DrSabrina Lucas

At the heart of my research is a simple question:

How can the places we live support healthy, comfortable and socially connected lives, with everyday access to nature, while staying within ecological limits and preparing for a changing climate?

I approach architectural sustainability as a systems problem. Buildings do not perform in isolation: energy, materials, health, cost, climate resilience, behaviour, infrastructure, nature and patterns of development interact. The most sustainable solution is therefore not necessarily the one with the most technology or the highest performance against a single metric. It needs to be appropriate to its climate, place, resources and the people who use it.

My research looks beyond optimising individual sustainability metrics to understand how these factors can work together to create better places to live.

My research is developing across three connected areas.

Healthy, sufficient and climate-resilient homes

I am interested in what homes actually need to provide healthy and comfortable living, now and under future climate conditions, and how this can be achieved with the lowest overall environmental impact.

This includes passive and climate-responsive design, building fabric and thermal performance, indoor environmental quality, efficient heating and cooling, renewable energy, housing size, affordability and resilience to climate extremes.

A particular interest is sufficiency: rather than simply asking how energy-efficient a building can become, I am interested in how much performance is enough. What combination of passive design, building fabric, efficient services, renewable energy, materials and floor area provides the best overall outcome for people and the environment? Where do additional layers of material, technology, cost and complexity stop delivering meaningful benefits?

This raises questions about the relationship between operational and embodied impacts, comfort, health, affordability and resilience — and about how we define a genuinely sustainable home in different climatic, social and economic contexts.

Low-impact materials and building systems

My second research area explores how material choices and construction systems can reduce whole-life environmental impacts while creating healthy, durable and climate-responsive buildings.

I am particularly interested in natural and bio-based materials, whole-life and embodied carbon, circularity, material health and the relationship between material properties and building performance.

Rather than treating materials as products that can simply be substituted into conventional construction, I am interested in material-led design: how the inherent thermal, moisture, structural and environmental characteristics of a material can inform the way we design and build.

This includes learning from established and place-specific building knowledge, and questioning where additional technology is necessary and where simpler, passive or material-based approaches may provide more appropriate, robust and resilient outcomes.

Sustainable neighbourhoods and living environments

A sustainable home cannot be separated from the neighbourhood around it. My third research area therefore looks beyond the building envelope to consider how patterns of development influence environmental impact, resilience and everyday quality of life.

I am interested in compact and appropriately sized housing, walkable streets, access to nature, social connection, climate-responsive public space and the environmental impacts of the infrastructure required to support new development.

Greenfield development is of particular interest because decisions about density, street design, transport, infrastructure, landscape and housing made at the planning stage can shape environmental and social outcomes for decades.

An emerging area of interest is the relationship between the built environment, children and nature: how everyday places can enable children to move independently, play outdoors and develop an ongoing relationship with the natural environment.

From better buildings to systems change

Across all three areas, I am interested in what is required to move from isolated examples of sustainable design towards wider change in the built environment.

Technical knowledge alone is not enough. Regulation, development models, professional practice, industry capability, local knowledge and public expectations all influence what gets built and how buildings are used. Sustainable solutions therefore need to respond not only to technical performance, but also to place, available resources and the people and communities they are intended to serve.

I am particularly interested in the role of knowledge and agency. Building users often have little information about how their homes perform, what healthy and comfortable housing could provide, or how design decisions affect energy use, health and resilience. Making building performance understandable and visible can help people make more informed choices and create demand for better outcomes.

Ultimately, my research asks not only how individual buildings can perform better, but what needs to change in the way we design, build, regulate and understand our built environment so that living well with a lower environmental impact becomes normal rather than exceptional.

Supervision opportunities

I welcome enquiries from research students interested in architectural sustainability, particularly in the following areas:

• Healthy, sufficient and climate-resilient housing
• Passive and climate-responsive design
• Building performance and post-occupancy evaluation
• Whole-life carbon and low-impact construction
• Natural and bio-based building materials
• Sustainable neighbourhoods and climate-responsive development

I am particularly interested in projects that connect environmental performance with human outcomes such as comfort, health, affordability, resilience and quality of life, and that consider buildings as part of wider social and environmental systems.