Professor Sonja Dragojlovic-Oliveira

Architecture

Personal statement

Sonja is Professor in Architecture and Sustainability Design Innovation with over 20 years innovation and research experience in the sustainability and design sector. She has worked as an associate architect, senior manager and principal investigator in delivery of complex multidisciplinary research, innovation and design projects ranging in value from £200k-£29mil in the UK and internationally. She founded the Radical Architecture Practice for Sustainability network (http://www.rapsresearch.com) in partnership with leading design practitioners and researchers in Sweden, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria, Serbia and France. She has been appointed as a Thought Leadership Specialist Advisor to the Design Council and is a board member of the World Green Building Council (Serbia), as well as scientific and industry advisory member of numerous scientific committees including ARENA and the New European Bauhaus Collective. Her research, design and teaching practice are fostered through building strong industry and academic links across disciplines within the built environment as well as in computer science, psychology, environmental science and sociology. Her recent work carried out for accelerating socially responsible design capability and capacity for housing delivery has been selected for the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee’s report, Off-site manufacture for construction: Building for change and presented as invited keynote at the Westminster Social Forum in Dec 2020. Sonja has worked with UK and EU government institutions, EU business consultancy, international design firms, UK innovation hubs, research institutions and recently housing associations to examine complex cross-disciplinary problems that emerge in the designed environment. Trained in architecture and construction management and engineering, Sonja takes a novel approach to developing new insights into complex climate change phenomena in the designed environment.

Publications

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Publications

Beyond energy services : a multidimensional and cross-disciplinary agenda for Home Energy Management research: Oliveira Sonja, Badarnah Lidia, Barakat Merate, Chatzimichali Anna, Atkins Ed; Energy Research and Social Science (2021); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102347
Energy Modelling in Architecture : A Practice Guide: Oliveira Sonja, Gething Bill, Marco Elena; (2020); https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003021483
From individuals to collectives in energy systems — a social practice, identity and rhythm inspired lens: Oliveira Sonja, Chatzimichali Anna, Atkins Ed, Badarnah Lidia, Bagheri Moghaddam Faezeh; Energy Research and Social Science Vol 105 (2023); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.103279
From data to strata? How design professionals "see" energy use in buildings: Oliveira Sonja, Shortt Harriet, King Louise; Energy Research and Social Science Vol 101 (2023); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.103117
Reconceptualising sustainability practice research in architecture : radical ways of seeing and imagining: Oliveira Sonja, Betancour Ana, Mosley Jonathan, Schröder Torsten; ARENA Journal of Architectural Research Vol 8 (2023); https://doi.org/10.55588/ajar.390
Architects' 'enforced togetherness' : new design affordances of the home: Marco Elena, Tahsiri Mina, Sinnett Danielle, Oliveira Sonja; Buildings and Cities Vol 3, pp. 168-185 (2022); https://doi.org/10.5334/bc.189

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Research

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Research Interests

Currently, Sonja is leading delivery of multiple research and innovation projects (value in 2021 in excess of £1.2mil) aiming to transform interrelated energy governance systems to account for complex multi-phenomenon and multi-scale interconnected encounters between humans, nonhumans, spatial, socio-technological and environmental dimensions of everyday life. As PI on the £586,000 EPSRC project GLOW [EP/V041770/1], she is in collaboration with multiple research and industry partners, looking to develop new communication protocols to manage home energy demand drawing on bee colony and home socio spatial energy behaviour data across three low energy housing communities. She was Co-I on the £772,178 EPSRC project RESIDE [ EP/R008434/1] (with Oxford Brookes) and was lead investigator on the energy evaluation work for the REPLICATE project (https://replicate-project.eu). She is also developing a new multimodal visual lexicon for radical architecture practice to better communicate collective needs across diverse multispecies environments. Below is a selection of projects delivered or ongoing since last 5 years:

09/2021 (£586K) EPSRC GLOW-Energy nested bio system flows- from the home to the hub (PI) - Multidisciplinary collaboration with leading international experts in smart energy governance regimes including Energy Systems Catapult
02/2021 (£310K) Department for Education ‘Achieving zero carbon’ bootcamp cpd course for industry (Co-Lead) collaboration with UWE EDM
03/2019 (22K) VC Challenge Fund Automating environmental performance analysis in modular housing (PI) Collaboration with UWE FBL
08/2019 (20K) G4G Energy stories from the campus in collaboration with BAM and Hydrock (Co-Lead) Collaboration with UWE FBL
06/2019 (10K) G4G Perceptions of comfort in MMC housing – Zedpods study (PI) Collaboration with BCC, YMCA, BHF
03/2018 (EUR 29mil) EU H2020 project Renaissance of Places with Innovative Citizenship and Technology (REPLICATE) Co-leading Housing energy intervention Evaluation Programme in Bristol (Lead)
02/2018-(7K) North Somerset Council NSC Design Guidance and Sustainability Evaluation Consultancy (Lead)
12/2017-(3K) SHAPE Energy Research Challenge Award (with Wroclaw University of Science and Technology) (PI) Invited Contribution in advisory capacity to European Research Challenges in Energy Policy Agenda
10/2018- (£773K) EPSRC RESIDE ‘Residential building energy demand reduction in India’ (Co-I); leading and developing 2 work packages that will provide theoretical underpinning to data analysis and dissemination
03/2017- (£46K) Flagship fund ‘MMC delivery in social housing’ (PI); leading data bid writing as well as research design, data collection, analysis, liaising with client and disseminating- most recently in AJ ‘Offsite construction’ issue 5thOct 2017
09/2017- (£3.5K) Scott Brownrigg sustainability and environmental management consultancy (PI)
01/2017 (£22K) BEIS, International evidence heating controls (PI)
07/2016-09/2017 (£15K) HEA Developing Digital Feedback tools (CoLead)

Professional Activities

Socially Intelligent Home Energy Networks - views from Glasgow residents: Speaker; 4/5/2023
GLOW - Hive Launch Workshop: Participant; 22/3/2022

More professional activities

Projects

Design HOPES (Healthy Organisations in a Place-based Ecosystem, Scotland): Rodgers, Paul (Principal Investigator) Dragojlovic-Oliveira, Sonja (Co-investigator) Galloway, Stuart (Co-investigator) Inns, Tom (Co-investigator) Tapinos, Efstathios (Co-investigator) Wodehouse, Andrew (Co-investigator) Wright, George (Co-investigator); 01-Jan-2023 - 30-Jan-2025
Strathclyde Centre for Doctoral Training: Energy-efficient Indoor Climate Control for Optimised Health: McGill, Grainne (Principal Investigator) Tse, Dwight (Principal Investigator) Waites, William (Principal Investigator) Toledo, Linda (Principal Investigator) Moreno-Rangel, Alejandro (Principal Investigator) Sharpe, Tim (Principal Investigator) Dragojlovic-Oliveira, Sonja (Principal Investigator); This SCDT will provide three fully-funded PhD students with a world-class interdisciplinary research and training programme to bridge the net-zero design and construction skills gap whilst providing specialist skills in human-centric smart building design and digitisation for optimised health and resilience.

The increased risk of overheating, poor indoor air quality (IAQ) and inadequate ventilation in energy-efficient and/or net-zero buildings is now well evidenced, including the increasing gap between design expectations and energy performance, which is highly influenced by human behaviour. This CDT will train future innovators and leaders that can drive the transition to a healthy and energy-efficient built environment. The training will be led by experts in net-zero design, indoor air quality, building resilience, human behaviour and data analytics. Each project will be co-supervised by staff from different disciplines and all projects will involve industry partners and/or clinical advisors, to ensure that the research explored is based on an area of industry/clinical need.

The centre will provide highly-skilled future experts and leaders to tackle the challenges of delivering net-zero buildings that are human-oriented and optimise health. The CDT will deliver emerging multidisciplinary research endeavours by working across the departments of Architecture, Psychology and CIS, to decarbonise the built environment while providing a healthy and comfortable indoor environment.

SCDT students will become part of a growing PGR cohort, benefiting from peer-to-peer learning and an inclusive research culture. Opportunities will be provided to collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders (such as clinicians, industry specialists and the public), through internships/placements, personal development and specialist training, networking and interdisciplinary collaborations.

Successful candidates will be trained in writing manuscripts for publication in scientific journals, and strongly supported and encouraged to apply to external funding (such as travel grants), where appropriate. As part of the PhD programme, the candidate will be registered on the PGCert in Researcher Development. This is a 60-credit qualification covering personal effectiveness, governance, organisation, engagement, impact, and intellectual abilities, running in tandem with the PhD programme.

Candidates are expected to proactively take ownership of their project and creatively contribute to shaping it. We are seeking future leaders to develop knowledge and expertise required to address future challenges in the following three areas:

1. Linking indoor pollutant exposure and climate conditions with physical and psychological health outcomes,
2. Technological solutions for energy-efficient indoor climate control,
3. Understanding and analysis of psychological and behavioural factors that affect exposure indoors.; 01-Jan-2023 - 30-Jan-2026
Carbon Artifacts: a socio-material approach to low and net zero carbon building design from concept to handover (transfer): Dragojlovic-Oliveira, Sonja (Principal Investigator); 17-Jan-2022 - 16-Jan-2024
GLOW - ENERGY NESTED BIO SYSTEM FLOWS: FROM THE HOME TO THE HUB: Dragojlovic-Oliveira, Sonja (Principal Investigator) Chatzimichali, Anna (Co-investigator) Atkins, Ed (Co-investigator) Badarnah, Lidia (Co-investigator) Barakat, Merate (Co-investigator) Perez Hernandez, Marco (Academic) Bagheri Moghaddam, Faezeh (Researcher); The GLOW project is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and will create a new socially smart computational system to equitably and dynamically communicate household energy demand at a neighbourhood scale. Drawing on new insights from Glasgow and Bristol residents’ approaches to managing energy in their homes as well as their perceptions of what this means in their neighbourhoods, a new multidimensional evidence base on the social and spatial characteristics of energy demand behaviour will be developed. The computational system will be shaped by this first of a kind of evidence base as well as theoretical insights from Social Practice and Social Identity Theory to biomimetic approaches in the study of other species’ communication mechanisms such as bees that have evolved an efficient way to communicate collective resource needs.

The project is led by Prof. Sonja Oliveira, Department of Architecture, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow in collaboration with academic partners, the University of Bath (Dr Chatzimichali), the University of the West of England (UWE) (Dr Barakat, Dr Badarnah), the University of Bristol (Dr Atkins) and non-academic partners. The project team will be working closely with Steering Group partners, including Energy Systems Catapult, Energy Super Hub Oxford, Kenza Engineering, Community Infrastructure Group, SNUG, Bristol Housing Festival, Stride Treglown as well as Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, Purpose and Desire, Oxford Brookes University, Utah State University / Centre for Atmospheric and Space Sciences CASS and The University of Texas at Arlington.; 04-Jan-2022
GLOW-Energy nested bio system flows: from the home to the hub (Transfer): Dragojlovic-Oliveira, Sonja (Principal Investigator); 01-Jan-2021 - 31-Jan-2024
Campus spaces and places - Impact on Student Outcomes: Dragojlovic-Oliveira, Sonja (Principal Investigator); Systematic Literature review; 01-Jan-2021 - 23-Jan-2021