(Required of second-year M.Arch. I students.) The act of building is one of the world’s most powerful drivers of ecological processes and resource flows, from the mining and processing of building materials, to the energy consumed over its lifetime and its generation of waste for eventual degradation. This has always been part of a changing, interconnected and larger ecological system. Despite the perceived independence of humans and their habitats from this broader ecology, the scale and nature of today’s building sector on the global ecological system has placed immense pressure on the architecture profession to design buildings that, through their material selection, form, orientation, and climate-specific strategies, mitigate such impacts. An overview understanding of the relationship between the built environment and ecology will be provided through an introduction to key ecological theory and principles, climate/microclimate types, and thermal comfort theories. This is followed by an introduction to the fundamentals of building physics as it pertains to building thermodynamics, heat and mass transfer, as well as airflow. The fieldwork and laboratory components of the course will focus on the analysis of real-world environments and the evaluation of case study buildings in environmental simulation programs. Readings, short quizzes, homework, computational labs and a final group design project are required.