Urban Heat Mitigation Strategies

Paola Favaro is a graduate in architecture from IUAV School of Architecture Venice, Italy and an academic at the School of Built Environment, UNSW Sydney. With a doctorate and a professional background in architecture and urban design, she is engaged in research, writing and lecturing. Since moving to Australia in 1998, she has had a long-standing interest in examining the work of Australian architects with European origins like Aldo Giurgola, Enrico Taglietti and Harry Seidler, with her publications widely recognised and presented at international conferences and symposia. As an active member of Docomomo and Sahanz, her current research explores climate change and urban heat mitigation strategies from an architectural perspective. Her recent works include authoring a chapter, “Venice Floods: An Urban Morphology Perspective in a Time of Climate Change” in Waterfront Regeneration in a Time of Climate Change: Recent Japanese and International Experiences (2025) edited by R. Pernice and T. Yaguchi; co-authoring the chapter “Solar Design of Additions to Historic Buildings” in Solar Energy Technologies in Cultural Heritage (2024) edited by Elena Lucchi; co-authoring and co-editing the book Adaptive Urban Architecture and Design: Tzannes (2024); and authoring the video-book History for Architecture: Alec Tzannes and Doojin Hwang in Sydney and Seoul (2023). Konstantina Vasilakopoulou graduated from the Department of Architecture of the University of Patras in Greece. She continued her studies with a masters in light and lighting at the Bartlett School of Architecture at the UCL, UK and received her doctorate from the Chemical and Environmental Engineering Department of the Technical University of Crete, Greece. Konstantina has worked as an architect and a sustainability expert for over 15 years. She has also worked as a research-focused academic at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens and at the School of the Built Environment, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture UNSW Sydney, where she led the Home Modification Information Clearinghouse and the Liveability Lab. She is currently a Vice Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at RMIT University. Konstantina is passionate about sustainability and healthy environments and possesses comprehensive industry knowledge in the impacts of the built environment on well-being, sustainable design and architecture with a focus on the inclusivity of vulnerable populations.