This 18 month interdisciplinary project collaborates across the fields of Education, Architecture, and Design to improve our understanding of the lived experience of school buildings. This project combines sensory ethnographic methods with social mapping methods, to trace complex networks of relationality and spatial practices in buildings. Our aim is to generate new mapping methods that better document the sensory-affective dimensions of school environments. These dynamic maps will offer time-lapse representations of how staff and students experience the school buildings, shedding light on problematic spaces in the built environment. This constitutes a cutting-edge methodological approach that assembles participatory methods of design-based research with sensory ethnographic mapping. This hybrid ethnographic method involves following the key actors involved (staff, students, visitors, stakeholders), while also attending to the sensory force and impact of the built environment itself. The research team will collect sensory ethnographic data, codify and correlate with voiced/texted concerns regarding building use, assemble the data using mapping software, and create dynamic visualizations of the spatial practices and sensory environment, as it mutates over a 9 month period of time. Working with three secondary schools in Liverpool, our iterative research design involves alternating between 3-month cycles of ethnographic study and 3-month cycles of data processing and map making, for a total of 9 months in the schools. Our methods directly involve school communities in collaborative processes of collectively mapping the complex sensory-affective spatial practices within their buildings. Young people at the schools will increase their understanding of smart architecture and passive sensor technology through their participation in the project. Workshops with students and staff will commence in the first 2 months, exploring participatory methods for sensory ethnography in smart schools. The cycles of ethnography and mapping will follow. Co-designed interventions in schools aim to address problematic spaces during mapping phases. The research team will meet with an advisory group 5 times over the 18 months, which includes experts in UK school architecture, learning environments, and digital design, as well as representatives from the schools. We are partnering with an architecture firm esteemed for their school architecture, and their national and international contributions, over the last two decades, to education learning environment policy. The participating schools were built by the architecture firm, which is contributing person-hours throughout the project, as well as school architectural plans and blueprints, and other planning documents used to visualize the occupant experience. We are also working with a design company that focuses on innovative wearable sensor technologies and citizen science, with experience in school building interventions. The project is situated in our Manifold Laboratory for Biosocial, Eco-sensory, and Digital Studies of Learning and Behaviour, where we have access to equipment and research infrastructure (www.biosocialresearchlab.com). Academic and creative outputs will include (a) a project website, documenting both research process and findings, with a secure blog for posting news and progress, (b) project exhibitions and events in Liverpool public-access sites, such as The Baltic Triangle PLACED digital academy, and Make Liverpool North Docks Warehouse, and the Manchester Whitworth Young Contemporaries space, and Manchester School of Architecture, (c) academic publications (3), conference papers (3), and a report to local education agencies. Findings will also be shared with the Association for Learning Environments (ALE-UK), the UK National Data Archive, and the learning environment group at the OECD.

Green infrastructure (GI) delivers a range of crucial environmental processes and benefits to urban populations. GI also has the potential to play a key role in 'climate proofing' cities. Despite a wealth of scientific understanding on the importance of GI, the implementation and uptake of GI in new developments in the UK is lacking. Through a dialogue and exchange of knowledge with project partners from public, private and charity organisations, this project will develop and test a route map which translates GI scientific research into a practical and applicable user interface. Central to the development of the route map is the identification of user knowledge needs and an exploration of the current perceived barriers to GI uptake. The route map will facilitate the integration of GI science into user organisations, using Manchester as an exemplar city. Crucially, this project will also develop institutional embeddedness in project partners and other key stakeholders to utilise and apply GI science knowledge within user organisations. Through the co-production of knowledge, project partners will enhance their research literacy, thus enabling them to access, assess, translate and integrate GI science in the planning, design, delivery and funding of new developments in Manchester and beyond. It is envisaged that the approach implemented in this project will be adopted by other organisations and stakeholders, and in doing so, will help multifunctional GI-based solutions to become part of business-as-usual city growth in new developments. Key words Green Infrastructure; Barriers; Knowledge Exchange; Decision Tree; Research Literacy; Institutional Embeddedness; Manchester Project Partners Manchester: A Certain Future - Community Interest Company Manchester City Council - Local government organisation Building Design Partnership - International urban design practice Red Rose Forest - Charitable organisation

Concrete is the most widely used construction material and is essential to the global programme of infrastructure updating (global estimate ~$100tn including UK National infrastructure plan £400bn) (www.oxfordeconomics.com/publication/open/283970). Excessive cracking due to restraint in poorly designed reinforced concrete (RC) structures is a widespread problem in the concrete construction industry and leads to many instances of costly remedial measures and delays. For example, a recent project in England was delayed due to excessive cracking caused by the restraint of imposed strains (from early thermal and shrinkage actions). Subsequent changes recommended by the applicants during the construction programme to limit the edge restraint of early thermal and shrinkage strain produced a real cost saving to the client of approximately £1.75M. The design guidance developed in this research will increase the performance and efficiency of new RC infrastructure as well as prolong the life of existing infrastructure through improved understanding of cracking. There are many situations when cracking due to the restraint of imposed deformations may be difficult to avoid. In fact, cracking from the restraint of early thermal movements (often referred to as 'non-structural' cracking) is the most common form of restraint induced cracking. In design, cracking is managed by the provision of reinforcement intended to distribute internal strains in such a way as to control the cracking pattern and limit crack widths. Current UK/EU design guidance on restraint induced cracking is encapsulated in EN1992-3:2006 and CIRIA report C660/766. The underlying design methodology in these documents has been used for over 30 years and is flawed. This is reflected in field observations identifying cracking patterns contrary to - and crack widths in excess of - those predicted by EN1992-3:2006. It is apparent that such 'non-compliance' cases result from erroneous basic assumptions; in particular; the boundary (restraint) conditions play a more significant role in determining the crack pattern than assumed in the current design guidance. The outcome of this research will provide practising engineers with the ability for the first time in three generations of UK/EU codes to correctly design RC elements for the restraint of short and long-term imposed strains. Planned dissemination routes will significantly aid the reduction in frequency and overall number of non-compliance cases, which currently result from the poor understanding of restraint induced cracking and affect all aspects of concrete construction in the UK.

LoHCool focuses on topic T1 'Delivering economic and energy-efficient heating and cooling to city areas of different population densities and climates'. It confronts directly the conundrum of offering greater winter and summer comfort in a Continental climate zone whilst mitigating what would be a carbon penalty of prodigious proportions. It concentrates on recovering value from the existing building stock, some 3.4 Billion m2 in which dwell and work some 550 Million citizens. It is highly cross-disciplinary involving engineers, building scientists, atmospheric scientists, architects and behavioural researchers in China and UK measuring real performance in new and particularly in existing buildings in Chinese cities to investigate the use of passive and active systems within integrated design and re-engineering. It focuses on the very challenging dynamic within China's Hot Summer/Cold Winter HSCW climate zone. It aims to enable the much desired improvements in living conditions and comfort levels within buildings through developing a keen understanding of the current heating and cooling technologies and practices in buildings by monitoring, surveying and measuring people's comfort and capturing this understanding through developing systems modelling including energy simulations. It will borrow on UK research for comparative purposes, for example work examining the current and future environmental conditions within the whole National Health Service (NHS) Hospital Estate in England and the practical economic opportunities, very considerable, for significant improvement whilst saving carbon at the rate required by ambitious NHS targets. It will propose detailed practical and economic low and very low carbon options for re-engineering the dominant building types which we will identify in a series of cities, as developed with local stakeholders, contractors and building professionals, exploring economic and energy-efficient low carbon district heating and cooling systems. Finally, it will test them in the current climate, 'current' extreme events, future climates and will estimate the carbon implications and cost of widespread implementation. Findings for the existing stock will be equally applicable to new-build, in many ways a simpler prospect.