Buildings That Belong – Architecture, Climate Resilience and Our Relationship with Place
by Philip Shears, Director at Woldon Architects
Resilience is often understood as the ability to withstand change. Perhaps architecture’s greater challenge is learning how to respond to it.
For generations, buildings have been designed to provide shelter, security and permanence. Walls, roofs and foundations have allowed us to create places of comfort within an unpredictable world. Yet the challenges of a changing climate are revealing that resilience cannot simply mean resisting external forces. Buildings do not exist in isolation; they are part of wider systems of landscape, climate, resources and communities.
Perhaps the most resilient buildings are not those that stand apart from their surroundings, but those that understand their place within them.
Across the world, architecture has always been shaped by this relationship. Buildings emerge from the conditions around them: from the materials available, the climate they inhabit, the communities they serve and the landscapes that sustain them.
From the defensive walls of castles to the courtyards, streets and gardens of our towns and cities, architecture has always been a response to place.
From Protection to Belonging
Across the English landscape, castles remain powerful symbols of permanence. Their thick walls, towers and crenelated parapets speak of protection and endurance. They represent an architectural response to uncertainty – a desire to create places that could withstand external pressures. Yet over time, these forms have taken on new meanings.
At Rousham House in Oxfordshire, the crenelated parapet walls recall the language of medieval fortifications. However, they are not there for defence. They are part of a carefully composed relationship between house, garden and landscape, a reminder that architecture carries memories, ideas and cultural meaning across generations.
This evolution reflects a wider truth: buildings are never simply objects. They are part of an ongoing relationship between people and place.
The question for architecture today is not how to create stronger barriers between ourselves and the natural world, but how to create buildings that participate positively within it.
Learning from Settlement
Long before climate resilience became a contemporary concern, communities were adapting to their surroundings. The transition from seasonal movement to permanent settlement marked a fundamental change in humanity’s relationship with the land. As people began cultivating crops and managing landscapes, buildings became expressions of commitment and care. To settle was not simply to occupy a place, but to invest in its future.
Villages developed around water sources and productive soils. Farmhouses responded to sunlight, wind and local materials. Landscapes were shaped through generations of observation and adaptation. These places were resilient because they were connected. Buildings, landscapes and communities depended upon one another, and their survival relied on understanding those relationships.
The lessons remain relevant today. Whether a building sits within a rural landscape, a historic town or a dense urban neighbourhood, resilience begins with understanding what already exists and responding carefully to those conditions. Rather than imposing solutions, resilient design builds on the qualities of a place, allowing both people and landscapes to continue adapting together over time.
The City as a Living Landscape
The idea of landscape is often associated with fields, woodland and open countryside, but cities are landscapes too. Urban environments contain their own complex ecosystems of streets, buildings, waterways, vegetation, infrastructure and communities. They experience their own climate challenges, from overheating and flooding to pressure on resources and biodiversity. The challenge is not to separate cities from nature, but to recognise that cities are already part of natural systems.
Woldon’s work at 93-97 Queensway demonstrates how resilience can be achieved through adaptation rather than replacement. The retrofit and airspace development approach explores how an existing urban building can be renewed, extended and given a longer life within the established fabric of the city. This represents a different way of thinking about growth. Rather than seeing existing buildings as constraints, they become resources. Rather than beginning again, we can improve what is already there.
This approach reduces unnecessary waste, retains embodied energy and allows neighbourhoods to evolve while preserving their identity. The most sustainable building is often not the one that replaces what came before, but the one that allows it to continue. By working with the existing fabric of the city rather than against it, resilient architecture supports both environmental responsibility and the long-term character of the places we inhabit.
Designing Relationships
Permaculture offers an important perspective on climate resilience because it changes the way we think about design.
Rather than focusing on individual elements, permaculture considers relationships between systems. It asks us to observe first: to understand climate, water, ecology, materials and human needs before intervening.
Although often associated with agriculture, these principles apply equally to architecture in rural and urban settings.
A building is not an isolated object. It is connected to the landscape around it, whether that landscape is a field, a garden, a street or a city block.
Trees can provide shade, support biodiversity and help regulate temperature. Green roofs can improve insulation, manage rainfall and create habitat. Gardens can support wellbeing while contributing to food production and ecological health. Each element can perform multiple roles.
This way of thinking encourages architecture that works with natural systems rather than against them. Water becomes a resource rather than a problem to remove. Materials become resources to value and reuse. Existing buildings become foundations for future possibilities.
Resilience comes not from creating more separation, but from strengthening connections.
Adding to What We Inherit
Much of Woldon’s work reflects this understanding of architecture as a process of adaptation. At Argal Farm, the relationship between buildings and landscape is central. The project demonstrates how existing structures, new interventions and the wider working landscape can evolve together, creating a place that supports new uses while respecting its history.
Through retrofit and conservation projects, Woldon explores how existing buildings can continue to contribute. Repairing, adapting and improving what already exists preserves not only embodied carbon, but also cultural value and the stories held within buildings. At Font House, contemporary architecture is considered within the context of an established landscape, allowing a new intervention to sit within a much longer history of occupation and care.
Across these projects, the principle remains consistent: buildings endure because they are able to change. Resilience is achieved not by resisting change, but by working with it, allowing architecture to evolve alongside the landscapes and communities it serves.
The Future of Resilience
The landscapes around us are the result of countless generations of adaptation. A castle wall, a village street, a historic house, a London terrace, or a contemporary retrofit project all tell the same story: places survive because they evolve. Climate resilience is not a new challenge added to architecture, but a continuation of its oldest purpose, to create places that support human life within the conditions of the world around them.
The future of resilient architecture will not be defined solely by how efficiently buildings consume energy or how effectively they resist environmental pressures, but by how well they belong within their environmental, cultural, and social contexts. Resilience is not simply about withstanding change. It is about responding to it by creating buildings and landscapes that can continue to adapt, support life, and remain meaningful for generations to come.
