ABOUT 

Maggie MacKinnon is a PhD candidate at Victoria University of Wellington’s Faculty of Architecture and Design. With her interdisciplinary background in biology (BSc) and architecture (MArch), Maggie’s PhD research connects both fields and investigates how architecture can provide habitat for native species in cities to increase urban biodiversity, climate change mitigation, and human well-being. She is particularly interested in how building-integrated vegetation, such as green roofs and green walls, can provide habitat for native species, improve building performance, and form more robust and resilient green infrastructure networks.

 

The title of her dissertation is Architectural Green Infrastructure: Habitat provision by architecture to enhance biodiversity and climate regulation in built environments. It will cover her research at the urban scale, where she uses a number of digital tools to analyse and design urban green infrastructure networks that include buildings. At the architectural scale, she will be investigating how to design green walls that can provide resources for native species while also providing thermal performance benefits. Based on reconciliation ecology and regenerative design principles, Maggie’s research strives to blur the boundaries separating built and natural environments to improve the health, well-being, and resilience of humans and other species in cities.