The research focuses on how national governments can improve their sustainable building policies so as to increase feasible, cost-efficient and legitimate carbon reductions in the housing stock. Sustainable building is often seen in the context of new construction and few policy measures manage to address the complexity of economic and implementation barriers of improving energy efficiency of the existing stock. The research touches the sensitive question of demolition: to what extent the existing housing stock should adapt to the environmental and economic requirements? What is the real cost of energy efficient refurbishment and what measures should the government use to support sustainable urban regeneration?
Her concern with visual perception is allied to an interest in how architects learn to interpret their surroundings by acquiring embodied as well as abstract knowledge. Having established a fruitful decade-long dialogue on this topic with teachers at the Valparaíso School, Chile, she first collaborated successfully with them on a 2010 UK exhibition, Paseo, which explored the theme of openness and its enactment through design. Between 2013 and 2019, she has completed a series of papers concerning the school's innovative approach to architectural education. Two papers currently in preparation focus on the key role that light study plays in the curriculum developed at the Valparaíso School.