Hot Air: Erik L'Heureux

Hot Air 

Centered on two NetZero-energy adaptive-reuse projects—the Equatorial School of Architecture and the Equatorial Student Commons—and complemented by two urban equatorial exemplars—the Equatorial Tower and A Simple Headquarters—the lecture traces an integrated design ethos shaped by decarbonization, filtering, thermal calibration, and climatic comfort. 

Situated in the hot and wet urban equator of Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, these projects demonstrate how the carbon legacy embedded in our existing cities can become a foundation for regenerative futures. Collectively, the case studies reposition the equator not as a peripheral condition of the global South, but as a site of architectural intelligence with urgent lessons for a planet that is rapidly warming. 

About Erik L’Heureux  

Erik G. L'Heureux (PhD) FAIA, LEED AP BD+C is an award-winning American architect and academic leader based between Singapore and Melbourne, Australia. Through his creative design practice, Equator Works (www.equator.work), Erik specializes in designing for the dense equatorial city, deploying simple monolithic forms and finely tuned veils that calibrate buildings to the hot air of the urban equator in both surprising and delightful ways. Erik has designed the adaptive reuse of the Equatorial School of Architecture (SDE 1 and SDE 3) and the Equatorial Student Commons (YIH) at the National University of Singapore, transforming them into NetZero energy and super low-carbon buildings. 

Erik’s contributions have been widely recognized, including the Holcim Award for Sustainable Construction, the Wheelwright Prize from Harvard University, and elevation to the College of Fellows 

of the American Institute of Architects. He is the author of Renovating Carbon, Drawing Climate, and the monograph Deep Veils (Birkhäuser; ORO Editions), and is a frequent contributor to architectural scholarship. His article “Climatic Design and Its Others” in the Journal of Architectural Education received the Best Article Award, Scholarship of Design (2021). At the National University of Singapore, Erik served as Vice Dean, Program Director for both the Master of Architecture and BA Architecture, and as Dean’s Chair Associate Professor. He is now Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at Monash University in Melbourne, where he leads the school toward a future committed to decarbonization, social engagement, and planet-positive design action to meet the challenges of a warming world.