Hi. This is the corner of my living room where I sat in a chair and took a self portrait of myself looking into the shiny black speaker. The speaker is also a stand for my yellow plastic lamp which I swivel over to the couch when I’m reading. Initially I was going to show you the portrait, which I like, but instead I have taken a photo of where I was sitting. The chair is now out of view and I have been replaced by an amplifier on a wooden box. The star stays up all year round because we never found another home for it, this is its second major relationship with a window.

I am a teacher and an architect in the process of starting research at Umeå School of Archietcture on the relationship between Industry, Occupation and Nature in Vasterbotten Northern Sweden. The draft title of the study is Dwelling in the Garden of Crisis.

ISSUU Publication: Less Acceptera is

My on-going PhD research project at KTH is on the walkability of the built environment.

In 2012, I have published my Licentiate dissertation titled, “Walkability as an urban design problem: Understanding the activity of walking in the urban environment”.

I have been a PhD student at the School of Architecture KTH since 2009, and am now approaching the last stage of research project.

Before starting my PhD studies, I have studied in Korea, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

My name is Ingrid Allard. I am an engineer, with a master in Energy technology focused on energy efficiency, and a PhD student at the Department of Applied Physics and Electronics at Umeå University. I am participating in this course as a part of the cooperation between my department and Umeå School of Architecture, but also to get an insight in how architects work as a mean to connect my research more to the architectural part of buildings.

My PhD project is called Energy efficient dwellings of the future and is focused on cold climate and single family buildings. It will be a contribution to the debate on how to create sustainable dwellings for the future, facing the global environment issues and energy problems of today.

I have studied and lived in Umeå since 2006, but my home village is in the middle of Sweden, close to  Sundsvall. Apart from being a dedicated researcher, teacher and student, I am also a  freedom-seeking Parkour practicioner, a  devoted seeker of Quality and a radical dreamer.