It won’t have escaped your notice that the heat map on the TV weather report has turned an unfamiliar shade of red. Or that the normally friendly souls who stand in front of it are adopting a stern tone and proffering advice which will save us from discomfort and possibly even death. Like open your windows early to let in cool air then close them to trap it in bedrooms and lounges. Like keep your curtains drawn against the sun. Like drink plenty water, that same precious stuff being dropped on the wildfires currently raging across France and Portugal and which are now as much a part of the summer holiday experience as roaming charges, lost luggage and cancelled flights.

Some forecast modelling of the current heatwave predicts temperatures as high as 43C in the UK today, while the Met Office expects London to at least hit 40C. That’s potentially record-breaking stuff and hotter than the Western Sahara. Meanwhile the Borders, most of Dumfries and Galloway and a swathe of eastern and central Scotland including Edinburgh, Fife, Dundee, Perth and Stirling is subject to an amber warning for excessive heat. Here too records could be broken. How long before summer temperatures in the low or mid-thirties are a regular occurrence in the capital?

Welcome, then, to the new normal – a world in which extreme heatwaves will only increase in duration and frequency as a result of climate change, with serious ramifications for health, wealth and infrastructure.

But piled on top of that are other factors which are altering radically not only how we live our lives but where we live them. I mean the offices, hospitals, schools, shops, transport hubs and, importantly, the houses in which we spend our time. What do those buildings need to do that they didn’t previously? What change is required? What have we forgotten that we might need to re-learn?

Some of these factors are immediate and pressing. One is the cost of household energy which rose 54% in April and is predicted to rise a further 65% in October as the price cap is lifted. Here there are difficult conversations to be had about insulation, about retro-fitting houses to increase energy efficiency, about scrapping gas boilers and replacing them with hydrogen boilers or air- or ground-source heating. How leaky is your home? It’s a question with a hefty price tag attached, both in terms of the environment and your bank balance.

But as the events of this week have shown, increasingly we need to figure out how to cool houses as well as heat them. Ahead of the weather red alert the BBC interviewed a young woman in Manchester whose high-rise new-build apartment would be the epitome of cool urban living were it not for the fact that its design precluded anything even close to coolness. An expanse of glass and no back door or windows meant no possible through-draft, and even with the blinds drawn she found it almost too hot to live in. It’s certainly too hot to sleep in, so she beds down in the hallway. Nor is she alone in owing a home which over-heats. It’s a decade since the Climate Change Committee, an independent statutory body, raised the issue with the government. But since then over half a million new homes have been built which are likely to suffer from it to add to the four million or so homes which currently experience over-heating. Deaths from heat could treble by 2050, so this should fact alone should worry us.

There’s also the ongoing pandemic, which reminded us why those ingenious battlers of infectious diseases the Victorians built their hospitals with high windows and ceilings. Suddenly we remembered what those sash windows were for – to allow air to circulate more freely – and we thanked the top hat wearing planners for the back greens they bequeathed us.

That's fine. A lesson learned. But as Covid cases surge in the autumn, so will energy prices. How keen will we be to open our own windows then? Moving forward, how can we build porous buildings which allow fresh air to come and go but which are also tightly insulated, green and cheap to heat? How do we maximise daylight in schools and hospitals (crucial for everything from mental health to the development of young eyes) while also cutting down on the overheating caused by too much glass?

All this is a challenge for legislators, to be sure. But specifically it’s a problem for architects, designers and the technologically savvy – and what a challenge it is because as if we are to adapt our built environment to both cope with and combat the ravages of climate change, there is one hell of a circle to square.