The UN SDG framework is comprehensive, offering many themes to explore concerning global sustainability to showcase the scale and complexity of challenges we face. As a tool, they can bring research and education together and aid the co-creation of knowledge between staff and students to raise awareness of sustainability issues. However, to develop a paradigm shift in architectural education, they need support to better showcase their value to have a meaningful impact on the design of learning programmes. The Koppen Climate Classification System offers a means to reduce the complexity of the SDGs; it helps navigate students through macro- to microclimates and develop design skills for different climate zones. Along this journey comes an exploration of the economic and social factors, what the SDGs mean at a national, regional, and local level and what sustainability means beyond the aspirational ‘goals’. Together they provide an opportunity to take architectural students beyond buildings, to consider more so the needs of people and communities, view things from a different perspective and reflect on what their future impact will be as professionals. This 10-week global sustainability project is creatively underpinned by autoethnography; a re-lived journey through not just the co-created experience, knowledge and skills exchanged with students during it, but its design and pedagogical approach, the dynamics of group work and peer-to-peer learning and managing individual expectations. Reflections offer insight into the merits of a brief release from disciplinary expectations and architectural conventions to question the sustainability of the profession itself and its future contribution.