It seems amazing that it has taken this long for people to begin to realise that sustainable architecture isn't working (see article link below from archdaily)
http://www.archdaily.com/396263/why-green-architecture-hardly-ever-deserves-the-name/
Nikos Salingaros
Almost no-one was saying this a few years ago and now there are more and more similar articles. This is what we have been saying on our Masters course for 5 years now: sustainability is the radical, social challenge of modernity; but somehow that's been watered down to a (partial) science of individual buildings.
This article highlights the failings of the USGBC, though of course its a much wider problem than that and in fact the work we've been doing with the USGBC's LEED ND standard shows an alternative approach. ND looks at the urban scale of the built environment and combines qualitative dimensions with quantitative, so it considers how people use space, not just thinking of buildings as machines.
Climate change is only one of about ten major, global risks that threaten our survival and not even the most imminent (take your pick from desertification, species extinction, eutrophication, antibiotic resistance etc.). Any one of these can destroy us, but of course these risks are interconnected (as we and our built environment are), so cherry-picking one problem, sticking a gizmo to tackle it on some buildings and saying we're on our way to solving our problems is the equivalent of putting fingers in your ears and singing 'la la la'. But this is exactly what we've all been happily doing for the last three decades or so. Time to stop kidding ourselves and start seeing the bigger picture.
http://www.archdaily.com/396263/why-green-architecture-hardly-ever-deserves-the-name/
Nikos Salingaros
Almost no-one was saying this a few years ago and now there are more and more similar articles. This is what we have been saying on our Masters course for 5 years now: sustainability is the radical, social challenge of modernity; but somehow that's been watered down to a (partial) science of individual buildings.
This article highlights the failings of the USGBC, though of course its a much wider problem than that and in fact the work we've been doing with the USGBC's LEED ND standard shows an alternative approach. ND looks at the urban scale of the built environment and combines qualitative dimensions with quantitative, so it considers how people use space, not just thinking of buildings as machines.
Climate change is only one of about ten major, global risks that threaten our survival and not even the most imminent (take your pick from desertification, species extinction, eutrophication, antibiotic resistance etc.). Any one of these can destroy us, but of course these risks are interconnected (as we and our built environment are), so cherry-picking one problem, sticking a gizmo to tackle it on some buildings and saying we're on our way to solving our problems is the equivalent of putting fingers in your ears and singing 'la la la'. But this is exactly what we've all been happily doing for the last three decades or so. Time to stop kidding ourselves and start seeing the bigger picture.
No comments:
Post a Comment