Sustainability | The 30,000 foot view

It is interesting to understand from the perspective of a person like Inaki Abalos who has been a practitioner and an observer of architecture since past many decades, how architecture has moved through different cycles of technological innovation. What we see as the norm today is actually an outcome of an earlier stage of evolution in the way architecture was practiced.

From when we entered the field of architecture through education, I have known civil and mechanical engineers to be a part and parcel of our field. Architects design a building, engineers figure out how to build it (where engineers entail a negative connotation in most minds). With the advent of technology and specifically the call to design with sensitivity and awareness of our global climatic situation as well as the depletion of resources, architecture has been challenged to create a new way of working, thinking and living.

SUSTAINABILITY: IS THAT ENOUGH?

When sustainability was a buzz word (and it still is) the way forward quickly simmered down to technological means and methods used to create more “sustainable” buildings and today we see the outcome of that in many of the buildings built in last decade. The focus is on a systems-dependent, highly expensive, additive process of development (envelope) while abandoning to a certain extent, the formal nature of architecture (tectonics). And this may not be all bad an idea either. It clearly related more practically to the context at that point.

However, simultaneously, Inaki speaks about how in countries with lesser exposure to technological advancement and a weaker economy, there arose a different system of sustainability based in the cultural situation of the place through innovative use of materials, planning of spaces, social and environmental elements. In essence, the technological advancement seems to have been driven by the cultural traditions and human already present, facilitated in part through the lack of technological repetition/development seen in developed countries. Innovation at that level contributes to creating an architecture that would actually respond to the people and the context and hence be more successful at achieving its intent (referenced by Branzi relating to ecological urbanism)

And finally there is a third system of sustainability described as designing with ‘air’ where the thermodynamic content of the architectural object is subjected to a thorough analysis and possibly guides the design process rather than an additive process of envelope or mechanism based additions.

Each of these are driven by different economic, social, aesthetic and psychological factors and I think understanding these differences is the first step forward; learning from them, the next. Such observations are not easily made and in fact require the expertise of multiple fields to succeed.

ECOLOGICAL URBANISM: A NEW SOLUTION?

The notion of developing architecture and urbanism through the integration/ overlapping of disciplines (human v/s non-human and culture v/s science) has been spoken about since many decades. I think it has become more and more relevant with time as the climatic and global situation deteriorates, density in cities and migration to urban areas increases, and the ill-effects of these processes are felt more intensely.

In this situation, it is hardly possible to continue examining urbanism or architecture as independent fields of design. Architecture alone cannot help this situation. Sustainability at the urban level is described as a possible solution by Branzi, Mostafavi and advocated through what they describe as “ecological urbanism” which speaks about sustainability at the larger scale, beyond the architectural object itself to consider the user, the environment and all aspects social, cultural , political, economic in addition to the human (individual) experience.

“Today we face a situation where there is an erasure of differentiation and a surprising degree of apparent sameness of conditions and circumstances connected to urban development in various parts of the world.” _{Mohsen Moustafavi}

As discussed before in ‘everyday urbanism’, ecological urbanism speaks about examining what is existing, learning from how cities have developed so far (the successes and the failings): taking the existing problems, understanding the root causes, re-examining in the current situation and context and creating a possible solution looking towards future situations/ outcomes. Understanding these different layers of an urban setting definitely requires the expertise of urban planners, landscape architects, sociologists, financial analysts and much more. Collaboration of this extent is not possible without a fundamental change in the way education is provided, beginning at the grassroots level and making it the norm for generations to come.

I understand where these ideals stem from but, what is interesting to me is to see how the main powers 'star'chitects and architecture/ engineering/ construction firms in the field of architecture and urban design will begin to adapt to this process/ methodology in the near future taking notes from smaller movements around the globe.