Relevance contra Permanence

Too often architects over analyze, over complicate, and over work. Why? Because everyone is a critic! If the pressure doesn't exist on the inside, it certainly will create itself from the outside in the form of committees and press. So in a world obsessed with sustainability, and adaptability while being enthralled with danger scarcity and aesthetic of austerity...how is an architect supposed to make a living?!

Consider, for example, the processes of building procurement (which range from the traditional design-bid-build, to design-build, to construction management). Almost always these processes are framed entirely in economic terms, and tightly controlled by project managers and value engineers; and as noted, are nowadays a matter of endless cost-cutting. But what if we were to understand — to redefine — building procurement processes within the context of real and constructed scarcities? What if the quantities and costs of construction materials were not solely the purview of project managers? What if architects took on the creative challenge of redefining — you might even say deconstructing — those quantities and costs and construction materials in light of such pressing realities as finite resource flows and proliferating waste streams? The work of several practices already points in these directions. 

- -Samuel Mockbee: "The Rural Studio”, in Constructing a New Agenda: Architecture Theory 1993-2009 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011).

Unfortunately, we do not live in a world of 'what if's'. We live in a real world that expects real results, in real time. I agree that building practices have been wasteful though history and are continuing to evolve as society does, which is all fine and great. But perhaps as builders continue to increase efficiency by building lighter, faster, and less intrusive we are just adding to our own problem. The demand for better practices only grows as fast as it is seen degrading. So maybe in this way the solution is to build for permanence. To build structures that without a doubt, will out-live programmatic use and human occupancy. WHAT IF we designed buildings for the betterment of of our planet..and humans 'just so happen' to be able to occupy them. WHAT IF we pretend globalization doesn't exist and regional contextualism moves away from a choice and towards a badge of geography.