Re-imagining the profession

“We can thus see how sustainability —by reducing the complexity and temporality of the built environment to the fixity of measure and object — essentializes scarcity” 

 I think this is a really important statement that can help steer the profession in a direction that can actually help save us from digging ourselves into deeper holes. I appreciate all the efforts put into creating sustainable building - but that does not remove the fact the we keep adding more and more buildings. This makes me wonder if the profession wouldn’t benefit from an added ‘expertise’ or service - consultants? Like the London based firm that realized that we can be in service to our clients without necessarily adding another building. This also reminds of my personal experience while working professionally in Rwanda. We had what we called an ‘immersion’ process which was essentially the designers going to interview/ discuss with the clients and community where a potential building was going to be. This helped us better understand how we could be of better help and sometimes it could end it better space planning for existing buildings instead of a new building. This is also a form of sustainability - as Jeremy Till puts it; by tackling scarcity itself rather than treating it as a lack of raw materials.

I think this is also a form of spatial justice - especially for the generations after us. The article mentions says that “If we are once again to have an architecture that speaks of values (grammar, proportion, propriety, measure) other than the spectacular, it is surely through a return to those concerns that we will find it.” I think we should add justice to the list. Instead of saturating the earth with buildings - we need to be just the people after us by using only the space we need.