Sustainability is a relatively new concept. While some architects have a genuine concern for the environment’s well-being and have decided to include sustainability as part of the mission of their firm, some architects may also use sustainability and LEED certifications as a marketing stunt to give publicity to the project and make the firm appear a certain way to the public. This thought made me wonder why some architects would not want to immediately change their practice to incorporate more sustainable methods and a couple different reasons came to mind.
Incorporating sustainability measures into a project requires for many different professionals, such as physicists and ecologists, to be involved. Some architects might not like this since they would have to allow professionals in other disciplines to have a say in factors that will determine the design of the project. Another reason is that a lot of people dislike the idea that in order to be sustainable you have to spend a lot of money on technology. However, architects such as Bruno Stagno have proven to us that we can find ways to be sustainable while keeping the project affordable and using low-tech resources and methods.
Even though I can understand that it might be hard for some architects to change the way they approach projects, I believe that it is important to learn from these methods and adapt them to our projects in order to ensure we work towards a healthy environment. I believe sustainability has made us understand the influence that the built environment has on the well-being of humans and the planet as a whole and see architecture as much more than just a “tectonic model”.
Preach it! I think that I felt this more than ever when looking for a job over the past few months. As somebody who is very focused on long-term environmental impacts it was really important for me to find a firm whose values were deeply rooted in sustainability. But, sustainability is so trendy now that it was really hard to figure out which firms were just using it as a marketing stunt as you mentioned. I hope that as true sustainable design becomes even more as a focus that firms will realize that they need to start backing up their marketing material in a real way and move the industry forward.
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