"BOTH AND" architecture

 

Abalos, in talking about sustainability and materiality, says, "In short, hybrid material aesthetics, useful in the first and third world, capable of joining the three elements of Arup's triangle: the efficiency derived from architectural form, passive systems and active systems in a new combination - a material "crossbreeding" in accordance with contemporary demographics changes."

It's impossible to dismiss the need for architecture to join with sustainable strategies to be good stewards of the world in which we live, however, there's a tension that exists as design moves in this direction. Architecture has always held aesthetics in high regard as it's the very nature of our craft. We are by nature, creatives who design beautiful spaces or at least, we desire to be such. Therefore, for sustainable strategies to be sustainable in architectural forms. It must be a BOTH AND scenario which takes time. We are learning rapidly even now how to make these strategies coexist and actually complement each other in a deeply beautiful and practical way, but we are not yet to the point where it's the norm. I'm excited to see where it all goes, but I promise you that it won't look exactly how we might think because we work in a practice of BOTH AND.