Forced Shallow Sustainability In Studio
Throughout this semester keeping aesthetics in mind were a part of this semester studio project however for many people that was not the focus. Overhangs, louvers and other passive strategies were integrated into the projects design with care however making an announcement to add in active strategies such as solar panels and water collection with only two weeks left in the semester is problematic an leads to shallow sustainability like Abalos talks about in the reading Aesthetics and Sustainability. Sustainability shouldn't only be for aesthetics but work with the landscape and climate around it in order to have the depth to it necessary to actually have an impact.
With such little time left to be forced to include these into our project there is very little time to dedicate the care that a building that aims to be sustainable deserves as many will be forced to retrofit or slap some solar panels onto their building. If a project wants to focus on sustainability that's great but to force all projects in the last two weeks to focus on it is a terrible idea.
Our buildings now we need solar panels:
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that often in our studio projects we are required to ADD sustainable technologies rather than this being a discussion from the very beginning. Sustainable design does not need to be a series of superficial checklists that we tack on at the end of the semester in order to seem environmentally conscience. the design rather should be built around and as a response to our sustainable ideas, technologies, and strategies.