Our Common Humanity in the Information Age. Principles and Values for Development
RESPECT FOR NATURE, AN ARCHITECT’S
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RESPECT FOR NATURE, AN ARCHITECT’S
VIEWPOINT J. Robert Hillier, Founder and Chairman of the Board, Hillier Architecture All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable. – Frank Lloyd Wright. I am an architect and entrepreneur and as such, I am seldom called upon to discuss the many profound questions of global significance. Architects and planners, in their day to day practice, are called upon to solve a variety of complex problems – community needs, preservation of green space, cost of construction – but world population growth, poverty, hunger, strife and, until recently, global warming are not usually among them. 56 | Our Common Humanity in the Information Age However, many architects like my self believe that the built environment is essential to creating strong communities, promoting good health, protecting and preserving natural resources, and ultimately, illuminating our common humanity. Architecture as a pursuit is peaceful, as in full of peace. It is the antithesis of strife and war which usually destroys what we create. In essence, architecture is the creation of environments for the well-being and furtherance of the most important human endeavors – learning, governance and healing. My view of architecture is that it is the prioritization and understanding of all the forces at work on human need and then the creative balancing of those forces in the meeting of that human need. The question arises, what are those forces? They range from obvious simple forces like gravity and weather, to the functional forces of economics and supply chains, to the subtle and complex forces of sociology, politics, culture and context. Architecture is born from functional need, but to be meaningful it must fulfill emotional, spiritual and cultural needs. Indeed, the world today is facing an extreme ly dangerous vicious circle that I would liken to a tornado. It begins small, with building design that is ignorant of the earth’s finite resources, and ignorant of the abundant resources to be derived from the sun, wind and the earth’s mass. It gains destructive speed and strength through ignorant urban planning, which leads to sprawl and unrelenting gasoline consumption. The “haves” of the world can erect their castles from these ignorances. The “have nots” then bear the brunt of the storms: the hurricanes, the floods and the drought. Each architect can work hard to create desirable affordable housing and design schools or hospitals in developing countries, but unless we work together as a society to address the environmental consequences of population growth leading to rapid urbanization which we now realize leads global warming and thus, severe weather, flooding, and therefore natural disasters. Just imagine, no more land to build on; no resources with which to build; and ultimately, no audience for our creativity. There are some staggering statistics concerning the environmental impact of buildings. Buildings are responsible for some 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions that are responsible for climate change – well beyond what automobiles produce. The design profession and the building industry consume over 3 billion tons of raw materials each year – that’s the equivalent of all of Manhattan (about 23 miles long by 2 miles wide) being covered in 150 feet of material each year! Chapter III – Respect for Nature and Sustainable Development | 57 Since 1970, the U.S. alone has lost close to 39 million acres of farmland to development – that’s about 2 acres per minute. In developing countries, farmland is disappearing at an even faster clip. The small state of New Jersey is consuming land at a staggering rate of 40 acres a day for development – and it is considered a slow growth state! Thanks to a variety of national and international organizations committed to protecting the environment, as well as a growing number of architectural practices committed to environmentally responsible design, we’ve made great progress in conveying the message that sustainable design is not just desirable, it’s essential. Clients and government leaders have finally come to understand that building and climate change are connected; that human beings thrive when they have access to natural light and clean air; and that communities are most stable and prosperous when they are planned and designed with the big picture in mind. In many parts of the world, we’re still designing buildings that consume vast amounts of energy, and plopping them down in ecologically sensitive habitats. To draw the analogy between the building and the automotive industries, we’re still designing hummers when we ought to be designing hybrids. Because the average lifespan of a typical building is more than 15 times that of a car, we will have to live with these hummers for the next 100 years, long after the resources to maintain them have been exhausted. The good news is that we have at our disposal the intellectual and technological resources to design buildings and communities that can actually enhance the environment rather than detract from it. The green design movement has matured into a viable industry that now makes economic besides environmental sense, and governments in many developed countries are requiring that new buildings meet basic – if not ambitious – criteria for sustainability. New technologies to create environmentally efficient, intelligent structures are being developed daily. Innovation is happening everywhere. In Guangdong, China, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP (SOM) Architectural Firm is designing a “zero energy” office tower that will harvest sun and wind and employ cutting-edge technology to make it possible to operate completely off the grid. In some countries, ecovillages - entire communities devoted to restoring the delicate balance between nature and humankind - are cropping up. Hillier architecture has designed an international school in Chennai that harvests the sun and wind to heat and cool the building, and it was constructed from renewable materials all from within a 10-mile radius of the site, providing an economic boost to local 58 | Our Common Humanity in the Information Age businesses and craftsmen and wasting few precious finite resources as a result. This should be happening everywhere as urbanization and globalization is inevitable. With the proper planning and strategies, we can design “living environments” that help restore ecological balance, enhance our quality of life, and remain relevant and productive for generations to come. Though environmental responsibility is one aspect of sustainability with which architects are concerned, I want to discuss a closely related issue, which is cultural sustainability – that is, respecting and preserving the attributes and traditions that make one place distinct from another. People refer to the world today as a “global village.” From an architectural viewpoint, I would caution against the “one world” notion. The world is not one village, but rather a collection of villages – and cities and rural areas – each with its own distinct identity and needs. We can recognize our common humanity – our universal desire for clean air and water, a place for our children to learn and grow, and vibrant, economically stable communities – without making our humanity common. We need to resist “sameness” and nurture and cultivate the things that make us unique as cultures, as regions, and as a people. Architecture is both thriving and suffering under the influence of globalization. On the one hand, the exportation of architectural expertise to the developing world has led to bold new architectural designs; buildings that could not have been imagined or exe cuted at any other time in history. But one has to ask what is a Chicago apartment tower doing in Dubai? Is a high rise tower even appropriate to a country whose culture is nomadic and centered on village as community. There is no community in an apartment 600 feet in the air. More to the point, it’s possible to travel to the opposite sides of the planet and see the same fast food restaurants, big box stores and mega malls, run by global corporations, where once there were teeming, architecturally distinct marketplaces run by and for the people who live there. In short, homogeneity is not sustainable. Sustainable architecture – and environmentally responsible architecture – should be of its time and of its place. It should respond to the unique environmental, political, cultural, and environmental forces that act upon it locally as well as globally. It should be an expression of the people it serves and the culture from which it is derived. Chapter III – Respect for Nature and Sustainable Development | 59 As architects, we don’t always live by these principles. Until recently, we have not been good stewards of the environment, and we do not always do a great job of illuminating what is unique and special about our clients and the places where we design. That said, we must strive toward these goals: sustainable design, respecting nature, building community, celebrating culture and saving land - and hope that others with similar aspirations. As much as we strive to prevent the continuing decline of the environment and work to reverse the trend and, in the end, restore it, I do not want us to lose sight of the root cause of it all which architecture cannot solve, that is unrelenting population growth. With ever increasing population growth and ever decreasing resources to support that population we will continue to have strife and wars. The conflict between the “have’s” and the “have nots” will only deepen until we can all come together and join hands in a program of education, of birth control, and yes, of religious resolution. In doing so all mankind who is placed on this earth will have equality and can join in a mission of creating a sustainable world that has brought into balance a population density and the earth’s resources necessary to sustain it and protect it. We firmly believe that in order for a building to be sustainable, it must be loved; it must touch the soul. People - not just the current owners, but future generations - must find enough value in a building to continue to occupy and maintain it. Some of this is aesthetic, some performance and some economics. The roman architect Vitruvius told us that buildings must have "firmness, commodity and delight". True today more than ever. Download 0.61 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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