Our Common Humanity in the Information Age. Principles and Values for Development

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.