It's Time to Reconsider the Obvious
Architects understand the need to respect our environment, to address context and to stimulate human perception. Unfortunately, the realities of building, budgets and time often get in the way. In the building industry, as in other industries, profit motivates and projects are born from opportunity. Human purpose often gets lost in that pursuit.
Although social themes, waste and pollution, sustainability, energy generation, sensory value and the like are frequent subjects for architectural competitions, art installations and educational displays, the portrayals are generally symbolic – fantasy. We need to address our built environment in its reality.
The building design and construction industry is a competitive, client-driven world. Whether a project results from institutional expansion or real-estate development, a combination of funding, profit and timeframe tend to drive the momentum – favoring prestigious design at one end and low-cost solutions at the other. When the agenda includes energy or sustainability ratings, qualifying for points often outweighs substantive value. In actual practice, beyond the aesthetic goals, an architect’s mindset is specification driven. "What could be" takes a back seat, but this need not be so.
It is time to step back and reflect on the meaning of context – the design synergies it offers. It is time to reflect on the purpose of sustainability – how to net meaningful gain. It is time to examine our twenty-first-century goals and reset our mindset of what we can accomplish by design. We possess the tools, technologies, methodologies and materials to design more productive buildings within the confines of a client’s program. To do so, we need to rethink the obvious, taking advantage of architectural creativity and engineering ingenuity.
All architecture touches people – everyone: occupants, visitors, passersby and the community. All architecture impacts the natural environment. Nonetheless, a building’s primary purpose is to house a program. Style and aesthetics follow, but "green" living and community welfare are often afterthoughts.
The fundamental value of architecture resides in its service to humanity. When the creative process addresses the broad relationships of human ecology, and not only the needs of a client’s program, we serve people more effectively.
An excerpt from Buildings Are for People: Human Ecological Design. Libri Publishing (July 2016 USA, May 2016 UK).
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7 年'the fundamental value of architecture resides in its service to humanity'... Architecture and the act of making a building for a client is a privilege that the architects enjoy like no other product or service. Although, there ought to be exceptions; the architects who are ‘living on cloud nine’ and the clients who are ‘subsisting on the earth like lesser mortal’, but how could a discipline be fundamentally oriented around pessimistic viewpoint of architects and not progress with an optimistic outlook, where clients are treated with trust and pride they deserve. I would be very interested to know your feedback on my survey ... I request your action to this call. The truth about architects and clients... have your say! Anyone can participate in this anonymous survey, as it has been designed for both architects and non-architects. Click here to participate and you can easily do this on a mobile device. Your participation is essential for the success of this study and would help me a great deal to come up with some meaningful insights @architect4user https://goo.gl/forms/1dZuwC9KFPPO7We03
Author: Thwart Climate Change Now
8 年Mervyn, I can't speak for architectural education vs. practice in Australia, but in the US, there is a serious gap between the two. Given the technical nature of sustainable design technologies and products, architect educators tend to have a minimal or superficial understanding of the effective use of sustainable design materials and techniques. This is not surprising and in many ways is understandable, as architects are not engineers. Therefore, in many cases, both architects and educators are forced to rely on the manufacturer's PR materials, which generally provide limited information that can be misleading. The same can be said for short courses and professional journal tutorials that qualify for continuing education credits - most seem to be produced by the manufacturers. As you infer, we have a broad range of digital tools to help avoid the pitfalls. Unfortunately, in the practice of architecture, they are primarily used for design, drawing and Building Information Management, rather than environmental and people-interfacial simulation on the front end of conception and design, and in detailing. If we care to address this problem, there is a reality here that must be discussed openly and confronted. Leave your thoughts here…
AJM Member on Master Planning Team at The Australian Jazz Museum
8 年Thanks for sharing Bill! What appears to be obvious and a common sense approach, especially in Architecture, Planning and Urban Design can take a dive where, as you say in your first paragraph, --"Unfortunately, the realities of building, budgets and time often get in the way", -- hopefully the educators and practitioners in the Design Professions are using the new digital "tools, technologies, methodologies and materials to design more productive buildings within the confines of a client’s program"!
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8 年Nice! Worth sharing, thanks.
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8 年"All architecture touches people – everyone: occupants, visitors, passersby and the community."