Fundamentals for Sustainability
Fundamentals for Sustainability_Paola Sassi
Sustainable Design – Planning Human Wellbeing_Isabel Potworowski
– YB House_MASA Architects
– Bedales School of Art and Design_Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios
– A’tolan House_Creat + Think Design Studio
– Dave & Bella’s Headquarters_LYCS Architecture
– The SIX Veterans Housing_Brooks + Scarpa
– Nature & Environment Learning Centre_Bureau SLA
– Tumble Creek Cabin_Coates Design Architects
– Green Heart Marina One Singapore_Ingenhoven Architects
– Bloomberg’s New European Headquarters_Foster + Partners
– Rijnstraat 8_Ellen van Loon / OMA
– Visual Arts Building, University of Iowa_Steven Holl Architects
– Campus Hall, University of Southern Denmark_C.F. Møller Architects
– University of British Columbia’s AMS Student Nest_DIALOG + B+H Architects
– Benjamin P. Grogan and Jerry L. Dove Federal Building_Krueck + Sexton Architects
Fundamentals for Sustainability
Fundamentals for Sustainability_Paola Sassi
How do we want to live? What is a good life? These are fundamental questions that should underpin any design investigation into sustainable architecture. Architecture responds to human needs but can also provide a framework for living that facilitates and encourages specific behaviours and lifestyles. Architects and other built environment professionals therefore have opportunities and indeed a responsibility to create environments for sustainable living. This paper argues that to achieve a sustainable built environment that supports a sustainable future, professionals have to go beyond technical solutions and consider what drives human behaviour, and furthermore that effective sustainable solutions can only result from a deep evidence-based understanding of the fundamental needs and desires of stakeholders and the design and technical solutions.
Today’s focus on climate change is equivalent to preparing the lifeboats on a sinking ship, instead of understanding and addressing the cause of the sinking. Sustainability is more than climate change and it has to be addressed more fundamentally than by creating small enclaves of safety to survive future disasters. Sustainability is about reassessing the lifestyles that caused climate change, resource depletion, pollution to land, air and water, the destructions of natural habitats and the biodiversity within them, and is eroding the quality of life of many people, and developing regenerative and just solutions that benefit people and the natural environment. In the past decades examples of sustainable architecture and urban design solutions worldwide that have been built to reduce resource use and pollution, positively contribute to local communities, protect and enhance the local biodiversity, and provide healthy environments for their occupants. However, even after decades these design approaches are not mainstream. How can this failure of our society to address this most pressing crisis be explained?
Fundamentals for Sustainability
Fundamentals for Sustainability_Paola Sassi
How do we want to live? What is a good life? These are fundamental questions that should underpin any design investigation into sustainable architecture. Architecture responds to human needs but can also provide a framework for living that facilitates and encourages specific behaviours and lifestyles. Architects and other built environment professionals therefore have opportunities and indeed a responsibility to create environments for sustainable living. This paper argues that to achieve a sustainable built environment that supports a sustainable future, professionals have to go beyond technical solutions and consider what drives human behaviour, and furthermore that effective sustainable solutions can only result from a deep evidence-based understanding of the fundamental needs and desires of stakeholders and the design and technical solutions.
Today’s focus on climate change is equivalent to preparing the lifeboats on a sinking ship, instead of understanding and addressing the cause of the sinking. Sustainability is more than climate change and it has to be addressed more fundamentally than by creating small enclaves of safety to survive future disasters. Sustainability is about reassessing the lifestyles that caused climate change, resource depletion, pollution to land, air and water, the destructions of natural habitats and the biodiversity within them, and is eroding the quality of life of many people, and developing regenerative and just solutions that benefit people and the natural environment. In the past decades examples of sustainable architecture and urban design solutions worldwide that have been built to reduce resource use and pollution, positively contribute to local communities, protect and enhance the local biodiversity, and provide healthy environments for their occupants. However, even after decades these design approaches are not mainstream. How can this failure of our society to address this most pressing crisis be explained?
