Tag: biophilia

24
Aug
2017

Is beauty a trade-off for green design?

Nature teaches us the importance of beauty for survival. Color in the plumage of birds, the smell of flowers are but two examples of natural selection to promote procreation (of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, consider the horny toad – not called horny for nothing). Nature doesn’t call this green design, it’s just good practice!

If a house or housing complex is not pleasing to the purchaser, it won’t sell. Consider Pruitt-Igoe, once touted as St. Louis’ panacea to housing for the poor. Even with subsidized rents, the building never reached 90% occupancy and was demolished after only twenty years. If it isn’t beautiful, it won’t sell, and even if it’s free, no one will pick it up from the roadside of housing detritus.

A lot of resources go into a building and the longer that building endures, the lower the environmental impact.

Architects must solve for a series of criteria: how does the building take best advantage of views, harness the sun and wind, solve the space requirements|adjacencies, optimize water and energy use, be resource efficient, nurture the local ecosystem, enhance inhabitants’ quality of life, and — delight? The architect’s goal in designing a green building is to find a solution that is an elegantly integrated whole. Beauty is not a trade-off for green design — beauty is essential to a building’s survival and therefore its environmental impact.

04
Feb
2014

architecture of the fittest – 01

Belvedere Civic Core

Belvedere Civic Core

Fossil records support a theory on evolution whereby isolated populations, subjected to a new environmental pressures adapt rapidly, often within several or a dozen generations. We humans, occupants of the habitat we callThe World, now find ourselves in a like predicament – confronted by a changing environment, we must adapt and do so quickly, achieving carbon neutrality by 2030 (See Ed Mazria’s 2030 Challenge).

According to the Punctuated Equilibrium theory described above (the debate continues between these adherents and the Gradualists like the feud between the Hatfields and McCoys), the isolated population, having adapted to the new environment, now reintroduced to its original habitat, out-competes its sister lineage.  The homebuilding industry is developer-builder driven (20+ percent of the market is built by the ten top builders). In evolutionary terms, the Developer-Builder is the general population which operates on the premise of stasis.  We, let’s call us Team 2030 – the Ecohome-read’in, LEED-A.P.’in, xeroscap’in, carbon-sequester’in, Greenspec-tot’in, , Biophiliacs — those committed to changing the business-as-usual of the industry — must define a new species of building, one that operates at scale.