ONE PLANET LIVING
Can architecture rediscover its moral compass?
23 JUNE 2020 BY RODDY LANGMUIR
Taking climate change seriously is finding traction across society - at last. The penny has also dropped for many who commission buildings, that ‘future proof’ means taking net zero targets seriously. The standards and protocols we sign up to as a nation require action by the construction industry right now. The risk associated with not planning for climate change and a zero-carbon world is guiding investors and placing pressure on the long-term planning of companies. Meanwhile, we are riding along on the steepest part of the curve of the digital revolution, as great leaps within our field transform the way we draw and interrogate design, opening up new ways of predicting reality, and of measuring the impact of what we design and then build. We also have a housing crisis.
This is a heady cocktail for we architects, who relish the prospect of a genuinely transformational brief for what we design. There is the sense of a moral purpose about our work again, perhaps not seen since the establishment of the welfare state and the great social housing period of the 1960s. Now we have engineers fully engaged in embodied carbon comparisons and quantity surveyors beginning to measure social value, instead of bits of material… so that finally the three arms of sustainability might actually embrace as one. But our construction industry has been throttled in the grip of a procurement knot of its own making, left behind by other more agile industries, unable to demonstrate collective will and endeavour when faced with what amounts to a paradigm shift. So, as we glimpse these promising signs of a new dawn - what are the opportunities? …and how might architects respond?
Alongside the digital, technology and green revolutions, we should find new ways to build well for the long term; to re-use as much as we can of what has already been built; to use renewable energy and materials; and to design all buildings for better mental, environmental, physical and social health. These will all be part of the baseline expectation. So much for a 21st century take on Vitruvian firmness and commodity, but what about delight?
In our search for enduring qualities in what we deliver through architectural practice, we must look beyond performance data and environmental impact. It’s easy to make the case that we really have no other choice, in that there is a broadening consensus that we have to reach One Planet Living sooner rather than later. The technical hurdles needed to reach zero carbon across a fully collaborating industry cannot be underestimated. But in the end, all this good work will just create a new baseline - the standard regulated platform from which excellent design must spring. Whilst there is a moral imperative here, the journey we make towards net zero should include the notion that good design transcends measurement. While we will have to undergo a minor revolution to take our built environment towards the promised land of a net energy producing, zero waste industry, it will still just be a part of the story. What is really exciting about our response to this new brief is how we do it…not just that we do it.
So this is a simple thought… that the best places, the best buildings, have always responded to the drivers of their day (now the zero carbon agenda) and conjured up more timeless qualities from the specifics of context and use. Good buildings relate to people and strike a relevance to their lives. Good buildings employ the sun, daylight, and textures… in an interplay with dynamic qualities that anticipate our movement. Good buildings connect with nature. Good buildings tell us stories about how and why they were made, and they are gradually synthesised as a part of our culture to be passed on. Good buildings endure because they do all this, and they give us joy. In 50 years, an optimistic viewpoint would say no one will notice that a building is zero carbon. They will only reflect that they love being there and that it has lifted their spirits, most likely for all these other reasons.
With so much to work with and so much at stake it really is an exciting time to be an architect.