Oh, so there you are young intern, and why such a concerned look?
It's this gnawing inside me: I've been reading Kindergarten Chats and
studying Sullivan's ideas for some time now and believe I'm finally gaining a sense
of the powers within myself and of nature as a source of inspiration, but now
all I hear is that the four horsemen may be approaching from beyond the rise.
What riders are these?
Those not so fictitious riders, Famine, War, Pestilence and
Death: the four horsemen of the apocalypse! A century has passed in the blink of an
eye. I am just beginning and now I fear
the beginning of the end may be at hand.
At least that's the word on the street.
Only four, huh? We
ought to be able to handle them well enough – but what about the riders coming
from behind the next rise, and the next?
What about Water Pollution, Toxic Waste, Acid Rain, Rampant Landfill,
Energy Waste, Ozone Depletion, Disease Epidemic, Political Tension, Accelerated
Extinction, Global Warming, et al? This
horde seems to grow larger every time we look.
That's more than enough to get anyone riled up.
Perhaps if they could see the change taking place and if
they really cared. I'm afraid most of us
just don't contemplate the big picture.
When the limits of your reality are shaped by television, shopping malls,
and a consistent 72 degrees, then salamander mating rituals, retreating
glaciers, and denuding forests seem like a long ways away and more the concerns
of eco-kooks with not enough responsibilities to keep them occupied. Viewing an image of fish skimming a creek
surface to escape the oozing mud caused by adjacent site excavation an
architect announced that people were more important than mosquito fish. That's hard to refute (being a person and
all), though I wonder how many mosquito fish mother nature considers the equal
of a human being. Well, anyway, I think
it's safe to say it's not our divine destiny to rape and plunder the planet!
You're starting to sound a little edgy there, Chief.
Bear with me a moment and consider this: How many more buildings (and how much more
infrastructure) will it take to get our neighborhoods, our towns, our cities developed
to something approaching optimum build out?
What's the ideal? Like a finished
piece of accomplished artwork which can neither be added to nor subtracted from
without diminishing the piece.
I don't think that is a proper comparison because unlike
specific works of art, the built environment is an ever growing and adapting
system with its own laws of existence. Cities are constantly being filled with
incredible, soaring buildings and the intensity of life in the urban core is
powerful.
And I expect you find this exhilarating?
Sure! The hustle and
bustle is amazing, although I suppose there may be more people and automobiles
than I might like...
And what do you make of the vast tracks of development
outside the city limit – what we call the suburbs?
It seems Okay. I
remember when some of these areas were places we would go for weekend drives
and picnics. This is no longer where
man's spirit communes with the natural world, but these developments do provide
for the needs of a lot of people…
These vast, vapid, and soulless areas are devoid of your
urban core and, for that matter, of any buildings that might nourish the
spirit. People seem to like reproducing and
the more people we have the more of these "quickie" buildings we will
have as well. More and more of less and
less.
I understand your point of view, but with the use of green
and sustainable building practices it appears we can now have a win-win
situation for both mankind and the environment.
Those words are not exactly music to my ears.
What words?
Those eco-words. Another
architect recently proclaimed that future construction efforts should aspire not
for just twenty-five years of sustainability, but for as much as one hundred
years. What the hell kind of
sustainability is that? What did you say
about a century in the blink of an eye?
If, that's so then even a thousand years is just ten blinks of an eye!
So much of this green-speak is no more than a marketing response by those ready
to jump on any profitable band wagon. Talk
is cheap. These continuous eco-platitudes are too often insincere and to my ear
even offensive. Most people are perfectly
happy to consume more of the environment with green devices rather than with the
other colors… it placates the conscience and has a nicer sound about it. Show me someone who abhors waste, picks trash
up out of their path, and contemplates peace with gophers and pigeons, and that's
somebody I might be able to place my trust in.
I guess there is an over abundance of rhetoric, but surely
you applaud the numerous individuals and organizations that have worked to
reduce our environmental impact, and furthermore, have made great strides in raising
public awareness. Many governing
agencies are now beginning to require their new buildings to meet new standards
of environmental responsiveness.
And is that enough?
Is what enough?
I mean is architecture that complies with a multitude of
rules, codes, regulations, point systems, time lines, and schedules worthy of
applause? Are these to be among our finest
accomplishments? Isn't this just a kind
of pragmatism?
I hope there can be a lot more to it than that.
I applaud sincerity, but you're going to have to do more
than just hope. If there is going to be
more it will be because you will it to be…make it so Number One.
Too much TV? We have
a host of pragmatic problems to solve in our designs. What about the notion
that spirit and emotion in architecture lie at its core? Do you think that these
can contribute to planet well being?
The essence of sustainability is embraced by the profound
sense (not understanding, sense!) of the rhythms of life. It is the changing of the seasons and the
changing of the generations; not just human life, but all life on the planet in
concert.
The way you combine the irrational and rational can make for
a pretty hazy landscape for some of us youngsters. Maybe it's just my inexperience: aren't you heartened that not just the
profession, but laymen as well are now singing the praises of the environment,
and ecology, and sustainability, and well…just this whole green movement thing?
When someone announces their use
of low voc paints…a vision flashes through my mind…
When I read about the latest
viral epidemic…a vision flashes through my mind…
When a building is proclaimed green and LEED certified…a vision
flashes through my mind…
My vision is … THERE ARE TOO MANY OF US.
That may be, but to be fair, what about the reductions in
energy use, the efficient use of materials, and healthier environments? The way you talk sounds like our efforts to
recycle, use more efficient materials, and reduce energy does not lead to
sustainability.
The notion of using less and less in order to supply more
and more is preposterous.
At the very best it is just buying time. No amount of fluorescent lights is going to
solve our energy problems. Even if it were
somehow magically possible to increase the efficient use of a particular material
by, say 20%, how long do you think it would take for our increasing population to
reach parity?
I'm not sure.
It's not a 20% reduction because as soon as the demand has
increased 20% you're back where you started, but the demand will not stop
there, it will continue to increase every year.
The increased efficiency is commendable – but this is not sustainability
by any stretch of the imagination.
Sustainability means equilibrium; it means not using the earth's
resources faster than she can replenish them.
If the population doubles in another 80 years then whatever savings might
have been accomplished will be consumed in only a few generations. The good
news is that with the world's present population we can expect our efforts to
prolong the availability of the earth's major resources for many years. The bad news is that with accelerating
population growth we can expect the earth's major resources to be depleted in many
less years.
But surely there is plenty of room to house more people…
With the multitude of problems we now have does it make any
sense to double or even triple our numbers?
Don't we already have enough dancers, enough lawyers, enough workers,
enough chicken processing plants, and enough religions? Enough of everything? As long as the population is increasing even
ever so slowly – on a fixed sized planet – we're only talking time until we
exceed the sustainable carrying capacity.
Now that our land has been conquered, ravaged, and subdivided, all that
is left is to subdivide it into smaller and smaller pieces to accommodate more
and more people. As stewards of the
planet (which I find presumptuous) shouldn't we be thinking about the optimal,
most efficient, and most sustainable number of people for a given area?
But right now things
don't seem all that dire.
There is a classic example of exponential growth where each
day pond weed doubles the amount of surface covered and will cover the entire
pond in thirty days so how much of the pond do you think will be covered in
twenty-nine days? The obvious, but
shocking answer is only half! The pond
weed will then double again and cover the entire pond by the next day.
So more and more people means less and less of everything to
go around – this would impact the quality of food and water, the quantity and quality
of the materials our possessions are made from, …
Of course. You can
see this all around you today with so much of our thinking still shaped by the
momentum of Manifest Destiny. Less
people may very well suggest less economic growth. In fact a stable population would seem to
suggest a stable economy, yet most of us want to make more money, acquire more
possessions, and elevate our stature in life.
Nature has allowed us our excesses and we have taken as much from her as
we could carry and now we feel the burden growing heavy. We have taken from her like unwitting
accomplices to thievery, and what? Now
we are surprised to hear that there may be justice to be handed down? Who would have thought?
This is like Nero fiddling while Rome
We have developed lots of superficial tactics to deal with
environmental problems. While many of these well intentioned folks are
developing better Band-Aids for the extremities poor old mother earth is
bleeding to death from within. Our
intellect has allowed us a kind of artificial control over nature's eons-old
methods of population control and natural selection. This is clearly a problem between nature and
ourselves. Now we must work with her to
find ways to achieve sustainability that celebrates intellectual, emotional,
and spiritual growth – growth not in numbers but in quality – sustainability that assures availability not
for tomorrow, but for the day after tomorrow and the day after that.
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