The Quest for Ecological Propriety. (Comment).

As if fulfilling the portentous predictions of some medieval soothsayer, the first year of this new century has witnessed an unprecedented catalogue of warnings of the cumulative effects of climate change. Heatwaves in Europe caused over 100 deaths. Forest fires in America devastated an area the sizes of Wales. The global warming that is slowly eroding Europe's largest glacier in Iceland also created clear water across the North West Passage at the top of Canada, making navigation possible for the first time since pre-history. Spring in the northern hemisphere is arriving one week earlier than 20 years ago, Antarctic summers have lengthened by 50 per cent and the Arctic ice sheet had thinned by 40 per cent. World-wide, there have been increasingly violent storms and droughts, with the UK experiencing floods of near biblical proportions. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continue to increase at an alarming rate. The pre-industrial level was 590 billion tonnes; now it is 760 billion tonnes. (1)

The convulsions of the earth's climate are only part of a familiar, doom-laden equation. An ever increasing population (currently at 6 billion and predicted to swell to 10 billion by 2050) is progressively intensifying the stresses on the environment and exacerbating the problems of urban centres, such as overcrowding, pollution and waste. (For the first time in human history, more people now live in cities than in the rural areas.) Doubtless some form of life could still survive in a world of shrinking land masses, foul air, choked seas and ever increasing temperatures, but humankind still has the potential if perhaps not always the will to conceive of responsive coexistence with the natural world and its resources.

Sustaining the environment

For centuries, building has been seen largely as away of living apart from the environment and dominating nature. It has turned out to be a pyrrhic supremacy, but the current ecological crisis has motivated many professionals and academics to re-evaluate the fundamental premises of how buildings are designed and produced. Underscoring technical efforts to reconstitute the built environment is the elusive but critically important concept of sustainable development. Across a wide range of disciplines, including architecture, conjecturing a built environment that mimics and complements rather than conflicts with nature is emerging as a vital goal of current theory and practice.

As Brian Edwards and Chrisna du Plessis observe, (2) notions of sustainability are not a preoccupation of recent history. The medieval monasteries of Europe produced their own food, created buildings from local materials, captured and recycled water and developed renewable energy technologies such as water mills and windmills. These highly structured societies took care of the sick and elderly, cultivated land according to ecological principles and had a humane approach to animal husbandry. Such practices still obtain in rural communities in Latin America, Africa and Asia, but often selectively appropriate aspects of contemporary technology. For instance, in the desert regions of north Africa, doctors still travel by camel to visit remote villages. It is a tableau unchanged for generations, but nowadays the camel is equipped with a GPS antenna on its head to signal its geographical position, and a photovoltaic panel on its back that provides energy to run a fridge containing medicines to treat the sick.

Tradition and technology

This instinctive, almost poetic synthesis of tradition and technology could have wider implications for the sclerotic First World, as Edwards and du Plessis note: 'Sustainable development is not a term one hears in such settlements, but in reality, these are places from which the rest of humanity could usefully draw lessons rather than seeking to "improve" them.' The danger of this is a tendency towards the nostalgic glorification of some isolated, eco-responsive aboriginal society totally removed from our debauched, technologically sophisticated milieu. On the other hand, the lessons of these civilizations and their cosmologies reveal a wealth of insights into the evolution of the human habitat that cannot be ignored. They provide instructive examples of how to deal with climate and demonstrate ideas, attitudes and low-tech solutions that can be usefully incorporated into contemporary shelter. Equally importantly, these cultures offer the basis for rethinking humankind's relationship with the planet.

Architects clearly have roles and responsibilities in the context of ecological propriety, but lend not to have a great deal of latitude for reflection as they are swept along in the 'time is money' deminated processes of building procurement and production. Moreover, it is rare to find a client interested investing valuable resources in responsive, sustainable architecture, even though it can yield demonstrable economic, social and cultural benefits. Predictably, in view of this, many architects choose not to engage with such issues. Peter Eisenman's dismissive reaction to enquiries about his approach to sustainability is like talking to me about giving birth. Am I against giving birth? No. But would I like to spend my time doing it? Not really. I'd rather go to a baseball game'.!

Green paradigms

Yet it is clear that architects, particularly at Eisenman's exalted superstar leve, can lead by example, suggesting ecologically responsive paradigms that in turn can influence other agencies involved in determining the character of the environment, such as clients, planners, politicians and the public. This could form an important catalyst for change. As Susannah Hagen notes 'In the built environment, this kind of redirection can be furthered by architects not only specifying and designing the building's fabric and services in particular ways, but also expressing architecture's capacity to transform itself. This is its ideological message: not that architecture can transform society, but that it can transform itself, and, as architecture does so, perhaps other forms of production'. (5.)

In Germany, the work of Thomas Herzog (now celebrated with an exhibition at the DAM, p20) is based on and sustained by a rich vein of ecological consciousness at botha macro level in his building and on a micro level in his exploration of the potential of existing and new materials and technologies. Compared with Eisenman's humane, inventive, radical and passionate architecture that acknowledges a world beyond the glossy pages of magazines and the sterile plaudits of academia. This hybrid approach explores notions of appropriate rather than high technology, to create building that are not only harmoniously integrated with the landscape, but are also climatically responsive, embodying the soul and substance of an emerging ecological property that gives great hope for the future. After all, to paraphrase Thoreau, 'What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?'

(1.) Architecture in a Climate of Change, Peter F.Smith, Architecture Press, Oxford, 2001, p9.

(2.) Snakes in Chopia a Brief Illistary of Sustainability'. Brian Edwards & Clarisoa du Plessis, Architectural Design, July 2000.p10.

(3.) Lbid.P10.

(4.) The Case for a Green Arsthetic, Christopher Hawthorne., Vetropolis Ocotober 2001, p113.

(5.)Taking Shape A New Contract between Architecture and Nature, Susannah Hagan, Architectural Press, Oxford,2001.p11.