Sustainability in Architecture
Koichi Takada
The unsustainability of the lightness of being
José Carlos Nunes de Oliveira
Architect and Founder of NOARQ
It will take many years to put together the incomplete work that is the construction of the world. The project is old, it has good ideas, but it is full of dysfunctions and imbalances, because it is so ambitious. At the moment, it is urgent to correct the stability design of this cantilevered marquee that we call the modern world. The structural imbalance is causing ecological disaster.
Perhaps we have never been reconciled with life in the course of human history, contrary to the peaceful narrative of some populist environmentalism that proposes, almost simply, a return to origins.
What origins? What moment in history do we set? In what millennium were we sustainable? Before or after writing? And if we were, what was the price?
Think of the cave paintings to understand how many species we exterminated. If carbon was not a problem in the Middle Ages, then lack of health care was. Plagues nearly decimated the European population. Human history is also the history of war, of misery, of ignorance and of the lack of human rights. The process of the colonisation of America ravaged the original civilisations. Greed has subjugated millions to drought and extreme poverty in Africa…
Now, more than ever, it is claimed all over the world, the planet is at risk. Wrong!
It is the human species that is at risk, as indeed are all (only) forms of life that we know! In the last two centuries, we have reinforced our role as exterminators of species and natural ecosystems. In the last two years, we have realised how easy it will be to self-flagellate ourselves to extinction.
The planet, on the other hand, will remain vibrant and magnificent. Not as we know it, but admirable, as any celestial body is. Perhaps red like Mars, torrid like Venus, perhaps icy like Neptune, but always beautiful. Perhaps a fantasy of submerged cities or ruins immersed in sand.
It is not this wonder of apocalyptic beauty that we hope for. Just as we do not dream of having a grandchild named Mad Max.
This being so, and admitting that we cannot repair the construction of the world, with the necessary urgency to maintain the ecological balance of life on Earth, as we set it as being ideal (perhaps one of the mistakes on which the proposition of the problem is based, because the system is dynamic and therefore variable) and without diminishing the quality of life that we have achieved, it is the duty of each one of us to review our habits in our personal and professional life. The problem of sustainability cannot be solved at the cost of exclusion and/or reduction to simple formulae. The very complex construction of the world will only be possible by accelerating human development, science and technology, without forgetting the lessons of history.
Perhaps we have never been reconciled with life in the course of human history, contrary to the peaceful narrative of some populist environmentalism that proposes, almost simply, a return to origins.
What origins? What moment in history do we set? In what millennium were we sustainable? Before or after writing? And if we were, what was the price?
Think of the cave paintings to understand how many species we exterminated. If carbon was not a problem in the Middle Ages, then lack of health care was. Plagues nearly decimated the European population. Human history is also the history of war, of misery, of ignorance and of the lack of human rights. The process of the colonisation of America ravaged the original civilisations. Greed has subjugated millions to drought and extreme poverty in Africa…
Now, more than ever, it is claimed all over the world, the planet is at risk. Wrong!
It is the human species that is at risk, as indeed are all (only) forms of life that we know! In the last two centuries, we have reinforced our role as exterminators of species and natural ecosystems. In the last two years, we have realised how easy it will be to self-flagellate ourselves to extinction.
The planet, on the other hand, will remain vibrant and magnificent. Not as we know it, but admirable, as any celestial body is. Perhaps red like Mars, torrid like Venus, perhaps icy like Neptune, but always beautiful. Perhaps a fantasy of submerged cities or ruins immersed in sand.
It is not this wonder of apocalyptic beauty that we hope for. Just as we do not dream of having a grandchild named Mad Max.
This being so, and admitting that we cannot repair the construction of the world, with the necessary urgency to maintain the ecological balance of life on Earth, as we set it as being ideal (perhaps one of the mistakes on which the proposition of the problem is based, because the system is dynamic and therefore variable) and without diminishing the quality of life that we have achieved, it is the duty of each one of us to review our habits in our personal and professional life. The problem of sustainability cannot be solved at the cost of exclusion and/or reduction to simple formulae. The very complex construction of the world will only be possible by accelerating human development, science and technology, without forgetting the lessons of history.
