Design for the Now without F-ing over the Future: an Introduction

Print from Agostino Ramelli’s Theatre of Machines (1588), via Public Domain Image Archive, colour overlay added by me.

We have a word for this idea. The S-word*. You know the one.

This word has become politicized by those whose feel their business interests threatened by a shift to renewables, decarbonization, and prioritizing human health and equity in the built environment.

And the sense-meaning of this word has been compromised by marketing greenwash, buzzword overuse.

Within the industry this word comes up a lot in conversation about the built environment and tech. It’s a short way of referring to wise use of resources, material, financial and human, to meet present-day needs without compromising future generations to do the same.

This is a dead simple goal to articulate, though more difficult to achieve. If you leave the S-word out of it, most people consider prudent use of resources as common sense. Noncontroversial. Banal, even.

Since this is an introductory overview I’ll paint this topic in broad stokes, but there are a lot of threads to untangle that are worthy of consideration, and I’ll tackle some of those in future posts as I study for my upcoming LEED AP ID+C exam.

Why does the conversation about the S-word matter?

Many of our resources are finite and we don’t live in a vacuum. The built environment is entangled with various industries, national and international interests.  

Further, our individual needs and wants for shelter are one thing, but the real estate and building and construction industries are another, and often they are in direct competition/opposition.

These competing interests collide within the process of building and furnishing our spaces. The built environment makes up a large proportion of our national economy and the economies of other industrialized countries worldwide. Our spaces are designed, built, furnished, maintained and operated. The energy suppliers that allow us to operate our buildings another major player still.

Further, market forces governing all-of-the-above are not ‘natural’ – they can be manipulated by society, politics, expectations, and behaviours. If we wish to make changes to improve conditions related to the built environment in the present and future it is important to think about why, what, and how, and break that down into actionable bites.

In general, whenever we build anything, use building materials to renovate, furnish or otherwise change some aspect of our interior spaces, we have some impact—typically negative—on both nature + our bank balance: there is a cost.

As a rule, building from scratch is the most resource-intensive way, but adaptive reuse is not without its drawbacks either. Buildings must be maintained, materials refurbished or replaced, technology obsolesces. When occupancy changes, user needs often change.

While an existing building is more – I’m going to use the S-word now, sustainable* – than a new one because of sunk costs in the form of embodied carbon (land use, materials, energy, and labour) it’s still a negative impact. We do what we must to live, of course, shelter is part of that. Like food, water, and sleep, it is non-negotiable. Even if the choices are not many, they do exist, and to some extent it is within our power to choose as wisely as possible.  

As for how this plays out in practical terms within the design space… I’ll start tugging at some of these threads in a future post.

* Sustainability — for a foundational definition see The Hannover Principles (William McDonough Architects + Braungart,1992)