Part of ensuring that sustainability is more than just a technological fix to supplement a wasteful lifestyle is using design to reveal processes and concepts to onlookers that result in actually imparting knowledge. This can make the jump from simply catching attention to raising awareness and understanding. Designers are often presented with opportunities to decide whether a sustainable component will only be a hidden part of the inner workings of a building and landscape or a feature that is incorporated into how the design is perceived and experienced. If the goal is to change the course of our culture to more sustainable ends then some of the most successful designs are the ones that can successfully allow people to interact with sustainability itself. Continue Reading…
Archives For March 2011
Given how much room for improvement we have in making our buildings more sustainable, we should certainly welcome the efforts of companies to release more green building components. Recently, business has been good. The slow permeation of sustainability into the culture of design and construction has brought new products to market every year for nearly every stage of the building process. For as much as we need more opportunities, however, it makes no sense to preemptively rush a product to market just for the sake of getting more green items on the shelf. On the contrary, a faulty green product could do more long term harm than a shortage of green solutions. Continue Reading…
Pop culture’s interpretation of “green” urban landscapes have a tendency to draw a literal representation of a more sustainable city. These “Garden City” visions can include plants growing from virtually every spatial nook and cranny possible. With flowing strands of climbing plants scaling facades and trees not only lining the streets, but poking out of sky gardens stories off of the ground, the idea of a more environmentally responsible cityscape is often presented to the public as being the result of the integration of flora and fauna.
While incorporating foliage and creating micro-climates carry a number of benefits, a truly green city has to revolve around the integration of systems to help it emulate a natural ecology. Plants should be treated as one component of a network of sustainable efforts in order to be properly utilized. This vision is not really “wrong” as much as incomplete and runs the risk of misleading people into thinking that making cities sustainable is as simple as adding plant life. There is no real solution that involves only planting our way to stewardship.