The government has the opportunity to serve as the testing ground for innovative policy changes in order to gather data and provide a working example that can be used as leverage to convince an undecided public. Apparently, most executives in federal agencies support sustainable initiatives but also say that the agencies themselves have found little success in implementing them.
Architects and engineers have developed numerous advances in building technology that have allowed for the construction of taller, stronger, brighter, safer structures. As a result, contemporary designers have taken these systems and utilized them to help create a modern language of our building stock. At the same time, the lifespan of buildings still falls back on the weakest link of their components. Today, this is often sealants and adhesives, or “goop”, that are used to prevent moisture and air infiltration. Buildings need to solve the goop problem if they are going to last as long as the older buildings they are sitting next to.
Contemporary designers continue to explore new ways that the forgotten wilderness of the roofscape can be utilized as usable space with a greater purpose. Roof designs can become an integral part of a network of sustainable systems for a green building to purify its connection with its surrounding environs (be them urban or rural.) New York City has recently pushed past its green roof initiative to include “Blue Roofs” in its new campaign for a cleaner city, but despite the endorsement, convincing residents to invest in roof systems may still face resistance.
Urban farming has grown to be a subculture of sustainability that has received a fair amount of theoretical interest and study, but not a great deal of realization. For all of the interesting possibilities that urban farming is thought to enable, there have been enough hurdles to slow down any meaningful manifestations in U.S. cities. One group of eclectic individuals has pooled their efforts into a concept that offers a new model for urban farming with hopes that it could help jump start investment. They call their vision “Agropolis.”
Our country’s effort to support renewable energy is still in its early stages of development and ripe for adjustment. The maturing of the renewable industry can positively affect job growth, technological innovation and increased efficiency, but there are a number of ways we can be doing those things, even within the umbrella of sustainability (smart grids, alternative transit infrastructure, electric cars, building systems,etc.) The real goal of governmental support for renewables should be getting more clean megawatts attached to the grid. If that is the goal, then we should be retooling our system of incentives to make that goal a reality rather than dilute its effectiveness due to a lack of focus.
Many developing countries look to our utility grid with envy. Our access to technology and capital allow us to stretch services to just about anybody, but there is a point where a locality’s dwindling population density no longer warrants connection to the greater grid. With the amount of unavoidable renovation on the horizon and our increasing goal of making a more sustainable system, our grid should be retooled by density-driven metrics. Those areas that fall below a certain density threshold should not only have to supply their own services on site, but do so with sustainable systems.
Ten years into the new millennium the internet has become an extension of our consciousness, another bodily system we tap into through screens and keyboards that provides a level of connectivity as an ever expanding silo of information. Our proficiency with putting more content online can create the impression that the internet is infinite—a boundless expanse of ether that exists in the non-material plane holding a limitless volume of information in zero space. A black hole. But the truth is that our somewhat careless path of constant expansion online has physical repercussions that require large amounts of energy and take up space that is very real.
Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have been trying to convince the cadre of American’s wealthiest residents to give away 50% of their net worth before they die. They are calling it The Giving Pledge. Even for someone who lives in New York City, where multi-million dollar apartments are commonplace on street after street, it is easy to lose sight on just how much money is condensed into the uppermost financially solvent citizens in our country and what that money could do, for say sustainability, if the priorities of more of its members were closer to those of philanthropists like Warren Buffet. For this, we can turn to the famed “Forbes 400” that lists the 400 wealthiest Americans each year. As of 2010, those twenty-score people represent a collective $1.27 trillion dollars, more than most of us can even fathom. Sure that’s approaching twice the entire federal economic stimulus package, but it’s also more than the GDP of 94% of African countries combined.
On the Northern side of Wales, the small town of Portmeirion rises from the hills beside the water into a quaint collection of brightly colored buildings each bearing a percentage of inherently sustainable components. Nearly every building in the coastal spot has been built with pieces of older buildings reclaimed and integrated for a second architectural life. But despite the fact that the use of reclaimed materials and their ability to bolster a growing deconstruction industry is steadily on the rise, Portmeirion’s building stock was not built recently—or even in the last decade—but rose from the ground over half a century ago.
Collaboration between professions can yield new, uncharted perspectives that lead to fresh ideas and in doing so, Grimshaw Architects has pushed the boundaries of what the perceived role of an architect actually is. With international engineering firm ARUP, Grimshaw has helped to design a new conceptual model of an offshore wind turbine dubbed the Aerogenerator X. The design is not only an example of what complimentary industries can accomplish together, but how the face and appearance of sustainability can be re-imagined beyond the icons that we are used to.