thresholds
Understanding the Pattern that Connects:
Sustainability’s Role in Architectural Academe
by Jean Gardner,
Senior Faculty, History and Theory, Department of Architecture, Parsons School
of Design, The New School University, New York City <gardnerj@newschool.edu>
Mark Jarzombek in his article “Molecules, Money, and Design” invites his readers to think about the effects on academe of teaching “Sustainable Design”. He wonders if the teaching of sustainable design signals a “possible utopian revision of academe.” He raises the concern that current interest in sustainable design may bring the “possible return of grand narratives”. In his conclusion he poses several critical questions:
“Modernism effected a profound change in American architectural academe. ...Is Sustainability going to have a comparably profound effect? ... will we see a separation of the technical aspects of architecture from its intellectual aspects? Will we see an escalation in the rhetoric between the champions of “real world” pragmatism and those of avant-gardism? Will we see the end of that vibrant history/theory discourse that has so invigorated the architectural thinking of the last thirty years? Probably. This means that many of us will have to make some gut-wrenching decisions about what is the function and purpose of academe.”
Jarzombek has indeed called attention to a critical issue: the relationship between the continued survival of life forms and design practices, particularly in relation to the impact the built environment is having on climate. According to Dr. Michael R. Helfert, Director, Southeast Regional Climate Center:
“There is little doubt that global warming is occurring during the 20th century, and that it is occurring because of anthropogenic emissions. ... We are looking at the future when the application of sun screen is an individual automatic action prior to going outside; ... when the daily commute is different in form, time, distance, and complexity than anything that has come before.... when social discipline is more required than is now acceptable. ...”1
Dr.
Donald W. Aitken, Senior Scientist, Union of Concerned Scientists,
states that buildings use two-thirds of all the
electricity in the United States, which in turn creates one-quarter of the
carbon dioxide emissions responsible for global climate change. He recommends
that
“we
can have our greatest impact for the least cost in the shortest time in mitigating
climate change if we start with the built environment, both the existing built
environment and those buildings we’re designing and which have not yet been
built.”2
Of course, every aspect of the building process -- designing, constructing, inhabiting, maintaining, renovating and tearing down -- has always had a relationship to our ability to sustain ourselves.
“The mere fact of habitation anywhere on the earth inserts a new factor into the ecological balance of a locality. ... Disaster may attend a lack of sensitivity to the inevitability of the modulation of the physical and biological environment of a particular locality by the introduction of human settlement. ... The deceptively simple form of traditional houses (often) embodied an intimate knowledge of the locality and its potential for sustainable life. .....”3
The above observation was made by a team of architects who develped for the European Union educational materials on climatic architecture. Their evaluation of the relation between habitation and its impact on ecology is supported by most of the iconic buildings in the history of architecture. For instance, the 16th century Italian architect, Andrea Palladio, factored climatic concerns into the development of his architecture, particularly features that helped cool his buildings. Palladio’s work is perhaps best known for characteristics, such as the temple front, which originated in a different climate and culture from his own. For his North Italian buildings, Palladio designed pedimented colonnades, derived from Greek temples, because they signified cultural values shared by architect and client alike. But these sheltered porches, like those at the Villa Almerico, (“Rotunda”), also provided protected spaces, shaded from the intense sun. They thus fulfilled another of Palladio’s purposes: relief from the urban heat of near-by Vicenza. Palladio sited the Villa Rotunda atop a hill to cool its interior with prevailing winds. The Villa’s halls could be opened to the breezes along the building’s main axes stretching from colonnade to colonnade, or the central rotunda could be sealed deep in the center of the building to avoid the sun or hot air of summer. In addition, the compact cubic form of the Villa has minimal surface area, which limits the amount of heat gain or loss from its surroundings.
Relationship
between architecture and human survival
It is Jarzombek’s definition of sustainability that makes it particularly difficult for those interested in the relationship between architecture and human survival to discuss this critical subject. Jarzombek defines sustainability from the perspective of the Natural Sciences, which, in his words, “emphasizes the primacy of the physical environment ... as a world-of-chemicals-in-dynamic-interaction.” “Sustainability thus presents nature as a place that is chemically constructed and therefore humanly malleable. “Jarzombek argues that architectural practice has adapted “two strands of accommodation” to Sustainability: “one comes from the direction of domestic architecture, the other from the direction of corporate.” But, in his mind, “high-cost, heavily researched technical architecture ... and low-cost populist architecture ... are remote from the traditional concerns of the architectural studio.”
Jarzombek cites the work of Thomas Heroz as perhaps “the best example of an architecture of Sustainability that is compatible with the studio environment.”
“Conscious of the impact his buildings make on the environment, Herzog not only tries to use conventional methods of environmental design (i.e. high spaces to reduce air- conditioning costs) but also works with manufacturers to design new and sophisticated types of glass. In regards to the former strategy, Heroz represents all the attributes of a smart designer. After all, high ceilings and nuanced use of sunlight make just as much sense now as they have for the last thousand years. They have less to do with sustainability than with usual issues of design. As Herzog himself admits, proportion, and even beauty, must be taken into consideration.”
As long as Jarzombek defines sustainability from the perspective of the Natural Sciences, there will be this seeming split between sustainable design and “the usual issues of design,” which include for Jarzombek proportion, beauty, conventional methods of environmental design, and anything intellectual, but nothing to do with sustainability. The work of philosopher and anthropologist Gregory Bateson offers us a way to bridge this split. Bateson, whose interest in defining the ways and means of human survival was epistemological and ontological, argued a more inclusive definition of what we now call sustainability than that offered by the natural sciences.
In his studies of human survival, Bateson concerned himself with “the area of impact between very abstract and formal philosophic thought ... and the natural history of man and other creatures.” In “Form, Substance, and Difference”, an essay published in The Ecology of Mind in a section entitled “Epistemology and Ecology,” 4 Bateson traces the split, described by Jarzombek, between molecules and beauty back to the Greeks:
“The argument took the shape of ‘Do you ask what it’s made of -- earth, fire, water, etc.?’ Or do you ask, “what is its pattern?” (italics are Bateson’s)
Inquiring into pattern or form (beauty) rather than substance (molecules), Bateson proposed, that while energy (substance) is a feature of an ecosystem, it is the organization of information, its form and pattern, that is critical to ecosystem survival. He argued that
“Ecology has currently two faces to it: the face which is called bioenergetics -- the economics of energy and materials within a coral reef, a redwood forest, or a city --and second, an economics of information, of entropy, negentrophy, etc. These two do not fit together very well precisely because the units are differently bounded in the two sets of ecology. “
“But there are bridges between the one sort of thought and the other, and it seems to me that the artists and poets are specifically concerned with these bridges.... art is concerned with the relation between the levels of mental process. ... Artistic skill is the combining of many levels of mind ... to make a statement of their combination. ... It is when we recognize the operations of ... (patterns, forms) ... in the external world that we are aware of “beauty” or “ugliness”.
Applying Bateson’s observations, we can define sustainability’s focus as not the world-of-chemicals-in-dynamic-interaction as Jarzombek maintains but instead the area of impact between very abstract and formal philosophic thought and the natural history of man and other creatures.5 With this definition, design in the sense of form and beauty becomes a critical dimension of sustainability. In particular, let us look from the point of view of Bateson’s definition at the seven dangers described by Jarzombek as facing architectural academe if sustainabiility is allowed into the academic domain:
1. The Politics of History
In this section
“Jarzombek asks “Should ethical issues be put on par with design issues in
writing history? Should Herzog be privileged ahead of Gehry?”
If we define sustainability as including pattern, -- the organization
of information-- , as Bateson argued, Frank
Gehry’s work would fare very well. For instance, Gehry’s
1991-1995 EMR Communication and Technology Center in Bad Oynhausen, Germany,
is a 43,000 square foot center for regional power distribution. He molded
its steel, glass, sheet metal, and plaster into his characteristic shapes.
The completed building demonstrates the possibility of energy-efficient technologies
in an architecture designed by a “star” architect who is very much concerned
with formal issues.
“The
building ( the EMR Communication and Technology Center) itself is planned
to demonstrate energy technologies and systems appropriate to this building
type. The office wing utilizes natural daylight, natural ventilation, and
thermal cycles. The technical wing, which has continuous occupancy, incorporates
a thermal storage wall on the south facade, as the exhibit center. Roof forms
integrate photovoltaic cells for supplementary power production, as well as
solar collectors for hot-water use in the kitchen facility. A solar air heater
is also planned, to preheat air entering the mechanical system.”
“The building exterior integrates the energy systems and existing
context through forms clad with plaster, metal panels, and glass. A garden
setting, opening toward the river and mountains to the north, enhances the
site from the Mindener Strasse approach. An additional pedestrian entry located
on the south side of the atrium consists of a bridge crossing a lake built
to retain surface water runoff."6
2.
The Politics of Natural Science
Here
Jarzombek reiterates his argument for sustainability as the result
of measurable and physical interactions of chemicals. I addressed this argument
above in the discussion of Bateson’s essay,
“Form, Substance, and Difference”.
3.
The Politics of Culture
In this section, Jarzombek wonders “what happens when energy-efficiency is raised above the level of a cultural paradigm to the exclusion of other factors.” On the contrary, historical studies of the forms and patterns concerned with survival indicate that they do not necessarily exclude or suppress cultural paradigms. Professor of Architecture Amos Rapoport in house form and culture argues that most important for understanding why architecture is built in a particular manner at a specific time are the values of the group or culture in question. He shows convincingly that socio-cultural factors are primary when choices effecting how a group builds are made. Particularly crucial is the vision a culture has of the perfect life. He demonstrates that many different architectural forms have evolved in the same climate. His theory, based on extensive research within many cultures, is that once shelter is provided, the particular architecture or settlement patterns that develop do so because they suit a very specific way of life.7
For our purposes, what is critical about Rapoport’s broad inquiry is his demonstration that the desire to improve a particular culture’s quality of life involves in part developing building forms and settlement patterns able to sustain the lives of their inhabitants within the context of local ecological systems without excluding other factors.
4.
The Politics of Gender
Jarzombek states that “for eco-feminists, the problem of ethics and social practice is not solved by such an insistence on technology. On the contrary, it is only made worse.” He correctly points out that women must be made “an equal part of the professional team.” Certainly, this is a problem with the architectural profession in general and not sustainable design in particular. Women who have been made an equal part of a professional team that is developing sustainable design have in fact proved the value of their contribution. For instance, in the sustainable design of the national headquarters of both the National Research Defense Council and the National Audubon Society, co-director Kristen Childs of the Croxton Collaborative had a decisive and equal influence in creating a unique design the qualities of which I have often noted.
As a participant in meetings in the centrally placed, glass-enclosed boardroom of NRDC, I have had extraordinary experiences of light, movement, and air. I remember one late winter afternoon in particular. As darkness set in, automatic controls in the adjoining hallways shut off the lights. Someone left an office and walked down the corridor. As she moved, lights flicked on in front of her and lights dimmed off behind her. Suddenly I was a witness to a living unique forms of continuity in space worthy of Boccioni.
5.
The Politics of Capital
Jarzombek
argues that “Architectural academe, especially in the United States has historically
been remote from the capitalist world. It has traditionally emphasized the
primacy of design over cost.... Sustainability will force architecture toward
a stronger connection to both government and big business.”
It is just this belief that architectural academe is remote from capitalism
that has contributed to the degradation of the natural ecology so evident
today. It is the very nature of capitalism that everything in our society
is affected by it.8 Like King Midas, the hand of capitalism
appropriates everything within its grasp, snuffing the life out of it. Designing,
building, criticizing architecture, -- they all cost money. We no longer have
an alternative economic system that can support even those endeavors critical
of capitalism. The English critic
John Ruskin was one of the first to lament this paradox: because architecture
is the expression of a whole way of life, it is impossible for an architecture
built in a capitalist society not to express in some way that economic system.9
6.
Individualistic Politics versus Group Epistemological Politics
Jarzombek
argues that these two poles are mutually exclusive. They are not, regardless
of whether or not sustainability is part of a building program. Take the recently open Rose Center for Space
and Earth at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City by the
Polshek Partnership. The list of design
participants from architects through exhibition designers is long and impressive.
However, it is the vision of Polshek himself who maintained a dream
of the future building throughout the long process of design and construction
that enabled others to contribute some of their best work to date.
7.
The Politics of a Utopia in Disguise
Here Jarzombek states that “sustainability, because it is constructed on the principle of a grand narrative, will therefore have to alter the role that history/theory has established for itself as a “critical” participant in architectural discourse.” Bateson again helps us bridge this seeming impasse between sustainability as ”architecture-with-science” and critical thought. What he proposes is not a utopia but a method of thinking about what is sustainable and what is not. History/theory programs could contribute critically to the discourse about sustainability by evaluating the artistic skill with which an architect combines the many levels of mind in a building. History/theory could contribute to helping us understand new forms of beauty that embody the pattern that connects and sustains life.
Conclusion
Recalling Jarzombek’s closing statement that academe’s interest in Sustainability “means that many of us will have to make some gut-wrenching decisions about what is the function and purpose of academe,” I am reminded of Walter Benjamin’s definition of education:
“Is not education
above all the indispensable ordering of the relationship between generations...?”10