 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
 Page 2 Ten or fifteen years ago there was a good reason for green architects to shun aesthetics for their own sake: the concern that a "style" of sustainable design would only underscore its reputation as a fringe activity, the province of do-it-yourselfers putting up solar panels in the wilds of Northern California. Even today Bill Browning, who runs the green-design consulting arm of the Rocky Mountain Institute, suggests that green architects continue to focus on a formal language that won't scare off corporate America. "The goal is architecture where people can look at it and say, 'This isn't freaky,'" Browning told me when I visited his Colorado office this summer.
Green Architecture is younger than most people think: as a formal movement, it's been around for less than two decades. Of course, beginning in the late 1960s, an approach to architecture began to appear that stressed environmental consciousness, symbolized most memorably by earth berms and sod-covered roofs and drawing on ancient vernacular building methods. But in terms of an organized effort to promote sustainable design and development in the modern building trades, the bulk of the green movement's growth has come over the last ten years. In the early 1980s forward-looking economists and environmentalists began to define a new term, sustainability, that they hoped would tie together a number of eco-friendly philosophies into a cohesive whole. In 1987 the United Nations' World Commission on Environment and Development defined sustainability as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Yet it took a while for architecture to take a prominent role in the sustainability debate. The Green Reader, a collection of essays published in 1991 that addresses sustainability in fields from feminism to animal rights, doesn't once mention architecture.
The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a Washington-based nonprofit established in 1993 that now counts more than 800 corporations and organizations as members, unveiled what it calls its LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) guidelines last spring. These include a lengthy checklist that awards points for environmentally conscious design choices. Projects with enough points earn basic LEED certification, and additional points lead to the bonus appellations of LEED silver, gold, and platinum. Leaders of the USGBC and other organizations that promote sustainable design say it's impossible to estimate what percentage of new buildings in the United States meet LEED standards (or any other green standards, for that matter). Everyone agrees that the percentage is minuscule. But in relative terms, the movement is picking up steam. In the 15 months since the LEED standards were introduced, 182 projects that meet or surpass the standards have been registered with the council. There are limits to guidelines, certainly. Some of the wisest thinkers about green design have pointed out that in practice they can serve as a kind of trap. Consider Bill Gates's 40,000-square-foot house outside of Seattle, finished in 1997 after seven years of construction. Gates made much of the fact that he wanted an environmentally friendly home. The architect he selected, James Cutler, is known for tasteful and sensitive designs in stone and wood; he even helped Gates plant a forest of alder trees around the site. On a per-square-foot basis, the house may well meet green guidelines--and its materials, location, and construction techniques were selected with sustainability in mind. But the larger question is ethical: does any single family (Gates is married, with two children) need that much living space? In terms of sheer size and gross water and energy consumption--not to mention its 30-car garage--Gates's house is an unmitigated ecological disaster.
The USGBC's guidelines have been met with a generally enthusiastic response. "LEED is not perfect, and there are certain sections that I'd like to see modified," says Alisdair McGregor, who works in the San Francisco office of the giant engineering firm Arup and frequently advises architecture firms about sustainability. "But it's undoubtedly an excellent start. It's easy to use and is gaining wide acceptance." On the corporate side of the equation, then, green architecture has come of age. But from a public-relations point of view its momentum has been slowed of late by a band of spotlight-hugging architects who don't exactly personify Wines's ideal of "humble reserve" and "quiet philosophical reevaluation." In the early days of the twenty-first century, our culture is transfixed, in equal measure, by image and celebrity. Famous architects ingeniously manipulate both obsessions. They create imagery as well as any artist or propagandist. Add name recognition to the equation and you're looking at very powerful individuals. |
