NOTE: Sustainable Ethics & Aesthetics was written while using two images as reference.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Sustainable Ethics & Aesthetics - NOTE
NOTE: Sustainable Ethics & Aesthetics was written while using two images as reference.
Sustainable Aesthetics & Ethics
It is truly difficult to state whether or not there is a readily identifiable sustainable aesthetic. Varying levels of understanding and definitions for the term sustainability would render a broad range of possible aesthetics. For this informed observer, sustainability seems to fit more appropriately as a description for an ethic in regards to the production of architecture and other cultural artifacts, rather than describing the formal arrangement of synthetic volumes and the dialogue created with adjacent organic features. Even within this context, the possible ethics of sustainability can be quite varied but can be framed in strokes broad enough to incorporate differing attributes of sustainable ethics.
Doing a simple image search using a popular internet search engine for “sustainable architecture” produces many results. The two images above are both from the same internet search. It’s quite easy to see the dramatic disparity in the formal aesthetic of these two sustainable edifices. One is a home and the other is a large office building. Both use very similar principles to achieve desired end results. The home on the left is made from earthen materials. The office building on the right is made from modern industrial materials. Still, they both find their way into the category of sustainable design.
When asking a person not deeply engaged in a field concerned with sustainability, many of them may attempt to describe a building resembling the earthen home above. They may casually joke about hippies hugging trees. Another person may describe the contemporary office building as their idea of a sustainable building. Perceptions vary widely in the discussion of aesthetics and sustainability.
Taking a deeper look at the underlying principles, or ethic, used to govern the design process that arrived at two polar results as evidenced above reveals striking similarities. Having the benefit of an education that focuses on forms and practices regarding the creation of occupiable spaces allows one to draw common elements from many different objective forms and conglomerations.
Both of these structures are tuned to the sun. The arrangement and orientation of major building forms allows them both to passively cool interiors through shading. Massive volumes absorb insolation, storing energy to be used for passive heating during cooler evening hours. They are both sensitive to the context of their sites and respond appropriately. Their interior spaces are designed to provide maximum comfort to its occupants. Numerous parallels are quite easy to identify.
What has just been described are similar formal responses that are incredibly different in their physical manifestations. Any number of additional tangible examples could be substituted for the images presented above. How then, are these buildings categorized in the same fashion? The answer, I argue, is in the ethic used to derive their final built form.
The characteristics used previously to describe the similarities of the examples presented are born of an ethic in the production of synthetic objects. Attention to site characteristics and sensitivity to the needs of building occupants are not the only ways that this ethic directs design and production of space. Involving, or in the least, imagining the users’ needs and feelings throughout the design process is another way. Making that very process, which was once only the realm of accredited and licensed professionals, open, democratic and accountalbe to people not considered building professionals is yet another way the sustainable ethic has informed design. Even at the most basic level, perhaps the most important level of all – the bottom line – is being greatly informed by a sustainable ethic. Owners (in terms of AIA documents) are now willing to pay a greater up-front cost for architectural products (!) with the desire to see long-term cost savings. In the market-fundamentalist contemporary world, where instant gratification is currency, poor short-term gains are heretic. This fact, alone, is evidence of an widely accepted and understood sustainable ethic.
Sustainability as an aesthetic belongs to the sentient experiences of individuals. Depening on each individual’s life experiences, a definition of a sustaible aesthetic will be formed. There is the great potential for commonality and overlap in these definitions but they are incredibly personal. This wide range of deeply held understandings of sustainability is a tremendous asset to the possible aesthetics that can be presented and accepted by people across the world. Of course, not all will agree on a pluralistic view of aesthetics, for there exists tyrants even in the field of design. What can be agreed upon is that this very pluralism of ideas, the fair and just evaluation of them before embracing or exclusion, is the very core of the sustainable ethic.
Doing a simple image search using a popular internet search engine for “sustainable architecture” produces many results. The two images above are both from the same internet search. It’s quite easy to see the dramatic disparity in the formal aesthetic of these two sustainable edifices. One is a home and the other is a large office building. Both use very similar principles to achieve desired end results. The home on the left is made from earthen materials. The office building on the right is made from modern industrial materials. Still, they both find their way into the category of sustainable design.
When asking a person not deeply engaged in a field concerned with sustainability, many of them may attempt to describe a building resembling the earthen home above. They may casually joke about hippies hugging trees. Another person may describe the contemporary office building as their idea of a sustainable building. Perceptions vary widely in the discussion of aesthetics and sustainability.
Taking a deeper look at the underlying principles, or ethic, used to govern the design process that arrived at two polar results as evidenced above reveals striking similarities. Having the benefit of an education that focuses on forms and practices regarding the creation of occupiable spaces allows one to draw common elements from many different objective forms and conglomerations.
Both of these structures are tuned to the sun. The arrangement and orientation of major building forms allows them both to passively cool interiors through shading. Massive volumes absorb insolation, storing energy to be used for passive heating during cooler evening hours. They are both sensitive to the context of their sites and respond appropriately. Their interior spaces are designed to provide maximum comfort to its occupants. Numerous parallels are quite easy to identify.
What has just been described are similar formal responses that are incredibly different in their physical manifestations. Any number of additional tangible examples could be substituted for the images presented above. How then, are these buildings categorized in the same fashion? The answer, I argue, is in the ethic used to derive their final built form.
The characteristics used previously to describe the similarities of the examples presented are born of an ethic in the production of synthetic objects. Attention to site characteristics and sensitivity to the needs of building occupants are not the only ways that this ethic directs design and production of space. Involving, or in the least, imagining the users’ needs and feelings throughout the design process is another way. Making that very process, which was once only the realm of accredited and licensed professionals, open, democratic and accountalbe to people not considered building professionals is yet another way the sustainable ethic has informed design. Even at the most basic level, perhaps the most important level of all – the bottom line – is being greatly informed by a sustainable ethic. Owners (in terms of AIA documents) are now willing to pay a greater up-front cost for architectural products (!) with the desire to see long-term cost savings. In the market-fundamentalist contemporary world, where instant gratification is currency, poor short-term gains are heretic. This fact, alone, is evidence of an widely accepted and understood sustainable ethic.
Sustainability as an aesthetic belongs to the sentient experiences of individuals. Depening on each individual’s life experiences, a definition of a sustaible aesthetic will be formed. There is the great potential for commonality and overlap in these definitions but they are incredibly personal. This wide range of deeply held understandings of sustainability is a tremendous asset to the possible aesthetics that can be presented and accepted by people across the world. Of course, not all will agree on a pluralistic view of aesthetics, for there exists tyrants even in the field of design. What can be agreed upon is that this very pluralism of ideas, the fair and just evaluation of them before embracing or exclusion, is the very core of the sustainable ethic.
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