taking shape - a new contract between architecture and nature

[...]... Neither half of this book’s title is self-explanatory, not Taking Shape and not the reference to a new contract Taking Shape emphasizes the still emergent state of an architecture that is engaging in a new contract of co-operation between built and natural environments, socalled ‘sustainable’ or ‘environmental’ architecture At present, environmental architecture is split between an arcadian minority... ‘sustainable architecture equally vague and ambiguous There are, after all, many forms of sustainability – economic, political and social, as well as environmental – and what is ‘sustainable’ for one group is not necessarily sustainable for another ‘Social sustainability’, for example, could apply equally to societal organization that permits the continuation of a status quo, or to the universal provision... (Plate 3 and Fig 1.2) Different again is Emilio Ambasz, who chooses to pursue an architecture that both expresses and enacts a symbiotic relation between built and natural environments (Plate 4) Environmental architecture, in other words, is environmental architectures, a plurality of approaches with some emphasizing performance over appearance, and some, appearance over performance Affecting the architect’s... representing, as well as enacting this 4 Taking Shape Those already involved in ‘sustainable architecture maintain that the distinction ‘sustainable’ is temporary, as one day all architectures will be environmentally sustainable The question is, will existing-architecturesmade-more-sustainable, modernist and post-modernist, be able to remain as they are, or will they inevitably be re-formed by the... a disadvantage against one that is perceived as innovative, however harmful at some level this innovation may be But if a new contract between nature and architecture requires a reappraisal of what we build and the way we build it, it is a reappraisal that considers the new to be as essential to the project as the old While both those inside and outside the environmental fold are aware of the precedents... phenomenology as it has been interpreted by architectural theorists Both use environmentalism as a new meta-narrative that restores the human subject to the centre of moral discourse and a realm of effective action it has not inhabited since the collapse of architectural modernism From the arcadian minority has come a revival of craft traditions and vernacular techniques for mediating between inside and outside,... been universally welcomed in environmental circles is that representing a new contract between nature and architecture does not in any way imply the architect has successfully signed up to it In other words, the building may speak of a new regard for nature- as-model and still operate in an entirely conventional way, guzzling fossil fuels Frank Gehry’s non-linear, snakeskin-clad designs (Plate 5), or... ‘ugly’, that is, ‘out of place’ (Cousins, 1994: 61), by those who view the ‘place’ of architecture – and what has a place within architecture – traditionally As beauty became more and more disassociated from a divine order, it was viewed as less and less necessary a part of the Vitruvian triad, an attribute superfluous to requirements Whereas the relation between form and some kind of practical function,... operation, but in form? Again, one is forced back upon the necessity of drawing a line between the environmentally acceptable and unacceptable Where does the line lie in architecture? And how much of what is culturally acceptable, at least within the culture of architecture itself, is environmentally unsustainable? Environmental design works with climate rather than against it, using available air and/ or... part as the whole They view ‘environmental architecture , like ‘green architecture before it, as part of yet another ‘back to nature movement in which we all weave our own clothes and villages For such sceptics, ‘environmental architecture connotes a narrowing of horizons, an abdication of ambition and imagination, and a self-imposed restriction to a palette of twigs and thatch There are, certainly, .