MH house, designed by COULSON, has a 90 percent PEUI reduction without any renewable energy system. Image: COULSON
NOAA just announced that 2017 was a record year for cost the US due to extreme weather events and set a new record for cumulative costs. At the same time, there's a growing scientific understanding of the contribution of climate change to these events which indicates this could become a new normal. That’s one reason why this report from the National Institute of Building Sciences, "Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves: 2017 Interim Report” is so very valuable to architects. It shares a careful analysis involving many federal agencies of the cost savings from hazard mitigation. Worth a read and helpful in making the business case for enhanced resilience with your clients. Here’s Architect magazine’s Wanda Lau on the report: “NIBS Finds Investment In Resilient Design Can Pay Off By More Than Sixfold.”
John Cary’s new book, Design for Good: A New Era of Architecture for Everyone (Island Press, 2017), is an elegant and inspiring call for celebrating and prioritizing the dignifying power of design. (If you are looking for a shot of optimism, a bit of “hope in hard times,” this is a good dose.) “Dignity is to design,” Cary writes, “what justice is to law and health is to medicine.” Here’s a peek into the topic, via the voices of MASS Design Group’s Michael Murphy and architect/activist/author John Cary, via an excellent podcast by Lisa Chamberlain in Common Edge (one of the smartest outposts in design media).
Carly Coulson, AIA, writes for AIA about “invisible sustainability,” and how 2030 targets can be embedded into design practice—to the benefit of clients, architects, and the communities they serve. Coulson is founder/design principal of COULSON, which was recognized with an AIA COTE Top Ten Award of the University of Minnesota Bagley Classroom.
Oceanographer and consultant John writes in his blog about 10 cities that are sinking talk about sea level rise. The trajectory of these climate impacts is real; the resilience imperative for cities and their designers--architects and citizens alike--is significant and growing. But if you are looking for promising notes this January, as we face challenging trends of all kinds, the Ken Edelstein writing for the Kendeda Fund offers up an optimism-inspiring collection of five green building trends afoot this year. And Mimi Zeiger, in Metropolis magazine, suggests that “resilience” has lost its meaning and that it is time for a more radical approach.
Please share with us any articles, blog posts, books, podcasts, and other materials that you think are advancing thinking about designing and shaping the sustainable future--including any writings or talks by COTE members themselves. Send suggestions to kiragould@kiragould.com