Committee on the Environment

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  • 1.  Sustainability

    Posted 01-11-2011 08:09 AM
    These are all excellent discussion and very much on point. There are several correlative discussion going on at the AIA group site on LinkedIn that you should appreciate. Some are directed a LEED 's complicity in propagating this myth, to it's own benefit.

    Several terms seem to be misplaced and very marketing oriented these days. Sustainable, green and eco-friendly all come to mind. The comments 1) that a building is never truly sustainable and 2) we won't know if our practices truly are until some time in the future have been elaborated on in this discussion. 

    Green to me has always meant unproven, unsophisticated or just not completely knowledgeable. I guess, taken in this context, the term does adequately describe those individuals who use it to describe themselves and their services.  

    Eco-friendly I find even more disturbing, particularly when it is used to describe a second home that is >3000 sf and is plastered with solar cells, geo thermal, and other technology to make it the walled fortress that it is. Neither eco nor humanity friendly.

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    Nicolas Pacella AIA
    Principal
    Nicolas M Pacella & Associates, Inc.
    South Norwalk CT
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  • 2.  RE:Sustainability

    Posted 01-11-2011 10:06 AM
    A good definition will go a long way toward understanding what sustaianbility is and when it is an appropriate term to use. Let's refer to a thesaurus for two words: sustain and ability.

    Sustain (verb) - maintain, continue, nourish.  The last synonym implies positive growth or development.
    Ability (noun) - aptitude, skill, capacity.  These synonyms imply knowledge and experience.
    Sustainability is the aptitude, skill, capacity to maintain, continue, nourish.  Now comes the difficulty... nourish who, what, when, where, and how?  Let's change the order to what, who, where, how, and when.  Let's also accept one overriding conceptual premise - biophilia.  Then we have a workable definition:

    Sustainability is the capacity to nourish life (what), for all species (who), on Earth (where), within ecological limits (how), indefinitely (when).
    Try that.

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    Richard Macmath AIA
    Architect
    HDR Architecture Inc.
    Austin TX
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  • 3.  RE:Sustainability

    Posted 01-12-2011 11:31 AM
    Nicolas,
    I agree that no building can be completely sustainable- if you mean that it will have no impact on the earth. It's impossible to claim it in that sense when we are mining ores, digging dirt, and using plastics. However, buildings have the ability to save a lot of energy, be comfortable, durable, beautiful, recyclable, and be an enduring part of society for years to come when they are built and designed BETTER. That to me is sustainability. When a building lasts, because it is built well (above code), is beautiful (design), and costs less to own (energy conservation)- it will endure far longer than buildings that don't meet that criteria. Owners will want to invest in that structure in the future instead of just wiping it off the planet in 50 years and start all over again. We need to be designing buildings that will last 100 or 200 years instead of those that will only be around 50.

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    Jeremy Bastow Assoc. AIA
    Intern Architect
    McKibben + Cooper Architects
    Boise ID
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