I've spent most of my career working at the intersection of architecture and sustainability, and one question has kept bothering me:
Why does sustainable design so often get treated as something we add to a building after the important decisions have already been made?
A solar panel is visible. A certification is visible. A high-performance product is visible. But some of the most consequential environmental decisions are far more ordinary: where a building sits, which direction it faces, how much of it we build, where heat goes, what spaces actually need conditioning, or whether something needs to be there at all.
That idea eventually became a book I've been working on called The Renormalization of Sustainable Design.
The premise is pretty simple: maybe sustainability doesn't need to become another specialty layered onto design. Maybe we need to get better at seeing the environmental intelligence already hiding inside ordinary decisions.
The book moves through that idea in three ways: learning to see differently, to understand what is actually happening, and then to choose differently once we know.
I'm curious whether that premise resonates with people here. Where have you seen a supposedly small or ordinary decision have a much larger environmental consequence than anyone initially recognized?
I'm getting close to publication. Feel free to reach out if you want to know more.
COTE Chapter leaders, I would be happy to have a session with your local team.
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Anthony Brower, FAIA, LEED Fellow
Director of Climate Storytelling
anthony_brower@theclimatearchitect.comKansas City
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