Sustainable architecture, aka “green architecture,” is a design choice both timely and timeless. Timely, for addressing our growing concerns about the environment; and timeless in its reimagining of traditional forms and structures.
For the architect, “sustainable” is liberating, a chance to recycle and reuse brick, board, and stone in new and exciting ways with respect even for their textures and colors. Locally sourced materials in minimally intrusive and “eco-friendly” construction techniques combine with ultramodern systems for heating, cooling, water, energy, and information management.
The architect’s concerns include how all these elements will work efficiently together over the life of the house, and even how they will be disposed of—recycled, perhaps?—when it’s time to tear it all down and build something new.
David Chipperfield, the 2023 laureate of the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor, put it this way: “Architectural achievement independent of these concerns will have less meaning, which I believe will affect our very sense of what we will judge to be beautiful.”
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