The always inspiring Lloyd Alter offered some points in his recent article, Building Green Is No Longer Enough, It is Time To Build Resilient.
The article focuses on a new buzz word in the green building community, Resilience. Here is a quote from architect Craig Applegath’s Resilient Building Design Principles (note – the site was down earlier):
Designing buildings to effectively meet the conditions and realities of a Post Carbon, Climate-Changed world will require a shift in our current understanding of what constitutes good building design and sound building practice. Many of the practices that we now take for granted, like cladding our buildings in curtain wall building envelopes, in future, may no longer be economically feasible.
What About Quality?
Nowhere in Applegath’s eight principles is the word quality used. I don’t think that this is an intentional omission, but once again, I think that this is something that green building proponents take for granted. I think that Applegath and Alter make some great points, but until the green building movement promotes quality as a requirement of sustainable construction, I think that true resilience will be hard to come by.
AEC Forensics 