WBYA? 2.0: Sustainability and Sustaining Human Life
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To sustain means to support, uphold, and endure. The logics of sustainability focus on our collective roles as consumers and producers in order to maintain human life and preserve the environment that supports us. The green building movement, concerned with the ethics of constructing environmentally sensitive buildings that provide an ecologically sound environment for owners and inhabitants, has had a fundamental impact on how architects build buildings. The U.S. Green Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), has made the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of buildings compliant with their stipulations of low energy usage and environmental impact. Not only do these criteria impact the client and use, but LEED practices and professional certification also have radically impacted how architects work in the U.S and internationally. It links what architects do within a complex system of relationships that include users and owners, energy and material sources, climatic and site conditions, and architects and buildings. Drawing inspiration from the green building movement, writer and designer Ann Lui has made the compelling argument that “workers rights and safety should be a pivotal point for any sustainability discussion: the environment is not just the air, ground, and water, but the people with whom we work and live.” With architects building globally—often disconnected from their own cultural and political contexts—what is their responsibility toward the workers who construct their buildings? Who Builds Your Architecture 2.0? asks: should the production of buildings also sustain the human lives of those who build our architecture? WBYA? Panel at the Vera List Center Participants: Phil Bernstein (Vice President for Strategic Industry Relations, Autodesk) Video response by Raphael Sperry, who was unable to attend WBYA? 2.0: |