AN UN-SUSTAINABLE LACK OF EDGE

APPENDIX, 120 HOURS 2014

Sustainability is important, let there be no doubt about it. Our materialistic society has created a problem of consumption and a destructive cycle of overuse. Resources are limited and our stockpile is quickly deteriorating. Architecture as organizer and former of material have a recognized responsibility to respond and consciously work on terms with the idea of sustainability. This is nothing new, the awareness of the energy use and environmental impact of the built environment within the discipline have existed for decades. Currently sustainability is being employed mainly as technology, and a forced marriage between architectural form and technological achievement is eminent. A sustainable architecture is reduced to imposing technological, tectonic achievements onto a late modernist formal language. This begs to question, why is there a distinction between architecture and sustainability? Shouldnt the two ideas interlace, rendering the the term sustainable architecture as redundant, simply integrating sustainability into the common understanding of architecture? As we today take it for granted that there is running water and electricity in any building, this is not considered a feat of architecture but merely a mundane technological commodity that the architects obviously takes into account but in no way governs design decisions relating to form. Because architecture always require a form. Sustainability per definition today can be consid-

ered as technology, like running water or electricity, a set of certifications and material specifications that verify the social conscience of client and architect. It is a contemporary problem that architects become less and less concerned with the form of things, critically thinking what effects forms have on society both political and humanistically. Form is by many considered as exuberance, iconicity, a luxury for the privileged few or even unnecessary for the general masses. This is especially clear when one looks at projects that label themselves as sustainable architecture, they are just that: firstly sustainability (technology) secondly architecture. The architecture exists only at the mercy of the technological achievements of engineering better material solutions.

Urban Mountain, schmidt hammer lassen architects, Nordic Built Challenge

Green office building, Perkins+Will

In the recent competition Nordic Built Challenge, the ambition was to draw out ideas that would set precedents within the building industry, staking out a path for the future of the built environment. The competition focused on archetypical Scandinavian building types, lowrise late modernist residential and a High-rise from the same stylistic period in Oslo. The task was to rejuvenate these buildings within the parameters of the populist opinion of sustainability, mainly shooting for a measurable performance oriented result consisting of certifications, basing innovation on fitting within an established

norm is at best ironic. The idea being that The project would become an icon for the something new. If only good intentions where enough. The first sign of that this competition had little to no ambition of architectural innovations came during the publication of the assignment, the organizers proudly state that this was not solely an architectural competition, but that they encouraged cooperation across professional boundaries. In itself stating the obvious, architects no longer retain the sole responsibility of constructing buildings, we merely exist in a pool of consultants at the mercy of a client. As the competition entries came in a couple of months later the suspicions were confirmed, one project after another imposing sustainability as effect, showing illustrations of greenery in the interior. Not to mention what was to be the winner of the Oslo high-rise, a project consisting of shifted glass boxes, with triple thickness to the cold north and integrated sun screening to the south, its catchphrase being Producing an excellent indoor climate with very good daylight qualities, underachieving architecture at its best. Effectively reducing the profession to a deployer of windows and plants.

of various green biological icons generally thought of as pretty pictures of nature. There is no provocation in stuffing a building full of vegetables and stating that the green stuff contributes to the interior climate through absorbing CO2. It generates no public awareness, no excessive experience, it is simply too comfortable. Speaking of comfortable and mundane, once you manage to

E.A.T. - Experiments with Art and Technology Pepsi Pavillion, Osaka Expo, 1970

brush the leaves and vines away, in search of the man made form, what you find is easily reduced to an ideal constructed in the 1920s: curtain walls and building masses that conform to the dated idea of modernity. The only innovation being that the roof garden has moved to the convenience of the interior. A project on such a scale as the Nordic Built Challenge had the potential to be a game changer, a moment where actual architectural innovation occurs. Many will argue that form and sustainability is interlaced and that the architects must obey certain limitations in order to most efficiently achieve the demands of the environment. The only problem with this idea is that it is nothing new, architects have always considered external technological and contextual factors. The only current difference is that the notion of sustainability seem to have a stranglehold on architecture. In the Nordic Built jury report they state that all proposals perform equally in terms of material performance and certifications, thats nice, they all know how to make a building. Now lets talk about architecture!

E.A.T. - Experiments with Art and Technology, Pepsi Pavillion, Osaka Expo, 1970

What all these projects might be missing can be found in a rarely discussed pavilion from the psychedelic 1970 expo in Osaka Japan. Subtitled experiments with art and technology, the Pepsi Pavilion could contain the secret to breaking the techno dominated regime of sustainability in the contemporary industry. Focusing on the benefits of mutual respectful cooperation, where each of the parties involved understand and respect their own strengths and responsibilities. Architects are after all experts in form, experts in how form engages and communicates to the public, how form criticizes and raise questions in a discussion, form should in essence be any architects weapon of choice. Bold ambitions demand bold solutions! It seems strange then that when called upon to signify sustainability and the importance there of, the banal solution is reverting to imitations of nature to analogues