During the ages human beings have been adapting their selves to the different conditions. Nowadays human inhabit the extremes parts of the planet. Many technologies were developed to make it possible, such as air conditioning, heating, etc. This process of adaptation contributed a lot to the problems we are facing now related to energy consumption and sustainability and that is the next step of the humanity adaptation process.
Energy consumption and sustainability are related to many different fields including architecture and its relationship with the nature and environment. The building industry is one of the industries that consumes energy the most and some recent proposals show that a deeply modification of form and function in architecture could reduce the building energy consumption substantially, as Philippe Rahm and Gilles Clément explain in the book “Environment: Approaches for tomorrow”. The idea of the text is that as form and function changes time to time, the goal is to create architecture free of formal and function predeterminations, opened to weather and environmental conditions that could emerge spontaneously in response to climate and other environmental variations. Form and function should follow climate. There are some examples along the history of architecture where environmental aspect were the most import point for their development. Venice for example was conceived as it is because the lack of potable water so that it could catch rainwater and now its spaces function as a focal point for social interaction and the courtyard central to the layout of the desert houses were created mainly because of the need for and outdoor space protected for the sandstorms.
This concept is really interesting and can be applied in different scales, but should not be the only solution. In order to do sustainable architecture there should be a balance between different concepts during design and construction. In order to adapt to this new conditions architecture should be adaptive.