Often a building is only thought as an equipment inside the area that it’s implemented, but it is impossible to separate it from it’s surroundings. The construction of any building directly influences the infrastructure of cities. When a new building arises, services like water, sewage and electricity must be planned to actually arrive to the building, and the city – as an organism that it is – tends to need to produce more power to supply the services needed. In these days the building industry is one of the largest contributors to energy consumption, from the production of materials used, through the construction process, to the need of bringing infrastructure to the constructed and final building. A new building is also directly connected with the number of people who will attend and utilize the area, whether they are residents or a floating population. With the advent of the building, the government has the duty to bring mobility and easy access to the site. And for all of these changes to be made, more money has to be invested and more power energy is expended. For this reason, architects and governments alike should think of the building as part of a broader whole, and try to create more sustainable situations, not only in regards of technology and new materials, but also in social and economic issues, as in for example, providing housing near places of work.
The investors today are only concerned with short-term profit and they tend to do not consider a priority the social welfare. The way of thinking should change, and it should change to be more sustainable, as social welfare can also be financially profitable to investors and more beneficial to the users. The users can take advantage of greater architectural quality, and greater sustainability as well. In the way that with a sustainable thinking, energy consumption that can be decreased and the public money (that would be saved with the spending of urban infrastructure) could be utilized in other public sectors of as pressing needs.
“First of all architecture is construction, but construction designed with the mainly purpose of organizing the space for a certain goal and targeting a certain intention”
“Arquitetura é antes de mais nada construção, mas, construção concebida com o propósito primordial de ordenar e organizar o espaço para determinada finalidade e visando a determinada intenção.”
Arch. Lúcio Costa