Category Archives: Economics of Sustainability

It is very tempting to seduce ourselves, as architects or as anybody keen on architecture or otherwise involved in the design process that the answer to our problems lies with buildings. Do you actually believe you can separate buildings out from the infrastructure of cities and mobility of transit and the expectations and incentives of people?

I would say, NO a building cannot exist in “Isolation”.

A building is very much “Context Driven” .

A building needs a good Infrastructure to thrive and live. Each one cannot co-exist without the other. We are living in times where our natural resources are depleting . We cannot afford the luxury of ignoring the environment and the urban fabric while designing buildings.

We shouldn’t approach designing buildings as just walls and roof but approach it like we are designing Eco-Systems.

Architecture has to be good understanding of a wide range of subjects from physical geography, through to social science, and an appreciation for disciplines, such as real estate development, urban economics, political economy and social theory.

Architects therefore need to consider a lot of parameters before constructing a building. The main task of architects is to incorporate the basic human consumption of these resources into our natural environment. There is a need for a solution for future development which doesn’t restrict us to the current lifestyle but improve it in a better way.

With an intelligent infrastructure the architect can thus save cost, time and money/respect the economy and the expectations and incentives of people ,providing them with a perfect environment to live in.

A sustainable project should improve way of life and make sense economically.

 Why do people tend to believe that what is financially profitable (for developers) is not actually equivalent to economically feasible (positive impacts on social welfare)? How would you show that this does not necessarily have to be like this (but rather the opposite)?

Developers are only interested in what is financially profitable for them and think only about short term. The architect doesn’t typically choose a site for the developers; he is given the site and told to design accordingly. The way out of the damage causing the environment could be an sustainable and thoughtful, sustainable development. Hence sustainable development is about finding better ways of doing things, both for the future and the present. We might need to change the way we work and live now.Creating a sustainable architecture is one of the way. Having local materials for the building, considering the social need, with green and self-sufficient technology, collecting informations of  the neighbor, etc can get along together. Think and act sustainable can join these two of approaches. It creates the best behavior for developing an architecture. This is a challenge for us as architects, or as the users.