Architecture should be an integrated concept in the strategic planning from micro to macro level.The optimal development is the one that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs that looks to balance different, and often competing, needs against an awareness of the environmental, social and economic limitations that we face as a society.

All too often, development is driven by one particular need, without fully considering the wider or future impacts, which does not help in the future. We are already seeing the damage this kind of approach can cause, from large-scale financial crises caused by irresponsible banking, to changes in global climate resulting from our dependence on fossil fuel-based energy sources. The longer we pursue this approach, the more frequent and severe its consequences are likely to become.

Architectural design is important to every aspect of our lives. It informs the places in which we live, work, learn, heal and gather. The belief should be that even our clients are designers in their own right.Hence Architecture cannot be dealt at a particular level but be thought parallely at all levels as it has an wider and greater impact on humanity .

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.

Uncontrolled growth for urbanisation denotes a diffusion of the influence of urban centres to a rural hinterland and also moving to cities, changing from agriculture to other pursuits common to cities. The causes for the increasing trend of construction development would be industrialization which inturn has effected urbanization. It has expanded the employment opportunities. Rural people have migrated to cities on account of better employment opportunities. Which in turn increases the demand for unthought construction development.

The positive impact could be employment opportunities in urban centres, transport and communication facilities , educational facilities, increase in the standard of living.

Urbanization can yield positive effects only  if it takes place up to a desirable limit. Extensive urbanisation or indiscriminate growth of cities may result in adverse effects.

Rapid rise in the new trend of urban development by developers, is leading to many problems like increasing slums, decrease in standard of living in urban areas, also causing environmental damage all over the world.The way out of the damage 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.The way we approach urban development affects all strata of people. The impacts of our decisions as a society have very real consequences for people’s lives. Poor planning of communities, for example, reduces the quality of life for the people who live in them. Sustainable development provides an approach to making better decisions on the issues that affect all of our lives . In the right hands, urban development can determine or at least influence the destiny of a city and may be a turning point for its existence and optimistic future and better world for humans.

Tending to believe that what is financial profitability is not equivalent to economic feasibility is not something unreasonable. Humans are greedy, as all animals are. It is an embedded human instinct to follow what is best for your own survival, disregarding others. It is, sadly, verified throughout history by the outcome of every applied economic system. Fortunately, our brain capacity is also able to understand the benefits of cultural evolution, which will eventually control this very instinct.

But, instead of generalizing the question to a matter of culture and education, there are aspects of the situation a serious professional affiliated with economics should consider; in our case, an architect. It is an architect’s duty to always investigate, research and question on economics. Technologies and ideas are developed and one should take advantage on what they offer in terms of economic feasibility. It is always a matter of balance and investment, as sustainability never gives immediate economical profit. Easy money and unawareness are the two reasons why people are lured into unsustainable decisions, and these two reasons we are called upon to fight. One who is able to understand and create sustainability, at least at a certain degree, is also able to transmit this way of thinking by his own work.

Can we imagine buildings absolutely separated from their environment and never integrated with it? Buildings, roads and people – are not separable. We can not talk about modern city imagine only buildings, or only roads. Cities were developing simultaneously with knowledge and needs of people. And as we know, needs of people changes as soon as new appears. That’s why it is time to think about new ways of  conversions of cities, as a rule having old current structure, history, culture and old buildings…

Impetuous process of urbanization of modern megalopolises had constantly to review ways of creation of sustainable city environment. Excepting city as a business-environment with a lot of cars and skyscrapers, we can think about creation of comfortable space. It can suppose to be low-rise buildings, walking streets, convenient infrastructure  for living disposing to easy society integration with layout.

Everyone knows today that it’s impossible to live such energy consuming further. In absents of cheap energy it has to appear new requirements to order of environmental, which will change the cities. They has to became more resource-saving. People use natural resources not only for living needs, but also to make them wealthier. Is it possible to change cities to less energy consuming and at the same time to make people feel on the same level of life? I think it’s a question of happiness of future generations.

Source of picture:

http://footage.shutterstock.com/clip-2141867-stock-footage-isolated-loop-of-concept-city-planet-spinning-with-traffic-alpha-channel.html

Human life is based on three phases: planning, implementation and verification. The first and the third phase are performed in a private space, while the second occurs as an interaction between other users in a common space. The implementation phase is the clash of all users strategies that cohabit in the space-time. It is a receiver and distributor of symbols, signs and gestures. Man cannot exist without society, without human relationships and without own purpose. Each of us creates his community, and in them their symbols. The symbol is understood not only as an icon, drawing, but also as a gesture, a word, behavior, custom, etc. Every culture, human group has its own characters, with whom he identifies. By creating a build space for the realization of life – meetings, work, run, rest, eat – we need to remember about appropriate opinion and acceptance of the users.

While assessing building in economic terms one shouldn’t look at the aspects such as choice of cheaper materials, structural solutions or possibility of applying alternative energy sources. Instead the importance should be given to the size of the site, area of communication in relation to the other, the size and height of the building, the use of ramps, lifts, the amount of building material used, number of public spaces etc. In a way all the solutions that raise the costs of investment should be considered in principal as elements that are contributing to creation of ‘better’ buildings. We must take into account not only the financial aspect, but also social. The building should be accessible and “friendly”, likely visited, advertising on it’s own, with no need for promotion or organization of extraordinary events that would attract crowds. Information of existence of such space in which everyone can feel like at home – spreads by its members that relocate and start to create a new society.

When it comes to single-family house, where the investor is a private person, the argument for building speaks only through a comfort. Within commercial and public buildings, if the space is available, the number of services and recipients increases; the investor’s profit expands. If it is an office building and an investor has the ability (special quality) to employ and accommodate people for example with disabilities, he will be getting grants for this purpose. Moreover on the bigger scale the city or the state will also benefit from this micro decision that relies on the compatibility of the single building; more disabled people working, the less is the benefit, and unemployment is reduced.

The role of the architect is significant, but not decisive. There is no architect that would create entire city, even the best, neither best investor. There is a need of awareness and commitment and quite an amount of time … With the city it is like with the human because the city expresses its inhabitants. The city is a place where we spend most of the time; where we look for inspirations, opportunities, wealth of meaning and content. The city comes to creating places where man is most important. Individual buildings, public spaces with diversity of squares, passages express individual and dynamic character of the city and its inhabitants. The city should be thick, not only in form and solid, but in content, in diversity, which gives and opportunity of choice. We need to appreciate the importance of landscape architecture for the perception of the city. It’s like home furnishing. Here city is an extension of our home. Regardless the scale of units such as city/house/room, each should merge with gradation in order to ‘blend in’ and feel like there are an infinite number of starting points instead of one legitimate beginning. Spatiality and quality of the building should be assessed based on city and human capacities, if not it will become unnatural environment that the city can not assimilate , and the man in it will be lost.

The Architecture of Happiness because of a great phrase I found in the work of the French 19th century writer Stendhal. He writes: ‘When we see a place and call it beautiful, really what we mean is that we can imagine being happy there’. This sums up for me very accurately what is distinctive about beauty: it gives us a sense that a good life can unfold in its vicinity.

The way that I feel about many aspects of everyday life, for example a contemporary architectural culture, which is dominated by an endless consumption and production of images, graphics and information. We can easily express it trough a metaphor, comparing an ideal of architecture to a tree.
This way it’s much easier to understand that today architects have a tendency to develop their project to a degree, that surrounding is disordered. The architects are making plans that form and independent order unrelated to their context, introducing the example from the natural environment, but if a tree tried to implement such an independent idealized image, it would be destroyed in an instant- however egoistically the tree tries to live, a tree can only survive in a vast number of relationships. We must consider this as an important lesson for thinking about contemporary architecture.
If we want to create an architecture that would be more open to nature-as man’s natural habitat, we must think about the types of connections that this architecture creates. They need to be decisive in this case, because as much as architectural design was good or profitable on the other side, if the connection that this newly created architecture has with its natural environment is not solid enough, the solution simply will not bring anything new to the already existing ways of thinking and solving problems that we are facing today. Thinking about the architecture must be based on relativistic relationships with the environment. Architecture must be opened to the environment.

self′-sustain′ing

adj.
able to support or sustain oneself or itself without outside aid.

Is it even possible to have sustainable architecture? Is it possible that a system that works within another system to be self-sustaining without interconnecting with other systems?

These are the questions I would like to do deeper research about. Since I do not believe in the idea of a sustainable system as such (because nothing in the nature is self sustainable), but the interconnection of smaller systems within a larger system in a way to function in symbiosis.

We can use this very negative approach as a positive goal to strive for, however. If “cool” is what will attract financial investment, why not invest in being cool? why not aim to make sustainability “cool”?

Vectrix – an electric maxi-scooter in mass production and distribution up until the Global Financial Crisis, used the slogan “Cool  People Ride Electric”. It worked – attracting many young and enthusiastic investors.

Growth, in terms of urban development, has occurred throughout human history for a number of reasons, most of which can be summarized by the word “agglomeration”. Historically, agglomeration has meant safety (kingdoms, law enforcement, etc). In recent history agglomeration has meant ease of access and better networks of communication and transport between companies, and people. To put it simply, it is cheaper to be located close to a business with which you trade on a frequent basis; it is cheaper and easier to live close to your workplace.

The population of cities has been caused by “ease of access”, and the continued growth of cities is due this, and the optimized networks provided.

The age we are moving into, however, could suggest a shift from this agglomeration phenomenon. There are more and more examples of “tele-working” from many major and minor companies around the world. This is due entirely to the ease of communication afforded by technology. In the age we live in it is easier, cheaper and faster to send an email than a letter – rendering the parameter of distance useless.

What will this lead to? A decentralized world perhaps? We will no longer be confined to maintaining close proximity to those with which we do business. “International companies” will no longer be termed as “international”, but just as companies – as the normal.

The growth of the city will be entirely dependant on lifestyle choice and social proximity. With the notion of the “sea-change” being promoted throughout most developed countries around the world, there is a high possibility that we will see a depopulation of the major cities, and in place, population booms of suburban and rural areas (this is already happening in Australia, where many professionals are moving away from Melbourne and into the country-side, to be closer to the sea, wine growing regions, etc.).

To answer the proposed questions -

The first question prompts two arguments, each depending if you are talking about the individual or the mass.

Economic theories tend to follow a common theme which promotes the notion that one can predict the movement, thought or actions of 1000 people, but cannot predict those of one individual.

I believe that if we look at the scale of the individual, then we can indeed separate the building from the necessary infrastructure – it is just that: necessary. However, when visiting a building – for example a public building such as a museum – the individual will hold a certain expectation, and will visit, revisit, and promote the museum to their friends based on their individual experience. This can be highly influenced by the infrastructure and transport networks to and from the site, yes, but if the building itself is above and beyond expectations, then it will create in itself an incentive for increased use.

However, when studying the larger scale, the building can be rendered almost useless if the infrastructure and transit networks are far below what the general mass expect or require. To pput it simply, if there is no bus/train/tram/metro station near the museum, nor a car park in the vicinity, then many people will be highly inconvenienced when attempting to reach the building, and it will only be the few who will cycle or walk (if such routes exist so as to provide access) who will not see a great disincentive.

Whilst we must completely understand both scales, and the infinite levels between them, it is clear that no, one cannot separate the building from the infrastructure and mobility, unless dealing with a private dwelling with a very extravagant client.

The general consensus of developers and the buildings/site which they produce has a highly negative history, and hence the current thought of developers is very negatively weighted in terms of social welfare. In particular, due to social housing developments in many countries, where comfort, form and function have all sacrificed continuously to come in at a lower budget.

The view that developers are developing sites for the top profit is a very easy conclusion for one to reach, simply because of the connotation held with developers.

However, this viewpoint is rather ignorant. This is formed by a pre-set mindset, which assumes that all developers are just looking for top dollar. There are examples, if one looks hard enough, of developers seeking solely the benefit and welfare of their occupants. This can be seen in the UK from Kevin McCloud (the presenter of Grand Designs), whom began developing social welfare housing to create communities which would benefit the residents, develop friendships and improve quality of life. Sadly, cases such as this are isolated and often considered media stunts. To put it frankly, the best developers (the ones which develop the most land and continuously grow their property portfolios) are the ones whom are making the most profit, and hence can afford to undertake more projects than the developers looking to maximise end-user satisfaction.

Kevin’s Grand Design (www.telegraph.co.uk)

To push away from this norm would prove very difficult, but surely not impossible. How? incentives. Their must be incentives for developers to look at the quality of the product, as opposed the to the profitability. This is happening, however. In Australia there is a social welfare project – National Rental Affordability Scheme : where social houses built to a high enough level of quality can have significant tax benefits and government guaranteed long term rental agreements from tenants deemed to also surpass a level of quality. How do you determine which social welfare tenants should qualify for such high quality, highly subsidised rentals, is another question and perhaps one left for political debate.

NRAS Property Development (onyx.net.au)

The Australian Government is committed to stimulating the construction of 50,000 high quality homes and apartments, providing affordable private rental properties for Australians and their families.

http://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/housing-support/programs-services/national-rental-affordability-scheme

In a world driven by financial incentives and the mandate for prosperity – particularly from public companies whose interests are less in the products and more in satisfying the share holders (whose own interests can be completely removed from the product altogether), the vision of development aimed at positive social welfare as opposed to profitability is an unlikely fantasy. Increases in incentives are seen as the responsibility of the public sector – the government, and not at all of the private sector. How to make this a reality?

A very unlikely possibility would be take an example from history. Ireland in the beginning of the 19th century (prior to the potato famine) was subject to a fascinating architectural phenomena. Many catholic families whom were subjected to renting low quality, isolated farms and cottages throughout rural Ireland were subject to the constant threat of being evicted from their homes, without any necessary forewarning or reasoning. Any alterations or improvements made to the dwelling would be ignored. this led to many dwellings becoming run-down, derelict, with no incentive from the tenant to improve the building (due to the constant threat of eviction), and the landlord holding no legal responsibility to make the dwellings nice, comfortable, or even safe.

However, there is a region in the south of Ireland, named Ulster, where “tenant right” dictated that tenants must be compensated for any improvements made to their farm or dwellings. This led to constant development & refurbishment, and improved quality of life and quality of architecture for the residents of such areas.

“the superior prosperity and tranquillity of Ulster, compared with the rest of Ireland, were due to tenant right.”

Woodham-Smith, Cecil (1991), The Great Hunger

What lesson can be taken from this? Should it be that tenants should improve or renovate their apartments/houses? This would surely lead to a high number of buildings being constantly updated by unskilled, on-the-budget tenants whose interests see no further than the several months of few years which they will occupy the space?

It is indeed a very difficult topic, to discuss the possibility redirecting development from profit into welfare. Is it possible, in a capitalist system, without government intervention? A greater link between the tenant/end user and the developer is entirely necessary.

To summarise: incentives are at the core to any form of change. Financial incentives are the easiest to implement, and produce the fastest results. But easy is also simply a shortcut. Finding an easy solution is not going to create long-term improvements. More difficult incentives to implement and promote would be attractivity, or even morality. The “moral card” is being played currently – without much success. Therefore we must make welfare more attractive. We must make economic welfare COOL. 

Talking of architecture and sustainability in Peru is something very complex. We have 28 of the 32 climates that exist in the planet that makes our country very unique in terms of having almost every ecosystem in the world. We could have the posibility of taking advantage of the diversity we have but in practice that doesn’t happened at all.

In Peruvian society what is pretty sells, the peculiarities of a building, shape or aesthetics end up being the model to follow, the problem is that beauty and “modernity” of a building is not always link to comfort or environmental protection.  Developers follow the same trends without thinking in the welfare of population. It is important that  sustainablity does not become a trend to follow, but to people became aware of the value that this represent and be implemented in the market.

Lima city has more than 8 million of inhabitants and it´s still growing. The construction industry it’s been growing since 2006 and 30% of Peruvian population lives in Lima. That expansion is been really good for developers but it’s been divided in formal and informal sector. Therefore some of the buildings are built with minimal quality controls. There is a need to develop a sustainable construction policy that is integrated with environmental and social policies. I think a big aspect will be to show them that sustainability is not necessary uglier or expensive.

The last few years sustainability concept it’s been re-introduced in Peruvian architecture. I said re-introduce because formerly construction was sustainable in an environmental way. Materials were extracted from near places and lots of the ancient techniques are still in use in mostly rural areas of Peru (like adobe bricks) and they been developing this techniques for years. I believe we still have a long way to go when talking about sustainability in Peru, but as long as people is aware they will give sustainability enough value to become not only a trend but to be and starting point for the future development of the cities.

Placing a building in a certain plot in a city should be as complex as transplanting an organ or replacing a skin in a body of a human. The organ should cohere, and the body should accept, and so is the urban context of any city. Each city has its socio-economical standards factors that should be taken into consideration but as well has its architectural culture and its social particularity.

Constructing a building in the urban context of a city like Turin or Rome, could never be separated from the architectural language of the two cities, as well as the skyline and the façade response to the public and the relation between the pedestrians, immobile, and the character of the building. In such an example any business or sustainable integration should take into consideration certain historical exclusiveness and base it not the vice versa. While on the other hand, designing a tower or a house in a city of Dubai, which extended beyond a previous existing old city, gives the architect more freedom to explore and interact with sustainable and advance materials and thoughts to push a project into more advanced levels. Such places gives both the architect and the consultant more freedom to find different way to invest money without harshen the current urban fabric .

What I wanted to deliver in this approach isn’t the idea of that places like Rome , Turin , Heliopolis , and other places of certain specificity are places that we should not mess up in terms of historical importance and neither through distorting surrounding facades and buildings para-siting its appearance , nor that some cities like Dubai gives a better ground for investors and architects to grow their ideas without any attached to a certain cultural specificity , but it’s the idea of that a building is a result of an architect until the day of delivery , which means even though the architect can preplan all technical and design issues related to the relation between the building itself and the city , cost and expenses , systems for using water , or getting benefits from solar energy and enhancing a better sustainable and economical outcome , but it is the respond of all people who lives in the building , people from the outside interacting with it , any integration that could occurs from the outside-urban fabrics . Many examples of buildings were successful both design , technological and economical wise in planning or even in few years after construction but certain changes in the street or the city could make this place lose its role and its success.

Whether it was the Italian example , or the Dubai one , the architect is still an important factor in any  design yet the only factor , sometimes not the cost of the building decide its function or its success , neither the architectural analysis , it’s a combination of all , the architect , the design , the contractor , and the city awareness .

Redefining Prosperity: Tell us what makes us happy. People are sheep.  Some architects believe it is their responsibility to play god, and developers/corporate entities are hustlers.  Society seems to have an attachment to the word “sustainability,” but considering all of the initiatives we propose, there is still a lot of waste, disfunction, and decline.  Buildings don’t actually function the way they are supposed to, and prototypes are produced and reproduced, all while their architects are discouraged from using recycled materials.  When its all done photos go in a digital portfolio and models go in the trash.  In a consumer culture, we equate good and expensive, in an architects world selling an idea to a client is, at the end of the day, what pays the bills, so what seems to be “sustainable” needs to look good, even if it doesn’t work.  How can we be sustainable if the environment within which we learn and work doesn’t follow that model?

Unless institutions can become incubators for creativity as well as encourage students to think about the impacts of their choices, there can be no catalyst for behavior change.  As a non architect I see an interesting  shift from the ideas that architecture encompasses and reality.  During my undergraduate and graduate programs, architects spent a lot of money on prototypes that were never used beyond studio presentations.  My question is: what should we do to address this issue? Should architects create more prototypes, while asked to debate the possibility of sustainability without someone gaining financially? I think the problem goes much deeper than the developer and the architect.

That said, there are people, places, and world wide events that want to create a way to better manage our future by creating a culture of civic responsibility, self reliance.  The future is going to be a place where resources are limited.  Does the answer to our problems lie within buildings? No.  One possible answer may be that we, as a society, needs to pay closer attention to the materials used, and improve the approach to design in order to lessen our impact and align our needs as a society with the needs of our world.  But unless we start collecting rain water to take showers and get “off the grid,” someone will profit and nothing will change.

Buildings are an integral part of civic infrastructure, I don’t believe they can be taken out of their current context. Technology has come so far in the past 100 years, but we continue to make the same mistakes when it comes to the design of buildings, cities, transportation, and ultimately understanding the expectations and incentives of people.

But then again, people and their environments have always been misunderstood.  

Starting from a contextual point of view and maybe a bit basic and logical, the buildings are part of our immediate context , which in turn becomes impossible to separate what we call environment, answering the question , the buildings are a part of this great system called environment in which are integrated from the traffic and infrastructure to daily feelings of every human being.

For this we have to start with the analysis of what constitutes a building or any physical element placed in the middle of an urban system, a building to be architecturally correct only questionable but always would have to meet the expectations of what a building is , functionality , aesthetics , adequacy, technology and all that demand our world today , but in turn we find that the building is beginning to play an important role in real “life” of human beings, in their movements, in the visual , activities , and much more in the role of emotions when we as architects do us a question in the design process that can include the true purpose of my paa architecture is to produce a feeling / emotion what will cause our answer to the problem ? a better life, a better day , or just a great personal moment , most of the time we forget the most important part and we look to others acceptance of our work , having to start each element in our contexo represents a change sensory and emotional structure and here where it enters the second question … our main problem / ally that is the economic factor and better call money, our society has been educated in a way where personal economy has become a problem of egos along the world from a macro point of view or micro, I refer to this as the problem arises from a person but arises from the education of a whole society in our time globalization attacks everywhere this economic power we been led to believe wrongly in the difference of possession and economy. The developers , as part of this society in some way ” rude ” but with economic ability to produce these ” buildings ” already mentioned, have lost the value and the true meaning of the opportunity to build a better world no , but a life daily quality Opposed to the idea of ​​one world and environment , have begun to create these cities within cities completely breaking the symbiosis between environment / human / city , becoming a profitable system perfectly designed for monetary growth each owner and gradually destroying what in not long later will become a global chaos.

There is no concrete answer to this problem , it is not a sentence , much less an idea, the answer is always found in the conscience of polite society , where both architects, engineers and all professions have the same starting point to begin our projects , the people who contribute or alter our environment can not only architects and economists , engineers and doctors, all of us, as we are always connected in one way or another , I repeat that the answer lies in the education of our society, or in an urban pollution strategy , then moved all our inputs and outputs in the world.

If money go before ,
all roads are open.
William Shakespeare