Introduction

Sustainability? Humility?

Introduction

In the 21st Century with the fast pace of development and changes in architecture and design have led to new architectural proposals have been built without a deep understanding of their impact towards nature, local heritage, culture and community. Buildings and urban plans are now simply trying to accommodate the high demand for urban development, itself directly caused by globalisation and urbanisation (Moos and Skaburskis, 2010). This fast and instant fashion resulted in buildings that are insensitive and inconsiderate to sustainability and humanity. This has brought architects to new challenges and setbacks in architecture and urban design, such as climate change. Cities and buildings have become unsustainable. Unsustainable design in architecture and urban planning means many buildings are built without considering its design process, construction and performance impacts, resulting in negative effects towards the environmental, economical and social aspects. These ‘starchitects’ of the 20th Century commonly focus solely on creating extravagant architectural designs (Berman, 2015), resulted in buildings with high embodied carbon footprint, energy consumption and a harmful influence toward their communities. Unsustainable architecture and urban design is a direct cause of climate change, in the U.K. for example, architecture and construction processes brought up to 40% of overall U.K.’s total carbon contributor (UKGBC, 2017), and therefore the public has demanded better and sustainable designs looking forwards the future. Fig. 1 The lost of sustainability and humility in modern cities

To shift architecture’s current fashion towards the new movement of sustainability. As the direct players, architects and designers have to be more sensitive. To be sensitive in architectural design processes means we have to be able to consider and reflect our designs impact towards climate change and sustainability and this will lead to sustainable design and better life quality for the local community. Bringing sensitivity when considering the surrounding context in architecture and design throughout the design process meaning architects have to be more modest, considerate and humble. Kengo Kuma encourages architects to be more humble (Plane Site, 2017). Which in architectural manners means architects have to be modest, respectful and down-to-earth during the design process and outcome that is considerate towards local context, community, environment, cultural heritage and economy. Humility in this manner is sustainability, to be able to cover every layer of sustainability not only towards the environment and climate change but also reaches other sustainability aspects such as economic and social factor. The difference of humility and sustainability lies where humility is more like an ideology or a mindset that architects should (or must!) have and is embraced in every step of design process from function, form, materiality, constructions and building’s future impact.

This ideology means to keep modesty in mind and focuses not on the style, formal and aesthetic of the output but sustainability and humility.

Strategic Definition

Preperation and Brief Concept Design Design Developed Design

Technical Construction Out

and Close Handover In Use

Embraces Sustainability & Humility Fig. 3 RIBA Stages of work Humility shares a similar approach to vernacular architecture’s quality and characteristic. Vernacular architecture is humble architecture, it was not built with the aim of aesthetic or formality value to make a building. Vernacular was built from and for the community and it valued the local culture, functional need and sometimes religious aspect (Senosiain, 2003) without being overly ostentatious. It was typically built without the intention to be the landmark of a place of a city or for the ‘architects’ or ‘designers’ to be able to gain the ‘starchitect’ label. It simply was built to accommodate and meet the need for a function. What can architects reflect and extract from both ideologies of humility and vernacular architecture to learn from and adapts towards climate change? In this essay, a critical analysis will be offered in relation to how being humble architects will lead to a better and sustainable architectural design outcome and how designers can learn from vernacular architecture. Vernacular architecture shares similar design values of humility and sustainability. Through this essay case studies will be explored and investigated to understand how aspects of sustainability and humility in vernacular architecture can be applied by contemporary architects to learn and inspired by for a better contemporary architectural design. 4