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A SUBJECTIVE TAKE ON GREENWASHING Words Katarzyna Soltysiak & Ecaterina Stefanescu
Katarzyna and Ecaterina graduated from the Architecture department of TU Delft a couple of years ago. Soon, they hit a wall - not because of the economic crises but because of the ignorance of the industry. Nonetheless, the problems started earlier, they believe. In the following talk, they discuss greenwashing, misunderstood concepts of sustainability and reuse in academia and the industry. The topic of Taboo inspired their few-hours-long conversation. Below, you can find its most important ideas.
KS: I know that you are quite ambivalent about the topic of greenwashing, which I asked you to talk about.
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ES: So much has been already said about greenwashing and yet, it still happens. KS: Let us begin from the early stages of our personal experience then and refrain from big words. How many times have you seen a visually pleasing, interesting studio project and then, only for the sake of passing the building technology module, a student adds on random gimmicks to it? Solar panels being the most obvious. ES: Currently, the bar for sustainability is so low, anything is better than nothing. Tutors accept this approach knowing that “at least the students had thought about it”. In a way, also students having so many things to touch upon, simply focus on the formal design. It is often accepted that if a project is good, you can ignore the “sustainability part” or just add a green roof somewhere... and this is not challenged. KS: Learning ‘step-by-step' may be a reasonable excuse here but then, the issue of “sustainability as
an afterthought” is taken to the professional practice... ES: Let us consider the mainstream architecture, or what is perceived as such - for example, BIG Architects... KS: Bjarke Ingels has been recently called "this Century’s Frank Lloyd Wright” on one of the most popular design websites. A few weeks earlier they made a masterplan for the planet, supposedly a sustainable one ... ES: On the same website, BIG's projects are hailed as leaders in sustainability and very few contest this. As little autonomous bubbles, BIG’s projects might appear extremely sustainable at a superficial level. But then, you look at the scale of their developments, or even location, like the Middle East. The buildings on their own do not pose an environmental threat – it is the whole system and the industry. This, to me, is greenwashing at a deeper level: on paper, a project is “green”; but, together with its overall context – physical, economic, social, etc. - these mega-projects are actually green merely in colour. Adding hanging gardens and a state-of-the-art ventilation system is not good enough if you are
