June 2010 Lets Partner

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Exploring Sustainability

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VOL 23 (10)

JUN 2010

18 IA&B - JUN 2010

Reviving Sustainable Cultures

A proponent of sustainable design for more than 30 years, Bob Berkebile, FAIA, a principal of BNIM Architects, is a leading architect on sustainability. He is the founding chair of the American Institute of Architect’s Committee on Environment. In a tête-à-tête with Sarita Vijayan, Editor & Brand Director Indian Architect & Builder Magazine, Bob Berkebile reveals his green ideologies that make a difference.

Photograph: courtesy SEWC

let’s partner SV. In your career, you have launched a lot of initiatives. What are your current initiatives to change the perception of sustainability?

BB. The things that are holding my intentions at the moment are community based initiatives so we are still designing and building buildings. But we are focusing more and more on clusters of building that could be described as neighbourhood or a city or a region. We are right now doing a master plan and design project for a place called Oble in Ohio and it is a partnership between the college that is located there and the city. We agreed into an agreement that we are developing this plan for them and that we will make the place into the first post-carbon economy in North-America, which basically requires everything to change. Building design changes sources of energy, changes how we grow, prepare and consume our food and all the other materials that are required to support human life, all of those systems need to be re-analysed and re-designed and changed.

SV. In your career, you have achieved so much but have you been able to change people’s attitude towards their life and towards this planet through architecture?

BB. We find in well designed environment, particularly where the participants, the stakeholders have a direct role that when they create a future that is truly beautiful and regenerative it does in fact increase human potential because it is a part of them, their place and in that environment we can measure increase in human health and in productivity. We can measure the increased test scores in school, in health care facilities, we can determine that people actually go back home sooner with fewer drugs. What is more difficult to measure is the real important part and that is how our hearts and spirits and our sense of community are affected by the designs of buildings and communities that we are creating.

SV. Does architecture make people or do people make architecture?

BB. It is interesting that we have always thought that architects create spaces and those spaces celebrate a culture and I think that is true but I think that we are more and more aware that this is an on-going creative multi-generational dialogue. I believe good architects are listening to the emerging culture and to the earth and are beginning to help our society and culture develop strategies that will take us far into the future more successfully, rather than creating objects on the landscape that are not connected to the genius of a place or a culture. It is, I think, a collaboration between the designer and all the stakeholders and that includes subtle voices of nature and not just human beings.

SV. Do you think sustainability is a new term considering it has gained precedence due to growing global warming? How is the world connecting with this attitude of life and living?

BB. First of all I think sustainability is a temporary word, we are all referring to it because we don’t have a better word. But if we think about it, other important errors have been identified after the fact. We now refer to the period in history as the industrial revolution but it wasn’t the case when it was born. And so this term sustainability will disappear and a better term will arrive. For me personally the reason for this is that sustainability implies maintaining the current system, sustaining what exists and that would be

a disaster strategy. So we are seeking a new approach and a new strategy that would be more about thriving than sustaining. It is not important what the term will be, what is really important for all of us as human beings is to connect in a new way and to build an environment and a community that not just allows us to survive but also thrive and really realise our full potential as human beings.

SV. On one side, we speak of sustainable life. On the other side we make thousand developments. How do we reach both phenomena living on the same planet?

BB. There is something about human spirit that wants to be the fastest or the tallest or the richest or something. And this urge to build the tallest building is attached to that. It is all ego in my mind and its too much money in the wrong places and I think it is an extraordinary move at the time when, the current way of life on this planet is obsolete. That is why we are finding that the resources are more and more expensive because if everyone lived like the western world we need 5-6 planets of resources and that is a broken obsolete idea but we are still moving in that direction. And the real magic is for all of us to simultaneously or in thousands of places people waking up to the reality that it is a failed system and when you look at large pattern science, when failure occurs you find more radical behaviour, especially amongst the people who have been controlling the existing system. In a way you can take this as a good thing because as this gets more radical it means that there is more change taking place so it is the old system flexing its muscles and showing it can still build even taller building. But when you start looking at it, it means that people just waste a lot more time just going to their office or their home when they are going half a mile in the air to get there and when they are bringing in resources from all over the planet to make that system work it is enormously expensive, it separates people from one another and from nature, which is the most fundamental quality of life. So hopefully by this contrast between this absurd obsolete system and this new sense of more healthier, appropriate better quality of life, as the contrast gets better it will be easier to choose which direction to take.

SV. What are your views on the Indian initiatives towards a better life and a sustainable future?

BB. What inspires me most about India is the beauty of the people and the resilience that I have experienced here, under pretty tough conditions, in terms of, community infrastructure and economic resources. I consider that people even under dire circumstances have a very good disposition and are optimistic about what can happen. And I find that really exciting because it is that spirit and that attitude and that culture that is available here that could transform this system and could leap forward over many of the mistakes that the western society has made. Our part of the world holds all the record for consumption waste and pollution. So, right now in India in my mind there is a tug of war going on between being seduced by this obsolete way of thinking and developing a western approach to city building or taking the best of this culture that exists and taking the portions from us in terms of technology, resource management, things of that nature and creating a new society and a new economy and a new sustainable, healthier model for a design and community building.