sustainability and resilience

SUSTAINABILITY

One of the greatest transformations in design thinking in the last thirty years is a raised concern for the environment. Sustainability is a design goal that has become nearly universal in the institutional projects we design. Because architecture is complicated, expensive and involves many people in its realization, it is slow to respond to trends. Widespread response to an issue generally only occurs once societies in general realize the need for change. Sustainability has clearly reached this point with clients willing to invest additional dollars toward minimizing project impacts on the environment.

Our work incorporates many sustainable design practices including careful storm water management, the use of native plants, and local materials but our favorite sustainable practice is carefully considering how much we disturb and how much we build. We try to tread lightly, limiting new work and incorporating existing elements wherever we can. Building upon the existing character of a site instills the project with a sense of time and often costs less.

Many projects incorporate elaborate sustainable practices during early design phases only to have them deleted later when short term construction budgets must be met. Limiting disturbance, reusing what is already there and building less, always survives later rounds of cost reductions. Building less can temper the boldness and conceptual purity of some design approaches. We prefer a more subtle design expression that does not require everything to be conceived anew.

RESILIENCY

Where sustainability relates to our stewardship of the environment, resiliency is the much older concept of protecting ourselves from that same environment. Human evolution is a progression of advances in resiliency as we have used greater knowledge and technological advances not only to survive but to spread widely over less hospitable regions of the planet. The latest discussion of “Resiliency” is motivated by the increasing speed of change to our environment brought on by human activity. Where it is important to slow change to the degree possible through sustainable practices, change is inevitable. We should design not just to accommodate change but to celebrate it.

Practicing in a coastal zone susceptible to hurricanes and sea level rise, we have designed several resilient landscapes including a protective landscaped plinth for a Coney Island shopping center and a permeable waterfront park on the Hudson River. We find it is best not to deny or hide necessary defenses, pretending that nothing has changed, but rather to feature defensive elements for the security they impart. Where sea level rise leads to more frequent flooding over time we welcome in high water allowing it to transform the experience of the place.