This week was a little slower when it came to physical work but I did do a lot of thinking about the direction of this project. As I said in my last post, I am moving away from materials and towards architecture, but now at a little faster pace. I have begun to rethink my project, and am starting to lean towards a different question. At the beginning of all this, my question was: what materials are the most sustainable? Now that I have looked into all the different kinds of materials and seen how they are used in different buildings, I noticed that it’s not the materials that make a building sustainable; it’s how you use the materials. But as I came across that realization, I started wondering why is this all relevant? Does the cost and time and effort of making a building sustainable worth it? That’s the problem most people have with anything environmentally conscious; our environmental problems are so large and occur over hundreds of years, it is difficult to believe that recycling one paper bag or designing a building to use just a little less energy can make any difference. Working with something sustainable can sometimes feel as if your walking on a treadmill, you’re using up a lot of time and energy to just stay in the same place.
That is why my new question is: what is the lasting impact of sustainable buildings? I want to see if LEED certified (the point system to measure sustainability) buildings have a significant impact on the environment compared to non-LEED certified buildings. I want to know if being environmentally aware when building a structure is worth it and actually makes a difference. Of course I know recycling the one bag does make somewhat of a difference, but it is microscopic. I want to know what we can do in the field of architecture to make a difference that has a little bit more of a longer lasting effect. I want to know why we should strive to be sustainable.
What conclusions have you come to about why we should strive to be sustainable?
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