Architecture, Environment, and the Imperative of Responsibility

I continue the series of articles on the relation between architecture and the environment with a brief contribution I originally presented at a conference call promoted by the Landscape Research Group at the International Society for the Philosophy of Architecture in 2012. The theme of the call was Ethics and Aesthetics of Architecture and the Environment, and the title of my proposal was The Architecture of Responsibility. The argument is more timely than ever, as we are now witnessing an epochal shift of values in the way we envision our common future as citizens of a single place: the planet Earth.^[1]

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Over the last few decades, the signs of a global crisis caused by unsustainable growth models adopted by both developed and developing countries have become increasingly apparent. It is a widespread crisis, with entangled economic, environmental, and social implications. Citizens have been demanding solutions that political parties and decision-makers have proven unable to implement or agree upon at a global level. What we are facing is not a partial or sectorial crisis, but the crisis of modern society itself—a crisis that will provoke catastrophes if urgent actions continue to be delayed. As the philosopher Hans Jonas observed in a well-known 1992 interview, given on the occasion of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, each day we move ‘closer to the bitter end.’ ^[2] Thirty years later, the signs of this crisis have only worsened.

On the environmental front, scientists, researchers, associations, and citizens across the globe are working to counteract global warming, rising levels of pollution, biodiversity loss, soil depletion, and the overexploitation of seas and forests, to name just a few of the pressing issues on the agenda of many nations. The failure—or outright absence—of preventive, conservative, and restorative measures has cascading effects on the social and economic systems. Market economies, abstracted from social community and biophysical interdependence, are already showing distortions, with tangible social consequences: rising unemployment, poverty, social distress, and reductions in welfare provisions, in addition to environmental damage.^[3] In a single word, the development model of modern society is unsustainable.

The roots of this deep crisis can be traced back to the origins of Western culture, particularly to a distorted relationship between humans and nature, which the ancient Greeks referred to as phusis.^[4] With the spread of monotheism came the end of nature worship, and humanity’s path diverged from nature, giving rise to a series of dualisms that culminated in Descartes’ philosophy and the deterministic, mechanistic, and reductionist worldview that has dominated since the eighteenth century. This new vision widened the gap between humans and nature, turning the latter into a mere object of observation, study, and control through technology and industry. The Industrial Revolution—its most consequential outcome—enabled humans to adapt and exploit the environment for their own ends, but it also led to the overexploitation of natural resources and the pursuit of unlimited economic growth. The result is today’s global crisis: a profound threat to the future of our species and others, and a challenge that is simultaneously economic, environmental, and social in dimension.

What solutions? First and foremost, we must conceive a radical shift in the relationship between humans and nature, adopting an ecosystemic analogy that moves us from a parasitic to a symbiotic coevolution.^[5] A symbiotic relationship is possible only if Leviathan—the technical society of human beings—and Gaia—Planet Earth, or nature—find a dynamic balance that allows for benign integration. As has been said, this is history’s bifurcation: ‘either death or symbiosis.’^[6]

How? What is required is a new ethics, since we are confronted with an entirely new global situation and unprecedented risks. Conventional virtues and fair practices are no longer sufficient. What we need is an imperative of responsibility towards both nature and the future.[7] More than ever before, Homo sapiens must learn to think in terms of a distant future.

The immense task of promoting and instilling this imperative of responsibility demands collective effort and politics. Each individual must be aware of it and ensure that their actions align with their intentions. This requires considering ethics—the regulation of actions—and aesthetics—the perceptible values resulting from those actions—as complementary aspects of the same reality: the natural world, which encompasses both natural and human dimensions.

If the individual happens to be an architect, then what is the product of his or her actions? Architecture. What should the architecture of responsibility look like? And how can its underlying ethical meaning be made manifest? The starting point is the definition of sustainability, for the architecture of responsibility is inherently sustainable (see the article: Architecture as Place of Sustainability, for a more detailed discussion). Sustainability has a threefold dimension, related to economy, society, and the environment.^[8] The architecture of responsibility encompasses all three, going beyond environmental sustainability narrowly conceived as energy efficiency or reduced CO₂ emissions. While these are necessary, they are not sufficient. We must instead compare the life cycle and functioning of a building to the virtuous cycles of energy and material flows found in nature. We must explore the physical and biological integration between buildings and the natural environment, including organisms and places—plants, animals, and ecosystems—achieving a perceptible bio-integration that appeals to all the senses. More broadly, we must rethink the relationship between design and nature, adopting an approach that works with nature: we should design with nature.^[9] This requires re-evaluating our relation to space, place, landscapes, and the material substrate—whether natural or artificial—that constitutes any given location.^[10]

In doing so, we open ourselves to the comparative study of biophilic design attitudes and to emerging fields of research such as biomimicry, which drives biologically inspired technologies. By incorporating lessons from natural processes and forms into design, we open promising new pathways for architecture. Here lies a historical bifurcation for architects: both ethics and aesthetics.

Just as in antiquity the polis played a crucial role in shaping Western culture and its values—with repercussions felt far beyond its borders—today it is cities that will play the decisive role in promoting sustainability. In this task, both biophilia^[11] and technophilia—two deep-seated aspects of human nature—must serve as guiding principles to achieve the harmonious coevolution of human techno-ecosystems and natural ecosystems.^[12]

Image 01:  Badel Block Redevelopment, Zagreb (HR), 2012, competition project—model (Alessandro Calvi Rollino Architetto, in collaboration with Ecologist Ivana Vojnic Rogic).

Image 02:  Badel Block Redevelopment, Zagreb (HR), 2012, competition project—Location plan, rendering (Alessandro Calvi Rollino Architetto, in collaboration with Ecologist Ivana Vojnic Rogic).

Image 03:  Badel Block Redevelopment, Zagreb (HR), 2012, competition project—South view rendering (Alessandro Calvi Rollino Architetto, in collaboration with Ecologist Ivana Vojnic Rogic).

Image 04:  Badel Block Redevelopment, Zagreb (HR), 2012, competition project—West view rendering (Alessandro Calvi Rollino Architetto, in collaboration with Ecologist Ivana Vojnic Rogic).

Notes

[1] This brief post—retrieving, with minor adjustments for the present release, the proposal I presented at a 2012 ISPA conference call on architecture and the environment—was conceived against the background of my research into the originary questions that first promoted the diffusion of a new sensibility toward environmental issues (a theme I have addressed in the article The Place of Sustainability). One of those issues was already implicit in my reference to “our common future,” the title of the seminal 1987 report by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), which became a milestone in shaping the environmental agenda of many countries.

[2] H. Jonas, Dem bösen ende näher , Der Spiegel n°20, 1992. I have read the Italian version of the interview in: Jonas, Sull’ Orlo dell’ Abisso: Conversazioni sul Rapporto tra Uomo e Natura, edited by Paolo Becchi (Torino: Einaudi, 2000).

[3] This theme concerning the development of the market economy in abstraction from social community and biophysical interdependence is also developed in: E. Daly and J.B. Cobb Jr., For the Common Good (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), p. 37.

[4] On the elaboration of the notion of nature as phusis, and the dualisms that resulted (at the origin, the metaphysical dualism between logos and phusis, which subsequently gave rise to the dualism between man and nature), see Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), especially Chapter 1, where phusis is defined and interpreted as nature, and Chapter 4, in the section ‘Being and Thinking’.

[5] On the meaning of ‘coevolution’ in this specific context, see the work of the American biologist John Cairns Jr., in particular Global Coevolution of Natural Systems and Human Society, Revista de la Sociedad Mexicana de Historia Natural, no. 47, 1997. See also the website of Professor Emeritus John Cairns Jr.

I have used the strong biblical image of the ‘Leviathan’ to recall another type of contract—this time a social contract among human beings—outlined by Thomas Hobbes in his 1651 book Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil. In my view (as in the view of many scholars attentive to environmental questions), any form of social contract cannot stand without the prior and more binding validity of a natural contract between humanity and nature (see note 6).

[6] M. Serres, The Natural Contract  (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995), 34.

[7] H. Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: in Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

[8] R. Goodland, The Concept of Environmental Sustainability,  Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Vol. 26, 1995.

[9] The reference to ‘design with nature’ concerns a milestone book for landscape architecture, now fundamental for anyone concerned with the relationship between nature and the built environment—architects, planners, designers, politicians, and more. The book is Ian L. McHarg, Design with Nature (Philadelphia: The Falcon Press, 1969). This title also inspired Malaysian architect Ken Yeang, a pioneer of ecological design (or eco-architecture) and planning since the early 1970s, author of Designing with Nature: The Ecological Basis for Architectural Design (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995). I am deeply indebted to both authors.

[10] An example of this kind of total bio-integration between built and natural environment has been developed by the author, in collaboration the Croatian ecologist Ivana Vojnic Rogic, in a project for the redevelopment of a central district in Zagreb, Croatia: Badel Block Redevelopment, Zagreb (see Images 1, 2, 3, 4 above; here, a link to the project).

[11] Concerning the meaning of ‘biophilia’ see: E.O. Wilson, Biophilia (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1984).

[12] For further considerations on the concept ‘techno-ecosystem’, see Chapter 2 in Z. Naveh, A.S. Lieberman, Landscape Ecology: Theory and Application (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1994).

Works Cited

Cairns, John Jr. ‘Global Coevolution of Natural Systems and Human Society.’ In Revista de la Sociedad Mexicana de Historia Natural, n°47, 1997.

Daly, Herman E., Cobb, John B. Jr. For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.

Goodland, Robert. ‘The Concept of Environmental Sustainability.’  In Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Vol. 26, 1995.

Heidegger, Martin. Introduction to Metaphysics, new translation by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

Jonas, Hans. The Imperative of Responsibility: in Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

—. Sull’ Orlo dell’ Abisso: Conversazioni sul Rapporto tra Uomo e Natura, edited by Paolo Becchi. Torino: Einaudi, Torino, 2000.

McHarg, Ian L. Design with Nature. Philadelphia: The Falcon Press, 1969.

Naveh, Zev,  Lieberman Arthur S. Landscape Ecology: Theory and Application. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1994.

Serres, Michel. The Natural Contract, translated by Elizabeth MacArthur and William Paulson. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995.

Wilson, Edward O. Biophilia: The Human Bond with Other Species. Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1984.

Yeang, Ken. Designing with Nature: The Ecological Basis for Architectural Design. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995.

Image Credits

Featured Image by Åke E:son Lindman on divisare.com

All other images by Alessandro Calvi Rollino Architetto, CC BY-NC-SA