Architecture and sustainability: critical perspectives for integrated design

Generating sustainability concepts from architectural perspectives

Architecture in its classical meaning is understood as a meaningful integration of the use (utilitas), stability (firmitas) and aesthetic beauty (venustas) through design for (re)making and (re)shaping of buildings, urban spaces and the built environment. Sustainability understood as a development paradigm aspires an integrative attitude towards the social, the economic and the environmental concerns to unfold development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." While fully acknowledging the diversity of perspectives in both domains, this book focuses upon the integrative potential of architecture and highlights the ways in which it can contribute to the further development of the sustainability paradigm.

With ‘architecture and sustainability’ in the title, and not ‘sustainable architecture’, the importance of the dialectics between the two is acknowledged as a more productive approach: What is the value of sustainability for architecture, and vice versa? In what ways the emergence of sustainability paradigm has influenced architecture? What are the architectural perspectives on sustainability? While taking stock of these dialectics as a broader framework for advancing integrated design, the book is centered on one particular question: How to generate sustainability concepts from architectural perspectives? The book makes the case for sustainability as an integrative framework with design as the most appropriate (synthesis) field for exploring and dealing with this integrative endeavor. For such exploration, sustainable design should begin with change of ‘attitude’, followed by ‘rethinking’ of existing paradigms and the development of new strategies. This implies using issues of sustainability, ecology and energy as catalyst for creatively ‘rethinking’ conventional notions of ‘enclosure’, ‘tectonics’ and ‘program’, and thereby, generate new or alternative conceptions and expressions of sustainability.

The book presents, and takes stock of, recent developments in research, theory and practice of architecture that demonstrate such rethinking. Forty-four contributions by over a hundred authors (researchers, practitioners and academics) from around the world are assembled in this book as chapters. They offer critical perspectives on architecture and sustainability relationships, and in the process, unfold integrative pathways for addressing the issues and challenges of the ecological age.

Ahmed Z. Khan is an Associate Professor and Chair Sustainable Architecture and Urbanism at Université Libre de Bruxelles. His research activities focus on issues of Sustainability, Climate Change and Spatial Quality at different scales of the built environment with particular interest in exploring Sustainable Urban Futures. He has practiced for about a decade, coordinated large-scale European and regionally funded research projects, is the author of over 100 scientific publications, and held AKPIA fellowship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Karen Allacker is an Assistant Professor and Chair Sustainable Architecture at the KU Leuven. Her research expertise lies in the field of sustainable building focusing on an integrated assessment of economic, environmental and performance aspects from a life cycle perspective, i.e. combining Life Cycle Costing, Life Cycle Assessment and multi-criteria analysis. Her research covers different scale levels of the built environment with particular attention to the early design phase.

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