PBS has a great series on sustainability that is now in its third season. Each season design e^2 has a unique focus. The first season looked at the broad topic of general environmentally focused design. The following seasons focused on energy and transportation. Every episode focuses in on a certain designer and their design concepts and principles. Many of the episodes can be seen at the PBS website http://www.design-e2.com/
The Village Architect:
In this episode Brian MacKay-Lyons made several great points about the core of sustainable design. First of all he stated that the core problem with the western world is the fact that we over consume. So often we want to fix the problems we are in by buying our way out of them, whether that is buying "green" paints or Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs) it is only masking the problem. Maybe we need to focus on limiting our means more than focusing on buying the right product. Maybe instead of buying "green" paint we could use someones "mis-tinted" pain that most companies and stores just throw away, or maybe instead of buying CFLs for every socket in the house what if we left the lights out in the unoccupied rooms.
MacKay-Lyons pointed out that architects needs to be timeless. So many of the modern era buildings we destroyed because the fad changed and the buildings were not near as "functional" as the architects had dreamed. Are all of the sexy images in the glossy architecture magazines going to be sexy in three decades from now?
My favorite thing MacKay said was a building will be under budget if 85% of a building was built with local materials and local labor. So often we over look the vernacular for the modern and so often we miss out on the potential of building on to that vernacular.
In this episode Brian MacKay-Lyons made several great points about the core of sustainable design. First of all he stated that the core problem with the western world is the fact that we over consume. So often we want to fix the problems we are in by buying our way out of them, whether that is buying "green" paints or Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs) it is only masking the problem. Maybe we need to focus on limiting our means more than focusing on buying the right product. Maybe instead of buying "green" paint we could use someones "mis-tinted" pain that most companies and stores just throw away, or maybe instead of buying CFLs for every socket in the house what if we left the lights out in the unoccupied rooms.
MacKay-Lyons pointed out that architects needs to be timeless. So many of the modern era buildings we destroyed because the fad changed and the buildings were not near as "functional" as the architects had dreamed. Are all of the sexy images in the glossy architecture magazines going to be sexy in three decades from now?
My favorite thing MacKay said was a building will be under budget if 85% of a building was built with local materials and local labor. So often we over look the vernacular for the modern and so often we miss out on the potential of building on to that vernacular.
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