James Wines

What Wines points to here is precisely the shortfall of C. van Uffelen’s arguments.  What Wines is looking for is a truly integrated sustainable architecture.  However, this, as Wines describes, is a concept both ahead and behind its time.  In this case, the process of design is both ahead and behind the need.  We could design a building that both responds to the elements passively and integrates new sustainable technology, but it would be ahead of its time, unbuildable on the scale that is necessary.  We are at a point in the process where there must be compromise.  The ideal is not attainable.  We have to be less bad because we are incapable of being good.

-jd gutermuth