Wines, Green Architecture

Are you able to design an ecologically inspired art building in the Age of Ecology in your present studio?

Our studio does have the ability to design ecologically, if the argument strongly relates to the context of the community.  The current studio project is located in NW Portland and is a mix of vacant warehouse buildings and parking lots.  The structures previously built were dominated by the manufacturing mind set of the ‘machine age’ or industrial era.  We are given the design opportunity to re-design and re-define the identity of the entire site through a public square and park.  The project has the ability to be ecologically inspired but from the early urban planning stages of the project,  I became more fascinated with the idea of social engagement within a public space rather than the connection to nature.   The buildings our studio is designing are more intended to speak to the identity of community rather than the environment in large part because ecological hasn’t evolved into a complete design aesthetic that speaks to the complexities of society.  As designers, we still are fixated with technological innovation that increases structural abilities or as the architecture of ‘cosmogenesis’ that Jencks refers to.  I agree with Wines for the need to make ecological design the basis of our projects but our priorities within society hinder our decisions to make that leap.