Material #17 and #18: Humans and nature centre-stage in the built environment
I’m sharing two material definitions today, given that last week I was out spending time with family celebrating my father’s 80th birthday.
Both of the examples signal shifts in narrative. A growing recognition that, as part of nature, the ways people shape places through design and building have implications both for human wellbeing, and for the environment. Meaning that innovation has to take both into account.
The first is a big bold report by the Council on Urban Initiatives. Composed of big names and co-hosted by UN-Habitat, UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, and LSE Cities, the Council centers its work on: “environmental sustainability (the green city), health and well-being (the healthy city), and social justice (the just city)”. The new report is called “Modern Housing: An environmental common good”. It calls for a socio-economic reframing of housing:
“Housing is a fundamental human right, our core social foundation. Equally, housing is at the heart of the built environment sector – its materials, resources, systems, land-use. As such, housing intrinsically integrates the challenges of both social and environmental justice. Yet its current trajectory, defined by financialisation, extraction and inequality, mitigates against achieving either goal. We are at a critical juncture as a result, and we must fundamentally rethink our approach to housing.”
The report does a good job of leaning into the massive disparities between the climate footprint of housing between regions, the ways that housing production is hooked up to global and often extractive supply chains, and the need for context-specific strategies.
“Housing is uniquely complex. It can be a fundamental shared infrastructure, slow-moving durable good, industrial output, financial asset, cultural expression and, most importantly, a home. It is often all these things at the same time. The way that we imagine and enact housing reveals not only what we stand for as a society – who we are, our identities and cultures, histories and geographies, economies and polities – but also the way that we touch the earth.
Although houses would seem to be firmly rooted in place, as if drawn up from the soil, almost all contemporary buildings consist of a highly distributed global footprint, usually dispersed across what the Australian philosopher Val Plumwood (2008) called “shadow places”. These shadow places are obliged to host the extractive practices that make up a house, such as dredging sand to make concrete or fibreglass, destabilising river systems and creating flooding (Koehnken and Rintoul, 2018), or doing the same to deep seabeds in order to extract nickel for steel.”
The second material definition is from the latest issue of Monocle magazine. (As previously mentioned, I have a tendency to buy big chunky magazines in airports - this time it was Monocle). Monocle describes itself as a “global briefing covering international affairs, business, culture and design”.
The issue reflects an encouraging mainstreaming of recognition of work that is good for the environment and for people. It is packed with examples: from a segment on Metro Arquitetos’ retrofitting of buildings in Sao Paolo; to a piece on postage stamp design that includes a stamp featuring Italian architect Carlo Melograni, who “almost exclusively focused on projects for the common good”, with the magazine adding “we could do with more architects like him today”; to a conversation with RIBA’s president Muyiwa Oki on his advocacy for investment in retrofitting in the UK, saying that “if we want to solve the big issues when it comes to a global climate emergency, we need to think about the built environment first”; and to a sidebar highlighting “Material Success”, a recent Monocle newsletter on the Sharjah Architecture Triennial.
The Sharjah triennial was curated by Lagos-based architect Tosin Oshinowo. It examined “how a culture of reuse and reappropriation in the Global South can help to deliver more sustainable and resilient buildings across the world”. The triennial took place in a series of repurposed buildings across Sharjah, a stark contrast to the glass-and-steel towers of adjacent Dubai.
Monocle quotes Oshinowo saying “We want you to ask questions about how we design, build and reduce our carbon footprint”, and it adds: “Her statement and the locations of the triennial shows that in many places, especially in the Global South, we have already found ways to build sustainably.”
The issue also includes the annual Monocle design awards, recognizing 50 examples of the industry’s “finest work this year”. The magazine shares five key design themes that Monocle’s editors and correspondents identified while reporting for the prize. These are:
Embrace the environment
Good architecture should work with the climate in which it’s setCommunication is key
Graphic design is often a late consideration but it can be crucial to a project’s success. It can also go a long way to improving quality of life and protecting culture.Put people first
Many of the outstanding projects featured started from a place of prioritizing people. [This one should be a no-brainer when we’re talking about designing the places where people live, work, and interact with one another and the objects people use. But amazingly it had started to become an afterthought – including an afterthought to reducing carbon emissions – so it’s good to see it returning to centre stage]Elevate the everyday
Objects we encounter constantly should be a joy to use – and to look atAnd:
Material concerns
With any architectural or furniture project, material selection is crucial.
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Through 2024, It’s Material is sharing one use of the word “material” each week, on Tuesdays.
I was intrigued and reassured by the way Monocle magazine is committed to and celebrates the printed page. Here’s a good piece in Journalism.co.uk on Monacle’s strategy that focuses on print and audio.