Monday, 8 June 2009

green design - creating more humane spaces

Architect Norman Foster discusses his own work to show how computers can help architects design buildings that are green, beautiful and "basically pollution-free.

As he says, the green agenda is probably the most important and topical issue of the day. It isn't about fashion, it is about survival. "Green is cool," he says. "All the projects that have in someway been inspired by that agenda are about a celebratory lifestyle. In a way celebrating the spaces and places that determine the quality of life."

Norman quotes Thomas Friedman, who wrote in the Herald Tribune in 2006, "I think the most important thing to happen in 2006 was that living and thinking green hit Main Street. We reached a tipping point this year where living, acting, designing, investing and manufacturing green came to be understood by a critical mass of citizens, entrepreneurs and officials as the most patriotic, capitalistic, geo-political and competitive thing they could do. Hence my motto: green is the new red, white and blue."

Norman in turn asked himself, "When did that kind of awareness of the planet and its fragility first appear?" And I think it was July 20th, 1969, when, for the first time, man could look back at planet Earth."

I found this talk particularly inspiring as I prepare to enter Architecture School. One of the things I have been creating a bit of a wall about is digital design. But as Normal Foster says not only can the digital world enhance design but it can enhance our relationships and response to the issues we grapple with. "I think that that digital revolution now is coming to the point where as the virtual world, which brings so many people together here, finally connects with the physical world, there is the reality that that has become humanized, so that digital world has all the friendliness, all the immediacy, the orientation of the analog world."

"The answers to our problems lies with buildings" - claims Foster

Watch this inspiring talk here

Labels: architecture