Main Feature

As the world population increases amidst Earth's dwindling finite resources and the ominous dangers of climate change, the next generation of architects can no longer be taught to design future buildings and cities in isolation.

INTRODUCTION
Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." ¹ He was not thinking of architecture, but he might have been. Architectural education in the present appears to seek to prop up the past by promoting the historical image of the prima donna architect with the rich client who only vaguely knows what building he or she wants, leaving it to the designer/genius to fill this knowledge gap. Just like Orwell's party slogan for his fictitious Ministry of Truth this control over what architecture should be, and how architects should behave, is defining architecture's future through controlling its present and by viewing its history through that present.

In this way the majority of current architectural education neatly skips any examination of how societies maintained themselves (in a more or less sustainable state) in the past and what sort of built environment this generated. In the current world situation where a number of resources that are essential for the current Western lifestyle, such as oil for energy and phosphorous to grow food, have a known life², it would seem vital that the architects of the future should be learning to define the future through understanding how societies in the past have learned to live within the limited resources available to them.

In architectural education at present the closest to a consideration of what the future might be like is presented in some type of course, often optional or peripheral, with the word "sustainable" in its title. Some of these courses raise the issue of resources and this often leads to the study of buildings that use solar energy for heating and cooling. Seldom do these courses explore architecture for a society living without fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources. Students are not being asked to design buildings that use only renewable resources, and rarely is the whole architect/client relationship examined in such a context. The assumption of architectural education is that the current economic model will still exist in a sustainable future and that buildings will be procured in the same way as now, it is just that they will more or less face the sun for winter heating (if the aesthetics allow) and may have a grass roof for summer cooling (if the aesthetics allow).

The question is, should such an approach to architectural education have any place in the face of unpredictable climate change, resource shortages, an increasing world population, and the rapid development of countries like China and India? To provide some sort of answers this article will look at the effect each of these issues might have on educating architects for the future.

To read the complete article and find out more about what various universities in the region are doing to educate prospective architects on the need to design and build sustainably, get a copy of the 2Q 2010 edition at our online shop or at newsstands/major bookstores; or subscribe to FuturArc.

Professors Robert and Brenda Vale are research fellows at the School of Architecture, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Their 1975 book “The Autonomous House” is widely recognised as a basic text in the field of Green building. Through the 1980s the Vales designed a number of very low energy commercial buildings in England. In the 1990s the Vales wrote “Green Architecture”, completed the first autonomous house in the UK and received the UN’s Global 500 award. They also designed the award-winning zero-emission Hockerton Housing Project. They later developed the National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NABERS). The Vales’ latest book, “Time to Eat the Dog?” which deals with the realities of sustainable living, was published in mid-2009.

¹ Orwell G. (1949) Nineteen Eighty-Four, Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd. London.
² Vale R. and Vale B. (2009) Time to Eat the Dog? The real guide to sustainable living, London, Thames and Hudson (p. 34, 59)

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