Green Awards 2018

FuturArc Green Leadership Award (FGLA) and FuturArc Prize (FAP) are peeks into the realms of practice and imagination. This is what we do in the name of Green, what we would like to do, were constraints lifted.

In the world of what we do, FGLA offers us a sampling of built projects, architects pushing the boundaries of Green and interpreting it from a designer’s viewpoint. We see interest in materiality and climate. Brick and wood, air and light are the tools of the trade. In some projects we see innovation of form, new ways of connecting inside and outside, public and private space. Architects, working with a tight budget, are able to craft in-between spaces for life and living.

In the world we imagine, the brief for FAP this year asked for a biophilic city. Anyone familiar with biophilia knows what to expect here: plants and water overlaid onto the grey of buildings and roads. In the submissions that were received, the jury saw what this might mean to Asia.

Between FAP and FGLA, we see a gulf between vision and action. We know how to fix things; why then are we so conservative? It’s tempting to say this is a problem of governance or market dynamics (it is, to a degree). The reality is also that we are comfortable with the boxes we make.

FAP winners tell us that there are connections between things. Design is about reshaping relations, not simply making objects. In an interview with Heather Banerd, Rahul Srivastava and Matias Echanove talk about the morphology of the slum; how the edges between the street and home, working and living, inside and outside, are never clear. This, in turn, permits connections between social and economic, human and natural. Sadly, the slum is called a slum, and implicitly, without redemption or lessons learnt.

We hope this issue will be food for thought. In years to come, it will remind us of where we were in 2018,
when sustainability was a hot-button topic but we didn’t know how to move fast enough.

Happy reading.