COMMUNITY AND CONNECTION

The mind set that tolerated our destruction of the natural world and the legacies left to us by history depended on the suppression of a sense of connection with each other, nature and the cosmos, as well as to past and future generations. If a green architecture is to help bring about a sustainable culture, it must regenerate a sense of community and connection to, even communion with, the natural world. The opportunity for communities to form and function needs to be designed into all levels of the built environment, and is a challenge to planners and urban designers as well as architects. At the architectural level, all sorts of building types increasingly must stress the community dimension. In part this is because as we do more and more at home--including work, play, shop and exercise--the major reason to go elsewhere is to meet other people. A major element of green architecture should be not just to work with and be gentle to nature, but also to make conspicuously visible its workings and cycles. This will educate people about and make them more sensitive to nature, and also give them a sense of connection with and rootedness in nature. The ultimate ideal would be an architecture that fostered in various ways a deep sense of communion with nature and the cosmos. Such an architecture is not only good for the planet, it is also the only one in which people can develop into their full potential, discovering themselves in interaction with others and opening into contact with the most ennobling of human sensibilities as they experience their connections with the larger scheme of things, and the ways in which this unfolds from past into the future. The creation of a green architecture is much more than a merely technical issue: it is essentially concerned with delivering a much-enhanced quality of life, to be enjoyed now and capable of continuing into the future. It is only this broader vision of cultural transformation promised by a truly green architecture that will convince people to move forward to sustainable lifestyles.

Buildings: Commerzbank Headquarters, Cotton Tree Pilot Housing, Gotz Headquarters, Mont Cenis Training Center, Slateford Green, University of Nottingham Jubilee Campus