ACCESS AND URBAN CONTEXT

Transport, particularly automobile use, is the second biggest consumer of energy, after buildings. Even the most energy-efficient work place, if sited miles beyond access by public transport, does nothing to ameliorate pollution and global warming--at least until low-energy or non-fossil fuel burning automobiles become a reality. Such a building would be even less useful from a green perspective if it were removed from local shops, restaurants and opportunities to socialize, and housed none of these itself. A building's location in terms of its accessibility and proximity to a range of other functions is critical in determining how green that building can be. In the larger quest for sustainability, the design of our cities and other forms of settlement, and the relationship of these to each other and to their regions, are as crucial as is the design of individual buildings. Too many architects extrapolate from the fact that half the world's population now live in cities the dubious conclusion that the inevitable future is an ever-greater proportion of mankind living in ever-bigger cities. Each such city has a huge 'ecological footprint', defined as the area necessary to feed it, supply the materials for its buildings and industry, absorb its wastes and convert its carbon dioxide back into oxygen. One of the most urgent challenges for architects, planners and politicians is to reduce the ecological footprints of cities and seek a variety of other forms of human settlement, or networks of settlements. These should be less taxing in their impacts on the earth, yet also exploit our increasingly miniaturized and etherealized technologies so that everybody everywhere will enjoy all the benefits of contemporary life. Just as green buildings are conceived of as intimately related to their settings, so such settlements, like the cities of the future, will be considered along with their hinterlands as an indivisible organic whole. What will matter is the long term viability of both settlement and hinterland, and the health and happiness of their human and non-human inhabitants.

Buildings: Commerzbank Headquarters, Mont Cenis Training Center, Slateford Green, University of Nottingham Jubilee Campus