“Why do today’s ‘sustainable cities’ look like 1980s golf resorts?” asks architect, writer, and urban theorist JeffreyInaba.
He adds that “projects said to be sustainable” often receive "less scrutiny" than projects not so described – which has one particularly disturbing side-effect: sustainable development becomes one of the easiest ways to produce what Inaba calls "regressive urban environments" – with the full support of people who consider themselves architecturally progressive. A "sustainable" high-rise, for instance, and this is me talking now, can very quickly get away with being stylistically uninteresting, contextually insensitive, and nothing more than a get-rich-quick financial scheme thrown up on the horizon by billion-dollar property developers in New York, London, Dubai, Miami, and so on. But it's "green," so no one says anything – except to hype it, pointing out that the building has a few solar panels. I would even suggest that “sustainable architecture” has gotten to the point where nearly all it takes now to make a lifelong environmentalist cheer for and promote the offshore corporate heads of international real estate development firms is for those firms to install functionally useless ornamental wind turbines on the roofs of unnecessary Manhattan high-rises – because why ask yourself tough questions when all your jeans are made from organic cotton? Just call yourself an optimist and build more bank towers in central London. Capitalism has never had it so good: you’ve got hordes of environmentalists actually selling your products for you... In any case, to explore what a “sustainable city” might look like someday, steering clear of the "1980s golf resort" typology, Inaba’s SCIFI program teamed up with the increasingly interesting architect Minsuk Cho to propose “an urban district [built] above the water” of the River Han in Seoul, Korea. As such, the project "is a reaction against the regressive urban environments executed in the name of ecological sustainability" that we see peppering global design blogs today. But does this project, pictured above, really achieve the goal of expanding what it might mean to be sustainable? We report; you decide. Meanwhile, read BLDGBLOG’s earlier interview with Jeffrey Inaba, one I think deserves more readers' attention: Of cars, dogs, golf, and bad feng shui: An Interview with Jeffrey Inaba.
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“Why do today’s ‘sustainable cities’ look like 1980s golf resorts?” asks architect, writer, and urban theorist Jeffrey Inaba.
He adds that “projects said to be sustainable” often receive "less scrutiny" than projects not so described – which has one particularly disturbing side-effect: sustainable development becomes one of the easiest ways to produce what Inaba calls "regressive urban environments" – with the full support of people who consider themselves architecturally progressive.
A "sustainable" high-rise, for instance, and this is me talking now, can very quickly get away with being stylistically uninteresting, contextually insensitive, and nothing more than a get-rich-quick financial scheme thrown up on the horizon by billion-dollar property developers in New York, London, Dubai, Miami, and so on.
But it's "green," so no one says anything – except to hype it, pointing out that the building has a few solar panels.
I would even suggest that “sustainable architecture” has gotten to the point where nearly all it takes now to make a lifelong environmentalist cheer for and promote the offshore corporate heads of international real estate development firms is for those firms to install functionally useless ornamental wind turbines on the roofs of unnecessary Manhattan high-rises – because why ask yourself tough questions when all your jeans are made from organic cotton?
Just call yourself an optimist and build more bank towers in central London.
Capitalism has never had it so good: you’ve got hordes of environmentalists actually selling your products for you...
In any case, to explore what a “sustainable city” might look like someday, steering clear of the "1980s golf resort" typology, Inaba’s SCIFI program teamed up with the increasingly interesting architect Minsuk Cho to propose “an urban district [built] above the water” of the River Han in Seoul, Korea.
As such, the project "is a reaction against the regressive urban environments executed in the name of ecological sustainability" that we see peppering global design blogs today.
But does this project, pictured above, really achieve the goal of expanding what it might mean to be sustainable?
We report; you decide.
Meanwhile, read BLDGBLOG’s earlier interview with Jeffrey Inaba, one I think deserves more readers' attention: Of cars, dogs, golf, and bad feng shui: An Interview with Jeffrey Inaba.
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