Green Architecture

by James Wines, edited by Philip Jodidio, 2000. Taschen; Köln, Germany. Paperback, 240 pages, $24.99

Green Architecture argues that technological approaches to reducing the environmental impacts of buildings are, in themselves, not enough to head off environmental catastrophe as long as our culture’s basic impetus is one of opposition to nature. Architecture, Wines suggests, has a crucial role to play in the reinvention of our society’s relationship with nature. He then illustrates this point with a large collection of examples that he feels are stepping stones on the way to an “ecologically inspired art of building.”

As principal of the design firm SITE and an established author, Wines has impressive credentials both as a designer and critic. One doesn’t have to agree with him to enjoy his descriptive flair. He describes Frank O. Gehry’s work, for example, as “brilliantly sculptural … maintaining a satisfying tension between his convoluted wave forms and a chunky Cubist geometry.… Gehry’s buildings may be organic in appearance, but they are the polar opposite of environmentally responsible architecture.” Through much of the book Wines presents Modernism, and Le Corbusier in particular, as the antithesis of an “ecologically inspired art of building.” Referring repeatedly to Le Corbusier’s famous description of a house as “a machine for living in,” Wines points out that such a metaphor was not inappropriate for the industrial age, but that we now have more useful and powerful models for our designs in the earth’s natural systems.

The contrast with Modernism brings Wines dangerously close, at times, to proposing ecological architecture as another style of design. He even compares early Modernist buildings, with their nineteenth-century stylistic influence, to some of today’s green buildings, which he views as expressions of environmental awareness limited by their Modernist palate. Rather than taking a building form that he sees as inherently cut off from ecological systems and trying to reduce its environmental footprint, Wines argues that the building form itself must express the connection to nature: “It is strange that even the individual components of environmental technology are rarely interpreted by architects as artistic raw material.”

In

Green Architecture Wines lays out his arguments and then supports them with a historical survey of society’s relationship to nature and a photographic essay of projects from around the world that strive to integrate buildings with their sites and with nature in general. Wines acknowledges that some of these projects may be lacking in terms of common measures of environmental performance, such as energy efficiency. In general, however, he is too quick to downplay the importance of reducing the environmental impact of buildings. His presentation of the standard checklist of green strategies includes inaccuracies and confuses some issues. As a result, when he describes attempts to incorporate these strategies as “too little, too late” to save the environment, his words lack the authority of one who has really studied and implemented these measures. He may not be far off, however, in arguing that by focusing on what are in many cases merely “admirable engineering innovations,” green designers are missing an opportunity to inspire with more aesthetically and socially compelling environmental imagery.

Green Architecture presents a useful challenge to the technologically oriented green design community. The perspective it features is valuable, and the case studies offer a lot by way of ideas and images. While he may fall a bit too far on the side of aesthetics in his search for a balance with technological solutions, Wines’ call for a shift from “ego-centric” to “eco-centric” architecture is hard to argue with and enjoyable to read. –

NM