Experts estimate that at least 30 percent of the world's annual carbon emissions are bound to the built environment, since they are strongly due to the burning fossil fuels for the production of materials such as cement and steel and for heating and cooling buildings.
This statistics focus on architects at the center of a social debate, said Jeanne Gang, architect and founding partner of Studio Gang, during a discussion on January 16 at Stanford University.
“We were occupied with this question, which for architecture is the most powerful way to play a role in sustainability” mechanical engineering. “The way we build is the key to zero carbon.”
The discussion was part of the great ideas in sustainability, a number of conversations organized by Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.
“As a company, we have to reinterpret our approach to the construction and urban planning,” said Dean Arun Majumdar during the opening speech. “Through design, Jeanne Gang draws insights from ecological systems in creating places that combine people together, their communities and the environment,” he added.
Studio Gang is an architecture and urban design company based in Chicago with offices in San Francisco, New York and Paris. In 2023, the company was selected to design the school's Sustainability Commons, a number of new buildings and outdoor areas, all of which are welcome in Stanford with interest in sustainability, regardless of the academic focus and partners in the government, industry and partners become other external units. The sustainability increases will match the goals of the university to reach zero waste by 2050 by 2030 to 2030 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions.
Built to build on it
In their opening speeches, Gang discussed how the studio prioritizes sustainability by increasing the density of urban areas. The increasing density can not only reduce carbon emissions, but also create stronger, closer knitted communities. Gang noted that architects can achieve this by making urban communities more accessible, reducing or eliminating the need for cars and using biological building materials.
“I wanted to talk about two strategies that I think that they are great ideas,” said Gang. The first touched “architecture as a catalytic force that brings people into the struggle for the environment”. While they discussed the research and the work of their studio, who contributed to reviving the Chicago Riverfront as an ecological and leisure goal, she added that “it can really inspire it [citizens] To act what is greater than just designing a specific building. “
The second idea revolves around the reuse of buildings. They lent the term “transplanting” from horticultural practice to join together and described an application of this technology to architecture as a way to improve existing buildings. The idea in horticulture is “to produce the plant more variety, delicious fruits and more beauty,” she said. “And so it's not just about maintaining. The point is the capacity. “
Pretend with a good example
For example, she emphasized the work of Studio Gang in the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, which was a “mess of buildings at different times”, as Gang expressed it. Your team tried to renovate and expand the building in a way that would give the museum new life and inspiration. “Every building has a different future, and we add it through the transplant,” she said.
The second example of the aisle was the New York American Museum of Natural History, in which she and her team wanted to inspire people to understand nature in a historical institution in a new way. The result was the Gilder Center of the Museum of Science, Education and Innovation of the Museum, in which classrooms, collections, exhibitions and research are located.
“It is really about combining all of these things so that people can make mental connections between these topics,” said Gang. “This became our model to build on these existing foundations and create spaces that they fascinate and make them want to check it.”
Billington reflected the recent destruction by forest fires in Southern California and floods in North Carolina and asked whether catastrophic events change the thoughts about the design of the gang and how the built environment could be “good for the environment”. Gang replied: “I have seen more and more of these catastrophes, and I was more interested in how to build up more resistant communities.”
For architects who are interested in this challenge, she continued. “We have to start really paying attention and training how to work with communities and achieve a consensus, because the tendency is to simply rebuild in the same way,” she said.
Questions submitted by registrants before the event caused the gang to discuss how obstacles to sustainable buildings in the United States are overcome, the values of customers match, create a feeling of joy through design, use local materials and much more. The last question submitted by a current student asked the gang to worry about the future of architecture.
“I saw how people who love the environment go away from architecture because they feel that we are the bad guys,” said Gang. “And there is a movement that we have seen in France – also architects, young architects – say:” We will not build. “So my greatest concern about it is obviously a growing population and we need structures, but if we lose – Young, ambitious, innovative young architects – we will not be able to meet the needs of the future. “”