Vision 2020: Considering the World + the Future Architect

What will be the most significant challenge facing architecture and society in 2020? What is the relevance of architecture in this future?

The most significant challenge for architecture and society generally will remain sustainability - but the issue must be viewed holistically, far beyond questions of energy and climate change. Sustainable human habitation is a complex topic that touches on almost every aspect of how we live with one another and within the organic and inorganic systems of which we are a part.

What is sustainability? It includes ongoing access to clean air, clean water, healthy food and safe shelter. It requires making sure that those basic needs are equally available to every person - and every other living being - on the planet. It means focusing on our true needs versus our greed and desires; learning to live within boundaries; and refusing to take from our common resources what we may want until we know that others are able to get what they must have. It includes not using up resources that we don’t know how to replace, and it requires treating the other members of our common system as if they are just as valuable and worthy of respect as we ourselves are. It means giving back to the system as well as taking from it.

Those are grand statements, but they don’t mean anything until you put them into practice. Architecture is a very literal means of putting the ideas to (and into) the ground. What resources do our buildings and spaces use up in their construction and maintenance - energy, water, construction materials, furnishings, operating supplies, land? Can we identify all of the places those resources come from, they way they are produced, how much we are taking away from a place versus what is left, and how much we gave back in exchange? If a building takes resources from its local ecology, does it put back into the system as much as it took out, in forms that are useful to other members of the system? Are our buildings place-specific and locally appropriate - designed and managed to be most suitable for and responsive to the exact climate, ecosystem and culture where they reside? Do our buildings teach us about the systems in which we live, and how to live only within the shared means of those systems?

How will a future “architect” think/operate in 2020, and what skills will be required?

The future architect will have to be comfortable with complexity, with interdependence, and with feedback. She will be an architect who truly understands networks, and whole-systems thinking.

Architecture will no longer be - if it ever war - about creating objects that try to stand apart from their surroundings. Nothing can be truly apart - each space is connected to its structure, to the structures around it, to the neighborhood in which they sit, to the town or city, the region, and beyond. These physical environments connect - and connect to - the people, groups, communities, cultures and societies that operate in and around them. And both space and people are part of, not separate from, the natural systems: land, air, water; animal, vegetable, mineral; organic and inorganic; here and thousands of miles from here.

Such complexity is incomprehensible, at least to a single person. So the future architect will readily accept that she is not master, but partner in human habitat creation; leadership will not mean being in charge or in control of all, but rather being able to bring all the needed partners together to understand what our next habitat creation project will mean to our systems. There will be no place for ego: each person will know their limits as well as their gifts, and will be thankful for the others who know what they do not. Collaboration will not be a buzzword but a necessity, since no one of us can envision, execute or evaluate the project alone.

And every project will be evaluated - not by its formal concept, but by its systemic function and successful connection to the whole. Does the project provide for itself and its inhabitants? Can it keep itself and its inhabitants healthy? Does it communicate well with its parts, its users, its neighbors, its environment, its culture? Can it respond and adapt appropriately? What does it give to the members of the system in and around it? Does it recognize who those members are? Can it protect itself from harm?

These are the criteria for successful organisms in an ecological system, which is what our buildings and spaces turn out to be. To the extent that our habitats - and their creators - ask these questions of themselves, listen to the answers, and respond to make improvements, they will survive and be self-sustaining. To the extent that they do not, they will become obsolete, and eventually be eliminated.

Why are students uniquely positioned to address these issues?

You haven’t learned all of our bad habits - yet. So ask questions and challenge assumptions now, before you accept the way things currently are. Not everything you will be taught will be wrong; but some things will be, and it is both your unique opportunity and your responsibility to recognize those things and insist on change.

You are young, you have energy, you have time, and you have a wealth of resources at your disposal - a gathering of information and people that is unlikely to collect around you in this way again. You’re not committed to being one type of thing yet; you have formed much of your personality, preferences, skills and interests, but you can still be adventurous, test things out, explore something new. So ask questions. Disagree. Talk to lots and lots of people outside of your discipline. Take a course outside of the design school. Work or volunteer with your design skills in a place that isn’t an architecture firm. Travel outside of your comfort zone.

This is the time when you are choosing the kind of person and the kind of professional that you will be - so choose wisely. It’s not that you can’t (or won’t) ever change, but switching course is harder than it may appear. This is the time to choose not only to be a responsible professional, but a professional leader; and not for just 100,000 architects, but for cities, regions and nations. You can be the inspiration for change: with your words, which have power to show possibilities, and even more with your professional acts, which will show those possibilities to be concrete reality.

Train yourself now to be a sustainable professional not just in the technology you employ, but in the very way you think and work: holistically, collaboratively, responsively, self-critically, openly, locally, and equitably. Be the one we need.

Brandy Brooks is the director of the Community Design Resource Center of Boston (CDRC). Prior to her work with CDRC, Brooks was the director of marketing and communications for Loheed Design Partnership in Somerville, Mass. A passionate advocate for socially conscious and community-focused design, Brooks is a member of the Boston Faith and Justice Network, a group of Boston-area Christians committed to social action and justice. She also was an AIA150 champion this past year and speaker and panel moderator at the Design Corps 2006 Structures for Inclusion conference.

Photograph courtesy AIA.