FUTURARC INTERVIEW
the only self-imposed condition, that we should really be selfless in this. In a sense, this is where the ‘teeth’ comes from. You may have seen that a couple of signatories to the Architects Declare in the UK recently decided to leave. Perhaps they may have felt the ‘teeth’.
NK: Give us an example of a commitment. HR: Let me read it out to you. “Landscape architects seek to raise awareness of the climate and biodiversity emergencies, as well as the urgent need for tangible actions we take on behalf of clients and industry partners. They seek to establish climate and biodiversity mitigation, adaptation and resilience principles as key measures of their profession”, and so on and so forth. That is a statement of intent. Your intent can be as high or low depending on the bar you set for yourself. You police it and you raise it if you think it is not high enough, or reduce it if you think it is too high and not having the desired impact.
LCW: Let me explain how we interpret it in Taiwan. In terms of, say, biodiversity, you cannot plant a forest in an urban project, but maybe you can consider how we rehabilitate the environment and create habitat for flora and fauna. In suburban areas, we try to keep the trees as much as possible. There is one project that we call the ‘high heels project’ because it touches the Earth lightly, sitting on stilts. These are the types of strategy that we bring to the table.
I am quite disturbed by extremists criticising designers. Maybe they have done 10 things and you look at the one thing they did wrong. I think it is unfair to criticise that one thing.
NK: I sense a latent tension here between the architect as activist versus the architect as pragmatist. The argument for mitigation is a pragmatic one: you have a project; how do you make it better? My question to the pragmatist is, would you work on, say, an oil refinery and make an argument that it will be a more sustainable refinery? HR: About 25 years ago, we would have said, “let’s optimise”. The oil refinery that I will design will have 20 per cent less carbon footprint. Today, we are in an emergency. We are off the charts now. The answer has got to be “no”. But we each have our own answers for each declaration, each country. This is not coming from a statutory body, this is self-made.
SH: This is a dilemma. Every project that we have been doing in my firm is already 30 per cent better than the average. But we are also designing the Malaysian pavilion at the Expo 2020 Dubai, where we know that expo buildings have a short lifespan.
HR: Unless one does it the way your firm and ours are doing the Malaysian pavilion at the upcoming Expo. SH: A net zero carbon building that can be reused…
FUTURARC 13
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