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Written by Christopher Hawthorne
However slowly, America is becoming a recycling culture. We recognize the need, in an age of dwindling natural resources, to use things again or to repurpose them whenever and wherever possible. In architecture, though, sustainability is not only a matter of using salvaged floorboards. It also has to do with taking simple, affordable materials and employing them in ingenious ways.
As architect Stephen Kanner points out, affordable housing is often built to a punishingly low budget, with designers forced to use the cheapest possible materials. That means certain recycled products are simply not a possibility, since their initial cost is often higher than more traditionally sourced building materials. But even stucco and cement can be sustainable, if they are designed to last. The most important criterion for greenness, after all, is how long a building stays with us. If we put it up fancy sustainable houses and apartments that are knocked down in a decade or two to make way for something even fancier, it will be tough to argue that they were ever green to begin with.
Increasingly, architects and planners are realizing that the ethic of reuse should be broadened to include not just the specific materials that make up a building but also an urban scale. Saving older buildings from the wrecking ball, and thinking about how those buildings connect to one another, are among the greenest steps a community can take.
As Richard Moe, the president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, points out, "It takes approximately 65 years for a green, energy-efficient new office building to recover the energy lost in demolishing an existing building. And let’s face it: Most new buildings aren’t designed to last anywhere near 65 years. ... It all comes down to this simple fact: We can’t build our way out of the global warming crisis. We have to conserve our way out. That means we have to make better, wiser use of what we’ve already built. ... The bottom line is that the greenest building is one that already exists."
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