cheap womens down vestI first learned about Steve Mouzon in 2008; I was involved in the local architectural preservation movement, but could never quite explain why the buildings we were fighting to save were so important, particularly to environmentalists and the green building movement. Reading Mouzon was a slap-to-the-head that changed the way I thought and talked about preservation; when I became President of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario in 2010 I used it in lectures across the Province and you could just see lights going on as people clicked into it.
It also changed the way I think about sustainable design and green building; why the new buildings that I like the most operate like old buildings, short on gizmo green and long on natural systems. (Terry Thomas Building, see)
Kaid Benfield has also profoundly influenced my thinking and my writing, with his position that The Greenest Building is the one that’s in the right context. It is a position that has been reinforced by study after study in the last few years: that where you live and work matters more than what you live in; that location matters.
In what possible definition of sustainability can a place fit if it is not literally sustained? In order to sustain something, we need to care. And we don t have enough people who will care just because the consumption or pollution numbers argue that they should. We are so much better positioned if they, and we, can also do so out of love.
My long suffering wife will be the first to attest that I am not an overly emotional person; you can probably guess what she got for Valentines day. I also used to be like Steve’s modernist professional colleagues, and would ” recoil at a term so unprofessional as “lovable.”" But I want to send a belated Valentine out to Steve, who has taught me so much about how to love buildings, and to Kaid, who has taught me so much about how to love places.Random Posts
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