| Up to 50% of our collective carbon output can be attributed to the way we construct our buildings and design our communities. By bringing thoughtfulness (forward thinking combined with wisdom) back into our modern lives, we can design buildings that use only non toxic and sustainable resources, provide energy to either give to the grid, or stop draining the grid, and nurture nature as well as ourselves.
In May of 2006, The RIBA-USA California Chapter initiated “Building A Sustainable World: Life in the Balance” an open international competition to develop concepts for a maximum capacity sustainable community or an urban subdivision to address shifts in global climate that have been so vividly demonstrated by increasing numbers of flooding and drought catastrophies. The community must be “off the grid”, in other words as autonomous and self sustaining as possible. And, beyond this, participants were invited to propose ways of making the community a positive contributor to the natural ecology. Alternative energy solutions needed to be fully researched and integrated to identify advantages and to be realistic about risks and disadvantages (for example BioFuels are not a good long term fix to provide global energy). The competition premise is that the sustainable community should start to reverse environmental damage not add to it. The community can include new industries, which must be clean and considerate to the quality of life for future generations. We want to create healthy, vibrant, non-toxic communities with a positive relationship, respect and regard for nature and our natural resources. At the close of registration December 31, 2006 The RIBA-USA received 65 registrations from 18 different countries encompassing over 200 people working as either individuals or in teams. This web site is dedicated to the caring souls who worked so hard to demonstrate to us that we can live in harmony with nature and how to do it, those that already practice truly sustainable design, and those that will change their lives from this moment on by only building a sustainable world!
Charles Qin and Angyla Wang, China National Enterprises, Association for Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, The Ministry of Commerce, PR China - for representing the competition in Asia and doing a wonderful job of raising consciousness regarding our collective global crisis in this region. http://www.partyapartyb.com/main/home/main.php AUTODESK, INC for their generous awards and prizes. Autodesk also underwrote “Design E2” The Economies of being environmentally conscious. A great documentary for understanding the vitality of the environment through eco-friendly architecture hosted by Brad Pitt. http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=9484418 The American Institute of Architects for their participation with us. Thank you AIA! http://www.aia.org/ Delta Faucet http://www.deltafaucet.com PacWind http://pacwind.net/ SolCool http://solcool.net/
In years to come humankind will look back with bemusement at the current times and remember how close we came to exhausting the earth's capacity to support civilisation. Living in balance with the natural world will have become as inevitable as language, the law or making. Perhaps people will remember who, in their own ways, however small, helped find the tools to achieve this balance in sustaining civilisation. Few people today could be as well placed as Architects to be amongst the finders of the new tools we need - tools for designing and building but also for thinking and communicating. The RIBA-USA California Chapter programme "Building A Sustainable World: Life in the Balance" with its inspiring combination of practicality and ambition shows what can be done RIGHT NOW. Sunand Prasad, August 2007
The competition reached its final stage in June when we exhibited all of the submitted works at the Architecture + Design Museum in Los Angeles as part of a 3 day symposium including the final judging.
This was a unique competition in every important respect - a "first" in terms of actually sponsoring all twelve finalists to visit the US and present their work live in front of the Competition's judges. This hugely successful international collaboration is also a "first" in bringing RIBA-USA and AIA together to address a common global issue. It is above all a "first" because nowhere else is it possible to view so diverse a group of solutions to the problem of Climate Change. I urge you to review all the entries exhibited below. Access to review all the entries is part of our continuing collaboration to bring this important work to global attention. RK Stewart, August 2007 |
