School of Architecture | Graduate Architecture and Urban Design
Student: Mehmet Kaan Capar
Faculty: Sanford Kwinter, Gokhan Kodalak
AI generated collage of “Built Ecology”, Midjourney, 2022
A study of an assembled “syllabus” for a hypothetical course named “Sustainability of the Built Environment: Philosophy and Practice”. This designed course seeks to provide a powerful engagement with environmental sustainability in a manner that will combine a non-reductionist approach and a practice-based approach to sustainable design. The concept of sustainability and ecological design is unpacked by focusing on reshaping our qualitative understanding of relationship with nature, and by providing fundamental knowledge of practical sustainability.
The concept of sustainability is a challenge to traditional education by its nature and scope. For this reason, this course will seek to provide a powerful engagement with environmental sustainability in a manner that will combine a non-reductionist approach and a practice-based approach to sustainable design. The first six modules of this course will have a non-utilitarian approach to understanding the concept of sustainability. We will be focusing on reshaping our qualitative understanding of and relationship with nature. Whereas the last six modules of the course will provide fundamental knowledge of practical sustainability, focusing on technical solutions to quantitative problems. In the first part of this course, the concept of environmental sustainability will be addressed by the ideas of three different thinkers: Spinoza the philosopher, Stephen Jay Gould the evolutionary biologist, and Alexander von Humboldt the geographer. We first will use a non-reductionist approach to understanding sustainability grounded in an analogy from the systems philosophy of Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). The ecological limitations of reductionism are becoming more apparent to both the global and academic communities in the current age of globalization and large-scale anthropogenic environmental degradation (Weaver, 1948; Gattie et al. 2007). Today, Spinoza’s alternative to reductionism holds an untapped pedagogic potential in a situation where we face the consequences of lacking sustainability in almost every area of human life. Spinoza’s systems approach to parts and wholes resonates strongly with the idea of sustainability. For Humboldt, who had unconditional love for the natural world despite his assumption that its products were meant at least in part for human beings, the point was to achieve sustainable use – “a more enlightened employment of the products and forces of nature.” As applied in this course, Spinoza’s philosophy, Humboldt’s, and Gould’s ways of thinking can effectively be used as discipline-transcending facilitators for understanding the concept of sustainability. Their approaches also provide a foundation for a transdisciplinary and new curriculum that is designed to address the complexity of a world in transition. In today’s building industry, green buildings and sustainable environments have been rapidly gaining acceptance. Environmental issues including energy consumption, energy resource depletion, gas emission, and land use are driving architects and engineers to re-think conventional architectural design and construction processes, and to look to more eco-friendly practices. The second part of this course will provide fundamental knowledge of sustainable building concepts, current environmental design building rating systems (i.e., LEED), building performance and diagnostic metrics, as well as referenced standards related to sustainable design. The course will benefit greatly from a large number of best practices in the U.S. as case studies and will adopt practical research experiments in building indoor environmental quality, focusing on thermal, air, lighting, and acoustic qualities. It will also address quantitative and technical methods for passive design strategies for a zero-energy building. Besides, some of the initiatives to apply sustainability and strategies to make designs and projects greener are problematic. Sometimes, the assessment systems mentioned above and their criteria are meeting only the lowest standards. The approach of the design for sustainability should not be the most basic. This act is called greenwashing. In the second part of the lecture, sustainable features of buildings and assessment systems are also going to be criticized. It will be discussed how to combat greenwashing and how to sustain a truly sustainable approach throughout the complete design process. The practice-based second part of this course will equip students with analytical skills to develop the best green design and technology combinations depending on the environmental characteristics of a building site. In this part of the course, students will be prepared and encouraged to take the LEED Accredited Professionals/Green Associate Exam, which is rapidly becoming the standard of recognition for green building professionals.