TINTECTUR ACnITECTUN ATER A JenENY TL Architecture and construction are a massive contributor to carbon emissions. And while the profession makes the right sounds sustainability, zero carbon, LEED ~ is it doing enough? Jeremy Till, architect, writer, and head of Central Saint Martins, takes a ing at those virtue-signalling architects “Who trumpet their environmental credentials while continuing to build airports. Instead, Till argues, tackling the climate emergency will require a fundamental restructuring of the profession, the seeds of which he sees in the empathetic and critical work of his students.thas been a conflicted few weeks for me, architecture, and the climate emergency. First, Sarah and I have just finished ‘8 major retrofit of our house, doing all the things we wished We could have done when we built, and also preparing It for ur older age. When wa conceived the house 26 years ag0, sustaineble design was in its infancy. The kit available Back then (boilers, solar things, whole house ventilation and so on) \was inerecby primitive in relation to today’s technology, 0, we have upgraded all that. But the main filing ofthe houst despite it being widely feted as sustainable pioneer = wes its artightness, or rather lack of i. We designed it when se0led box wes not the norm in environmental design, before Pessivhaus was a widely known term. Now our environmental enginoors brought along a wind machine, sucking ait out and blowing it in. We held our hands up against the gusts of ar ‘coming in and out, and looked at each other in despair. The retrofit has therefore involved ripping materials out nd taping Lup all th joints. It fests very fragile to confront the future ravages ofthe climats emergency with lengths of sticky tape, however oxpensive it might be. ‘At the same time that our project was underway, all the architects who had won the Stirling Prize dectared a climate ‘emergency. This fel like @ powerful move of solidarity and Potential action. However, the whole initiative quickly unraveled ‘as one after another of these famous architects announced ‘major new airport projects in each case wrapping 2 major {engine of carbon production in a soft eco-wrapping, First, Grimshew's Heathrow Terminal Fiva declared itself to be ‘car bon neutral in an astonishing sleight of ruth. Zaha Hadid Architects’ Sycney Alrport did not match this false hubs, ‘merely saying that they wil integrate ‘extensive use of daylight, Climate 0 ventilation and water recycling’ as part of ther ‘sustain ;pproach. Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia, Foster + Partners he sustainabily stakes by announcing that a new resort jing to be “eco-friendly. Asif For an ‘ltr-luxury tourist, \ination’, a car crash of enviconmental rights? As | shouted nthe phone toa bemused journalist the ther day: ‘build \hoir bloody aiportsifthey must, but then don’t virtue signal Thy can't ave i both ways. Finally, went to a lecture by the revered architectural Historian, Kenneth Frampton. He opened with strong state \s about capitalism, commodification and climate, and then "his Seminal essay on critical regionalism) he finds resist ico fo these conditions in a very particular strain of archi |e: poetic tectonics, Semper’ earthworks and roofworks, \Noughtful engagement with context. At the end he got all, "standing ovation, The audience had luxuriated in the that the continuation ofa stylised canon of architecture J0ing to be enough to resist the environmental, politicel and nomic ruptures that we face. The reality is thet this version ‘hitecture represents too comfortable an avoidance of the \ of challenges wa fae, These are but three small examples ofthe conflicted ‘lure of architecture's engagement with the climete emer von. First, the fragility of design, sticking tape over much * societal cracks. Second, the duplicity of phony words clarations which deny the reality ofthe environmental Third, the reteat from engaging with extarnal issues, \o the perceived sefety of internalised values, n all, thore 1 clinging to the emollsnes of the tarmsustainabiliy in iace ofa crisis that confronts the very besis ofthe word ‘annot sustain our current modes of consumption and wth, and 30 to continue to use the word ‘sustainebilty’ ds out false promise. In a way thesa resctions are under. ndable, but they are not acceptable, They are understands ble because the climate and biodiversity emergencies demand ‘omic change, and this includes architacture and its value ‘ems, The current approaches (technical, ethical and cul ral) are simply not capable of effecting the change required, «430 tend to divert from it. But this is not acceptable, for the am Architects After Architecturesimple reason that the emergencies are just that, and we all eed to enact radical action as both citizens and experts To do this, we need to break architecture's attraction to certain systems and values, 'tis not surprising thatthe twentieth cantury was @ {olden era for architecture, twas an era driven by the twinned Paredigms of progress and growth, Progress i signsled by, growth, and when one speaks of progress one assumes growth As the extractive industry per excellence, architecture woe the perfect vehicle forthe announcement of growth turning ‘anonymous earth into pillars of constructed matter These wore then wrapped in various sheens to demonstrate progress an endless advance of styl, form, aesthetics and tachniauee that became evar mors hysterical asthe old century turnad, {o the new. We should have called out tho architectural wathing| ofthis period for what it was -the spatialisation of an out of Control capitalism ~ but too much money wae being mode, 4nd the pictures were too good. Dezoen boomed. ‘The problem is that the endless production of buildings is also tied to al the traits that have led tothe climate ames. {eney:# reliance on a technocratic regime fuelled by the cor: bon state; extraction of raw materials and fossil fuels: growing {eonsumption; dependency on the orthodoxies of nesliberelin To say that architecture is complicit in the climate emergoney 's not to apportion blame, itis statement of fact. What hon Pens, then, to architecture when wa think seriously about the Systemic chango thatthe climate emergency demands? Con architecture in its current guise be ether acceptable or viable? W architecture i so firmly identified with images of progroce and growth, what happens wien those concitions are no longed tolerable? And what happens to the identity ofthe archraece when the continuing production of buildings is questioned? How might we reframe our value to be knowledge, rather than the production of novelty? "ask these questions not because | have the answers, but because the climate crisis fundamentally disrupts the Value system, and with tthe cultures and identiten, on Which architecture has thus far been founded. The emergency ‘demands we come to provisional answers, and soor, Climate he condition of architecture after architecture, previous assumptions and operations are replaced ones. This might sound like @ negative scenerio. the Wing of a discipline - but | suggest otherwise. Of course, ings will be built inthe future, and we noed to take asure to ensure that they are ae carbon reducing, ile; this should be the primary value stem through ony new architecture is produced and judged. Beyond limate emergency presents new opportunities polio agents, architects, spatial activists, whatever tall become, As Rebecca Solnit notes ‘nsige the mergeney is emerge; from an emergency new things ‘orth, The old certainties are crumbling fas, but dane Possibilities are sistors’” The danger of the crisis ined with potential. f the climate emergency demends nie change to our economies, values, betaviours and \onship to nen-humans, then al of these changes bring im new spatiaitss, end these need to be co-designed ert citizens and eitizen experts Unfortunately, much of what passes as architec ‘engagement with alternative futures relies on notions 2g0s of utopian technologies: floating islands, hydro ic facades, sell-lowering desert cites and soon, These aches align with the techno-boosterish endof the ecology ‘sum, those who persuade us that the solution lis some inthe future through technological intervontion, and "meantime it ean be business as usual. Too often these ‘ulations repeat the mistake that eraated the emergency, first place, namely an unfettered command of nature, \sing humans from the world we are part of. They suggest ons, but the climate emergency is not a prcblem that can ved, itis @ predicament that we have to male best sense of sight, buildings are not solutions but the new architecture "moans of making spatial sense ofthe new socttal conditions will emerge. To live in the Anthropocene, the geological which the effects of the emergency are unfolding, needs vt in sensibility from humans a8 distanced beings n the ult of freedom end progress to humans embeded in, and, ;ponsible for, @ non-human world of interconnected systerns Architects Aer ArchitectureTho scale and complenity of the climete amergoney is such Finally, and perhaps most importantly isthe central that assumptions of certainty and prescription ae Yes asign and he ow architecture ta eevee ee wanting, While itis certain that wr are facing cima change "ungrounded or merely specusive ey and accompanying ecological crise, the sosial sed yrence hat materiaians and sptiaises revised soil conditions Implication are much ess clear Isha thatthe contincere tionships. The creative acts hare a form of storytling, of creative work has akey role to play i'onefollons hen alternative narratives might be moaned: Tee tion of contingency asthe fact that things could be thera voney demands thet we dovewer nam ovo re than they are, Ws andthe now architects attr architects can bho Seconds the condition of empathy that should fe nvisioning them, alwaysin partoretirar ars, atthe hear of all design. Creative work mover ervoroec an & Sociol vacuum: its always located In elation to omer tov human (users, viewers, ertipens, cizens sustontee) on ‘non-human Ibiosystoms, sites, elimetic conctions), Ths aks thatthe creative act is imbued with empathy becca without that empathetic engagement the creative wort becomes an abstraction removed from the wordy corltions invshich it will eventualy be located. This empathy orenae beyond the human to the non-human, meaning we shel see the word, netur, atmospheres, animale, goology,oennee Connected living agents, and s0 treet them awit ogeeeent empathy. Creative practice i exemploryinundarsasaine connections, operating iteratively and iateraly whore te Sciontie method, for example, is more linear ae deca way The creative citzentexper ith well poced to thiok tong and at on the networks of tha climate amorgocen Third isthe combination of hope and erly that this generation of designers have, The erate sera ‘of ransformation taking a chunko! the word and chong forthe better. Why would they ever stout tomate tos or {worse place?) Confronted with the devastating evden of ‘timate change and ecological collapse, itis al toe eeey bo Baralysed. Distribute the pockets of hope al the noxtacoor no and tansformatve acts follom. This hope inet rarea oe Strcted land so doomed to fale) but feunved on cokenity Hie which excavaes the construction of current conditions sn sey Te Neaton bower structures inorder to understand the way thine eve eee Sel Se turned outthe way they have and then use create arte carvan henoeraes to move forwards in transformative manner ther doce ng 8 ‘2v0id past failings or systems of power vont 2016 3 climate Architects Ater Architecture