I want to talk about the word sustainable, first of all, because I think we should be careful with it—and unfortunately, I couldn’t come up with something better. Words are very important… It would be an exaggeration to say that the word is dangerous, but I’ll say that in recent years it’s already become connected with a specific interpretation in architecture, one that is very different and more limited in certain ways than what was there twenty years ago or thirty years ago. When we start to use a word like this, as a kind of solution in itself, we should really pay attention to what we mean.

Anyway, I have to excuse myself before I go on, because this is my own kind of preoccupation. That’s why I invited Iñaki here. Somehow I convinced him that figuring this out is also his problem, so he organized this seminar, which I think will be productive—maybe not to find any answers, but perhaps to help us ask better questions.

– Mirko Zardini, from the introduction to the colloquium

Listen to the talks

Stan Allen and Iñaki Ábalos: Introduction

Michelle Addington: Unprecedented Collaborations

Mahadev Raman: A Quarter Century of Environmentally Conscious Design

Mark Jarzombek: The Reverse Utopianism of Sustaining Sustainability

Volker M. Welter: Sustainability—The Shangri-La of Modern Architecture?

Manuel Bauer: Integration of Sustainable Development Objectives in Buildings, the Swiss Approach

Matthias Sauerbruch: Architecture and Sustainability

Mohsen Mostafavi: Ecological Urbanism