Sustainability’s Image Problem [electronic resource].

Library Stack 2019

Open access content

The discourse of sustainability in architecture is often associated with eco-capitalism: the theory and practice of a free-market economy in which natural resources are regarded as capital. Since profits are partially dependent on environmental protection, nature is treated as a commodity that needs to be restored after it is exploited for economic growth. This results in a looped accounting cycle of checks and balances… Likewise, the economic incentives for using “green technology” to create new markets rarely consider how these competitive, profit-driven scenarios will necessitate (new) forms of social mistreatment in order to flourish. Herein lies the crux of the problem not only with “green architecture,” but the cognitive dissonance of architecture’s sustainability discourse as a whole: sustainability is interested, by definition, in maintaining the status quo. Its ineffectuality as a discourse and ethics is due to its commitment to continuing an economic paradigm that must exploit in order to function well…
https://www.librarystack.org/sustainabilitys-image-problem/?ref=unknown

Architectural criticism
Space (Architecture)
Capital movements
Climatic changes
Ecology
Sustainable development

Text

Esther Choi
Bryce Wilner