The only ecological architecture is the one that is not built. The one that doesn’t spend The one that does not waste scarce resources. (And after that, the one that builds on ruins or on what was built). The rest is lying. Because architecture produces impact and requires the investment of enormous amounts of energy to get up…
We are beings that fight against nature since ancient times. Facing its freezing cold, we invent the control of fire; against famine, agriculture. Architecture is part of that cycle of domestication of the environment. In return, the world should be better. More beautiful. The only possible consolation for the architect is not if he pollutes the least, but if he employs with real commitment the means that society puts at his disposal. There is an ethic in the architect’s work that is also linked to the awareness of resource consumption: in exchange, he must report something better than those raw resources. The whole of it must be more than the sum of bricks, steel and glass. The whole of it must improve the site that he borrows. He must return, precisely to all men, a benefit. (And I say the whole and not a particular man).
Otherwise, better not to build.
That other one, let it stay on paper. And let it be on little paper.
