Abstract

This presentation comprises three main parts. In the first part, I introduce the overall problematic of my research. Green-wrapping has come to be a problem in the design of public architecture and the city today. In addition, promises of eco-efficiency in environmental buildings are not always met once people inhabit the buildings. My research program aims to better understand how the use of environmental tools/guidelines/grids/certifications have impacted contemporary architectural practices and the overall quality of the built environment in the city. Have these tools helped bridge (or enlarge) the gap between culture and nature for our built environment?

In the second part, I present the research findings from two different projects. Today, architects and designers are increasingly caught between a will to protect the planet through environmental management tools, and their expectations for innovation and overall excellence in design for the built environment. They come into an environmental design project from many different entry points resulting in very different constructive, expressive and rhetorical qualities. This second part will describe the methodologies for both these research projects and present some of their findings.

The last part will focus on a research platform that aims to use urban public spaces as points of junction between academic knowledge regarding environmental architecture and urban living and community action. Architecture has a latent capacity to unify abstract ideas and conceptual structures to the concrete situations of everyday life (Vesely, 2005). This research initiative aims to use the capacity of architecture in the design of public spaces with the intent that it can help heighten community knowledge and action about sustainability.

In summary, the focus of this presentation is on environmental architecture and public spaces. It will focus specifically on three main aspects:

- Introduce a certain level of criticality of ongoing methods of environmental architecture
- Introduce a methodology that distances itself from eco-performance and optimization based methods to better grasp how deeply architecture is capturing its site and program within its geographic, climatic, and social environment
- Introduce a research platform that aims to use public spaces as junction points between academic knowledge and community action