Citizenship: an ethic in which one voluntarily takes responsibility for, and action on behalf of, one’s community

―Morton Winston

I need your help.I have some problems.

They stem from architecture and urban planning.

Their solutions will have to come from all of us.

If average global temperatures rise by 4-7 ˚F in the next hundred years:

• Sea levels will rise by 12-35”, displacing hundreds of millions worldwide and increasing the salinization of major river systems

• The warmer water means that tropical storms will extend further away from the equator

• Continental interior zones will be drier, making deserts more severe and more widespread

How do we design for a billion climate refugees?

Each year, the building I work in consumes:

•7,500,000,000 BTU of source energy (three rail hoppers of coal)

•1,100,000 gallons of fresh water

•three tons of US mail

•100,000 square feet of cardboard

•70 computers

•1,500 pizzas

What do we do with all that waste?

…from ONE BUILDING!

That building, by the way, is obsolete.

•A contemporary building would use a third of the energy of my 1965 building.•Building it would provide $8,000,000 in construction wages alone

But building it would consume:•9,000 cubic yards of concrete (maybe from Massachusetts, maybe from Korea)•15 miles of copper wire (probably from Chile)•1,400 tons of steel rebar (from China or Russia)

All of which have shipping, mining, labor and health costs

How do we maximize environmental benefit when we still don’t understand all of the inputs?

When an Aquafina bottle has finished its useful life, we can recycle it.

When a building has finished its useful life, we crush it and send it to a landfill.

Can we make buildings dis-assemblable…

and thus recyclable?

When I buy a $30 toaster, I get a twelve-page instruction manual in four languages.

When I buy a $30,000,000 building, I don’t.

What should go into a building owner’s manual?

Who should get a copy?

American suburbs were built for 1950s conditions:

• Cheap fuel and cheap cars

• An army of stay-at-home mothers

• Huge government investment in infrastructure

• Huge government housing subsidies

• Development policies that devoured farm and wild lands

Those conditions no longer exist.

Can we intensify existing suburban forms?

How do you “infill” wide roads, acres of parking, and vast (and expedient) single-story buildings?

City Peak population

2010 population

Change

Detroit 1,849,600 713,800 -61.2%

Saginaw 98,300 55,200 -43.8%

Flint 196,000 111,500 -43.1%

Youngstown 168,300 72,400 -57.2%

Toledo 383,800 316,200 -17.6%

Gary 178,300 80,300 -55.0%

The Abandonment of Industrial America

These cities have smaller and poorer populations, which means their tax bases are shot… but the same amount of roads to pave and plow, sewers and water mains to maintain, land area to protect with police and fire service.

Can we physically shrink an existing city?

Or evacuate it altogether?

At any given moment, about 3,500,000 Americans, about 1% of our population, are homeless, temporarily or permanently.

In 2011, 7,500,000 American houses and 2,000,000 commercial buildings were vacant or abandoned.

Is squatting a civil right?

Capital is global.Design theory is global.Design firms are global.Construction practices are global.Design software is global.The workforce is global.

Buildings are local. They have fixed locations.

Does the local matter?

Should a building in Dubai be different than a building in Dubuque?

If so, on what terms?

With the advent of micro- and nano-technology and high-volume data storage, sensors and building management systems have negligible cost. We can measure:

• Temperatures • Fluid and air flow rates• Fluid and air pressure• Hours of mechanical system operation• Number of door cycles• RFID and swipe-card motion trackers• Keystroke monitors

If you could put a hundred thousand sensors into a building, what would you want to measure?

And what would you do with that information?

The average metropolitan dweller is photographed or filmed about 300 times a day:

• On the street

• In the park

• In the store

• On the job

• On transportation

What are the design goals for privacy?

To protect it?

Or to eliminate it?

There is not a single person in this room whose knowledge is not needed to help us address these problems.

There is not a single person in this room whose knowledge is not needed to help us address these problems.

There is not a single person in this room who won’t be affected by how we try to resolve them.

And our students?

And their students?

That’s what we’re facing.

We cannot solve these problems without chemists.

We cannot solve these problems without biologists.

We cannot solve these problems without mathematicians.

We cannot solve these problems without physicists.

We cannot solve these problems without geologists.

We cannot solve these problems without philosophers.

We cannot solve these problems without demographers.

We cannot solve these problems without poets.

We cannot solve these problems without computer scientists.

We cannot solve these problems without engineers .

We cannot solve these problems without lawyers.

We cannot solve these problems without anthropologists.

We cannot solve these problems without sculptors.

We cannot solve these problems without teachers.

We cannot solve these problems without economists.

We cannot solve these problems without psychologists.

We cannot solve these problems without nurses.

We cannot solve these problems without you.

Research questions can reside within a discipline.

The world’s problems do

not.

Interdisciplinarity is not an option.

Interdisciplinarity is not an option.

It is a mandate.

Herb ChildressDean of Research and Assessment

Boston Architectural College

320 Newbury StreetBoston MA 02115

617-851-8293herb.childress@the-bac.edu