We are not the first or last generations of architects to deal with the high performance requirements of our day. Consider the castles that resisted mass assault and cannon fire, the palaces and cathedrals that harvested daylight with such craft, the great opera houses that resonated like fine instruments, the great step wells that stored so much accessible water, or the great aqueducts and conduits that functioned for centuries. These were all designed and built to last forever, so to speak. The great investments often paid dividends to societies for centuries. In high contrast, most of what architects have been asked to design the last few hundred years was not expected to last more than a generation or so. In sync with this outlook futurists often created visions of what was to come as completely new with no evidence of older construction or development patterns. Though this vision of the future has occasionally been replaced the last few decades with either future life among the ruins of what our cities look like today or shown as a more probable future that embraces both old and new (much the way we live today) such as was illustrated in the film “Minority Report”.
As the true costs of fossil fuel access and burn-through become even more apparent to investors and taxpayers and we begin to really grasp the incredibly high value of the energy embodied in what we have built already, we are likely to realize that we are not going to replace much of the patterns of settlement or the buildings we design for many lifetimes. The winding suburban roads and cul-de-sacs, the commercial strips and malls, the estimated 5,000 square miles (around the size of Connecticut) of parking lots of roughly 500 million parking spaces (around two for every car), and the countless miles of buried utilities (some hundreds of feet deep) all have great economic value and represent staggering levels of embodied energy. While we may turn over large amounts of paving to arable land or carbon sinks as mass transit and bicycles replace cars, the inventiveness of retrofitting and repurposing buildings to continue profiting from the embodied energy and stranded capital will likely challenge our whole industry to think outside the box more often than not. Architects with a solid foundation in building science understanding and the skill to design using that knowledge will be the most effective source of ideas as these future chapters in our story unfold.
While the current measure of high performing buildings will surely continue to rise, the craft and creativity to profit from embodied energy is likely to become a central measure of project success sooner than we might think. When we do plan new sites and development we would be wise to ask ourselves what this new development could become far after the initial use. Are our ideas durable and malleable or will they be written off far too soon as short sighted. Popular culture marvels at the long haul investors who quietly and careful build their immense fortunes. Likewise, the designs we deliver today can also pay dividends for generations.