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ALBION DISTRICT LIBRARY BY PERKINS + WILL IS A 2018 COTE TOP TEN RECIPIENT. IMAGE: DOUBLESPACE PHOTOGRAPHY

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The Committee on the Environment (COTE®) is an AIA Knowledge Community working for architects, allied professionals, and the public to achieve climate action and climate justice through design. We believe that design excellence is the foundation of a healthy, sustainable, and equitable future. Our work promotes design strategies that empower all AIA members to realize the best social and environmental outcomes with the clients and the communities they serve.

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Our future is decided right now

  • 1.  Our future is decided right now

    Posted 03-23-2020 08:51 AM

    Peaking on the other side of the tunnel? 

    Behave in such a way that a reasonable generalization of your action to a universal rule will lead to a benefit to a generic person under this universal rule. Always treat others as ends and not means. (Immanuel Kant, the Categorical Imperative)
    The world shuts down

    The calculated shut down of the economy in favor of human life is a choice most countries have made by now. This in itself is is a unique achievement of civilization over the barbarism that would ensue with any other choice. Just when many believed that capitalism had gone off the rails and greed would know no bounds at all, leaders across the world made decisions that feel like a direct application of Kant's categorical imperative, an ethical milestone in human history. This in itself could be a moment to celebrate, except the decisions may have come too late to avert a global shake up of entirely new dimensions.
    Our future will be decided right now.
    What's next?

    Even experts don't dare any predictions on how long this crisis would go on, not even on how it would end. In a time when calculations can be made so accurate that a rocket land on its narrow end on a barge in the Pacific this level of global uncertainty is highly alarming. Yet, looking ahead is essential, especially in a highly unpredictable situation, as illogical as this may sound. Our future will be decided right now. After it has become abundantly clear that almost no country was prepared for an event that had been predicted by experts as less a matter of if but of when, it is absolutely necessary to prepare for what may come even if the scenarios may look entirely surreal.  Some compare our situation to a marathon where we are at mile 2 trying to find the right speed to make it. I would add, a marathon of which the final length of the run is not known and one for which we never practiced. Still, we have to plan for the journey back home.
    Some compare our situation to a marathon where we are at mile 2 trying to find the right speed to make it. I would add, a marathon of which the final length of the run is not known and one for which we never practiced. 
    Unprepared as most countries were, it took too much time for leaders to fall in line, even after early cases in Iran and Italy showed the trajectory of poor preparation. By now, though, the consensus on how to behave in this phase is almost frightening for its lack of deviation. Even renegades such as Boris Johnson and the US President are now largely singing from the same sheet.
    With being in lockstep now for the initial reaction, it is time to plan for the next phases, even though no playbook exists 

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    [Klaus] Philipsen FAIA
    Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
    Baltimore MD
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