Being inspired

The observation of nature leading to the socially refined abstractions of science is a human achievement.

However, it is what we do with those insights that matter, and our actions in turn present further environmental possibilities and ideas.

We use nature dynamically, as a source of inspiration, whilst recognising that man transforms the environment. The most imaginative contemporary architectural and engineering practices are ecologically minded, but could they do better? Does it help to think about sustainability when building human environments, or does a deference to nature limit creativity?

There are rumoured to be well over 200 definitions of Sustainable Development, many of them self-serving.

The notion is that society relies on 5 types of capital to function properly, being natural, human, social, manufactured and financial capital.

We must move beyond low energy design as a base point, to ecological or sustainable design as an holistic approach.

There is a problem with "greenwash", or the sort of misinformation that makes a mockery of sustainability. People often claim green credentials for a building with a green aesthetic.

In architectural and engineering design, yes we can sometimes do better than nature.

Nature as an inspiration is necessary but not sufficient.

Click to go to the next presentation in this session by Alex Cutler

Is everything worth building naturally precedented?

Austin Williams (chairman) (Following Brian Edwards) Next is Duncan Price, a building physicist and associate at Whitby Bird and Partners. I haven't a clue about the issues that he will address, but I think the benefits of science maybe part of it.

Duncan Price After those inspiring words from Brian, my presentation is back to basics, but I hope I can spark a bit of thinking. Rather than diving straight into the topic of being inspired, I'd like to begin by defining the problem, as all scientists do.

What is the brief? People are both prescriptive and vague about sustainability. The principles are now beginning to be understood though the realisation of these principles is slow to take place and there are many uncertainties. There are rumoured to be well over 200 definitions of Sustainable Development, many of them self-serving. Often they are filled with caveats that allow the owner to state an aspiration whilst carrying on business as usual and failing to tackle the real issues.

Forum for the Future have developed the Bruntland Commission's statement "…humanity has the ability to make development sustainable - to ensure that it meets the need of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Forum for the Future define sustainable development as "…a process which enables all people to realise their potential and improve their quality of life in ways that simultaneously protect and enhance the Earth's life-support systems."

This emphasises that sustainable development is a process not a destination and makes clear the notion of equity, in that sustainable development is about people and not just the environment. This is a vital ethical point usually missing from other definitions. Whilst we debate issues we must not forget the very real threat of climate change and the everyday reality of world poverty. Time is against us and we must all act now to make a difference.

Attitudes can get in the way of sustainable development. There is a backlash against sustainability as being too complex to analyse, so we do not bother to try. We have to demystify sustainability and begin the process of analysing and debating. What makes it complex is the fact we are trying to compare and contrast both the quantitative and the qualitative.

I'll emphasise again that at the heart of sustainability lie ethics and values. Unlike tastes, ethics and values are accountable in various ways to argument, to reasons, to experience, and to strongly held intuitions and to belief. We must ask ourselves: what are we sustaining, why and for whom? Once we are relatively confident that we understand our own ethical principles I think it becomes a little easier to unpack the concepts of sustainable development, and to form a framework for thinking and questioning.

Forum for the Future has adopted this approach in producing what they refer to as 12 features of sustainability, based on the model of sustainable capitalism. The notion is that society relies on 5 types of capital to function properly, being natural, human, social, manufactured and financial capital. Financial capital is the one that has no real value, and is just a means of accounting for the others.

The 12 features have been derived from an extensive consultation process and remain sufficiently loose in their definition as to allow room for debate and evolution as our understanding grows. I think that the important point here for us, as building professionals, is to recognise that we must move beyond low energy design as a base point, to ecological or sustainable design as an holistic approach.

We can still work within a framework of aims and objectives, with a hierarchy of priorities, and I believe that comes back to emphasising energy as a high priority. The Royal Commission argues that immediate action is required in order to produce a 60% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, and so there is still a strong emphasis on reducing energy consumption. This should continue to be addressed by architects and engineers.

There is a problem with "greenwash", or the sort of misinformation that makes a mockery of sustainability. People often claim green credentials for a building with a green aesthetic. There should be tough credentials for what is acceptable as a minimum performance. The value judgements should be explicit and be based on a consensus view of priorities, such as the urgent requirement to reduce CO2 emissions.

We have to learn from nature and we can be inspired by nature but we have to be critical about what counts as sustainable building. Taking inspiration from nature has clearly led to some great advances in human understanding, but we can often do better and we should not restrict our vision to reproducing natural systems. Certainly, we can benefit from examining the subtleties of ecosystems and recognising the complexities of our own living environments. We can learn a lot about the interdependence of systems and the importance of balancing different requirements. However, this should also remind us that the abstraction of generalities from highly evolved systems is crude and can be misleading.

What is best is completely dependent upon the context of the system and on what it is trying to achieve. The current Earth system has evolved over millions of years, constantly changing. It is a dynamic system. To say that what we see today is the best that can be achieved is to suggest that evolution stops at this point. Are we saying the tree of tomorrow is going to be no better than the tree of today? Clearly, we see just a brief moment in time, with nature in a particular state of being.

Nature is constantly changing. We know from fossil records that the number of species alive today is only a tiny fraction of the number of species present on this planet at many other times in history, and that nature, itself, has seen the eradication of countless species before now. There are winners and losers in nature and so to suggest that nature always knows best is to ignore the fact that there are both successes and failures.

Nature might get it right in its own context but we can't simply imitate it in ours and expect that we have optimised the design. The shape of a bird's wing was inspirational in the development of the airfoil wing but there is no single perfect wing. Rather, birds evolve different shaped wings to meet their own environment. Furthermore, a flapping motion is not the most efficient means for driving forwards an aeroplane. The propeller does it much better, but no muscular system has yet been developed that can mimic this motion. In architectural and engineering design, yes we can sometimes do better than nature.

Perhaps the most powerful message that we can learn from nature is that the more specialised a system, the more susceptible it is to catastrophic collapse. It is in this state of unstable equilibrium that, arguably, we find ourselves today. We must remember that the speed of our technological progress is orders of magnitude greater than the natural speed of evolution and we have to think on our feet. We are placing ourselves in situations without precedent and the way forward may not be intuitive.

I think we feel secure in deferring to nature because nature has been slow and steady compared with the rapid change our species has achieved. However, nature has also seen radical change and there is no reason to think that this will not happen again. I am not saying that we take the romanticism out of design. Inspiration is vital, especially as it brings so much energy to the work that needs to be done. However the analytical approach gives you the freedom to explore and evaluate new ideas and push forward boundaries with confidence.

For example, by understanding building science, we are able to formulate new approaches to creating environments that respect our own development and evolution. Studying nature in this way provides us with an insight into the workings of natural systems and can help us produce better designs. The anthill may be a wonderful example of natural ventilation in a desert system but applying the metaphor to building design is dangerous. Most of us do not live in deserts, are not substantially blind like ants are, and we have very different requirements.

I prefer to widen the boundaries of natural inspiration and think about our place in the overall system. Let's begin to design buildings that are truly climate-responsive, both adapting to the environment at a local level and doing their bit to maintain a favourable environment at a global scale. Be inspired by nature, and preserve what is good about it. We should be asking, "whose game is it anyway?"

I think because sustainability is an approach to life and a philosophy, there can be a tendency to think that we should not bring an analytic approach to it. There is a dissonance between hand waving and hard science, and if you do bring science into it, people think you are trying to hijack the issue. The debate is becoming polarised between architects who embrace the philosophy, if not the delivery, and at the other end of the spectrum, the tick-box approach of the quantity surveyors.

Nature as an inspiration is necessary but not sufficient. It is easy to be seduced by the idea of buildings that take their inspiration from nature. Their elegance, perhaps, and their simplicity and clarity. But in many ways, getting inspiration from nature is quite a diversion from the bigger problems that are harder to solve. Equally, do not think of the ability to analyse nature and analyse buildings as a panacea. It is but a small part of a big picture.

Some 90-95% of the development that will be with us in 30 years time has already been built. Of the remaining 5-10% of new buildings, perhaps only 5% of them are architect designed. Clearly, we are in danger of missing a trick if we don't tackle the volume house-builder, local authorities and the possibilities for refurbishing our existing stock. Having a vision is very important. High profile designers can inspire others and challenge our ways of living and working. Natural references can inspire us to respect the ecosystems in which we place new buildings. But this tiny percentage of buildings must absolutely demonstrate best practice.

Sustainability is about ethics and values and there must not be dissonance between the means and the end. And that's the end.

Austin Williams Next is Alex Cutler, a sustainable development consultant at SustainAbility Limited. She will look at the business inspired rhetoric of sustainability and why, maybe, we should buy into it.

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