The Rotterdam based design team STAR strategies + architecture has shared with us their recent project, O’ Mighty Green, a critical piece about Green – washing and especially about the abuse of “Green” in architecture. Additional images and text can be seen after the break.
Sustainability currently shares many qualities with God; supreme concept, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient; creator and judge, protector, and (…) savior of the universe and the humanity. And, like God, it has millions of believers. Humans are relatively simpleminded and suspicious and need evidence before belief can become conviction, Green has come to represent sustainability; has become its incarnation in the human world. But sustainability, like God, might not have a form, nor a color…
1. Emancipation
In a desperate attempt to give shape to an all-encompassing ideology the Green proves to work as the quickest and easiest representation of sustainability. The Green is the only symbol able to keep pace with today’s lack of patience and hunger for images; a Lady Gaga-Sustainability: effective, noticeable, creative, sensationalist. In a persistent effort to become the allegory of Sustainability, Green has been emancipated as its caricature.
2. Function
If the Iconic buildings simply needed to be iconic, the Green buildings simply need to be green. Green as a function. Green allows sustainability to be bought per m2, or to be painted on, or glued on. Sustainability is a Photoshop filter in CS6: Ctrl+Green.
3. Style
Modernism, Postmodernism, Deconstructivism… We have now definitely entered Sustainabilism. Unlike in previous movements every architect can be a Sustainabilist: whether avant-garde, commercial, young, established… It can be even combined with other styles: Eco-Deconstructivism … Architectural magazines and commercial brochures found a common language: the Green. Green is also the point on which the architect, the client, the developer, the politician, and the user agree. For the first time ever we have a genuine International Style.
- Green buildings can be Ducks or Decorated sheds, and there are some interesting cases of being both at the same time: the Decorated Ducks.
- Green should be added as the sixth principle to Le Corbusier’s five points, and as the fourth quality to Vitruvius’ triad: Venustas, Utilitas, Firmitas and Sustinebilitas
- The built … product of Sustainability is not sustainable architecture but Green. Green is what remains after Sustainability has run its course or, more precisely, what coagulates while Sustainability is in progress, its fallout… *Taken from Junkspace by R. Koolhaas
- Green is the new Black.
4. Religion
- Green works as faith. Saint Green will watch over the sustainable architects, and will guide them in the Green direction.
- Green works as confession. The guiltier we feel, the greener we try. The green-looking is usually indirectly proportional to its sustainability achievements. Green has the capacity of reducing all that matters to one single problem, and one single solution: Green.
- Green is double-miraculous. As if trying to heal cancer with aspirins, Green is the phenomenal formula that turns sustainable everything that it touches. It can also hide graceless designs. Ugly Green buildings are more readily accepted than ugly buildings.
5. Ambiguity
But the Green also hides a perverse dimension… As in a David Lynch movie; everything appears to be calm and harmonious but there is something disturbing… rotting… The Green is the common lie, the secret consensus, the perfect crime; everybody knows that it cannot be that good, that it cannot be that easy, but why bother? It sells, and there is enough Green for everybody.
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- Sustainable Cenotaph for Isaac Newton – Boullée, 1784: © STAR strategies + architecture, 2011
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- Sustainable Concentration Camp Auschwitz I, 1940: © STAR strategies + architecture, 2011
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- Environmentally Friendly Nuclear Power Plant, Dukovany: © STAR strategies + architecture, 2011
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- Berlin Eco-Wall, 1989: © STAR strategies + architecture, 2011
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- Eco-friendly Villa Savoya, Poissy – Le Corbusier, 1929: © STAR strategies + architecture, 2011
this article is quite poignant even if a bit sarcastic. I do hope this gets circulation outside architecture spheres too.
“Sustainability is a Photoshop filter in CS6: Ctrl+Green.”
Could have not said it better myself. Great essay/project.
brilliant.
“Green works as confession. The guiltier we feel, the greener we try”
Quick! Somebody call an Imam!
An excellent satire!
No, but I do agree. That they have made some very good points.
That in this century architects, politicians, people in general agree that “green” architecture is the ideal architecture. Although it is our role to define green. _ I like the Lady Gaga Green_ if you can’t see it, it’s not there. I have been a huge fan of the “clean coal” campaign (they have some great ads on youTube)_ a great quote “energy comes from the walls”.
I think this is interesting, that ignorance or misinterpretation of what exists happens because we cannot see it. Our generation of architects has to find a way to define green and sustainability in a way that is legible, relevant, and tangible. This is truly difficult because more often than not, Gaga Green sells WAY better than functional green.
Brilliant!
I do hope more comes out of this.
Green is Great and LEED is his prophet..
This article hits the bull’s eye!
Just listen to LEED consultants or leaders in the “green movement” speak. They talk in an apostle like jargon that, besides religion, can only be compared to corporate pablum. As an architect, it annoys me that LEED certification rivals licensing in cost and the # of tests, but is basically a test in memorizing a book outlining clerical protocol. And the continuing education for LEED is almost as stringent as for your license. It has created a job niche of less qualified professionals charging absurd rates for paper pushing and gaming a flawed incentive.
There is no real satire in this article, it’s just a normative rant.
http://www.urbanarbolismo.es/blog/?p=1612&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+urbanarbolismo%2FfJGG+%28Urbanarbolismo%29
resemblance???
This is cheap propaganda, and the goal has been achieved- she got attention. The concentration camp image is nothing but provocation. I would appreciate it if she would actually give meaning to her rage and rant. The irony is that she attack (according her opinion) the superficial use of green, with superficial text.
This is totally pointless. Is this an eco-joke? Sad that archdaily gives attention to such a cheap “projects”.
Superficial, unhelpful, as unprovocative as the green-washing dribble that proliferates the media, a cynical view on a current and valid dilemma, does not add to the debate in a helpful way, coldly criticizing a generation of individuals/ organizations for trying to promote and shift a way of building/thinking is not the way to spark positive feedback for the point you are trying to make,It’s simply a way to get a bunch of simple web-ready people to ad to a long feed of chatty posts…
“green” architecture is it architecture or just a color !