NBS | Sustainability: Building on Copenhagen

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Building on Copenhagen

by Brian Edwards

For architects the politics of Climate Change can seem remote and meaningless. However, the switch from a carbon to solar economy which was signalled at Copenhagen's recent Climate Conference (COP15) will affect how we design and engineer buildings in the future. The fuel of the 21st century will be the sun and even if agreements at Copenhagen were less extensive than planned, the messages are clear. What the conference achieved was agreement over a set of guiding principles about fossil fuels, carbon emissions and third world development. Whatever its cause and degree of irreversibility, global temperature rise will impact deeply upon the architecture of the future.

There are two actions which the European Environment Agency (a branch of the EU) has been actively promoting. The first is called 'mitigation' – how to limit damage. The second is 'adaptation' – how to change the world to suit the new global climate. Architects contribute to both. Through good design they mitigate environmental impacts, especially those on the global climate, and they spend a great deal of effort adapting existing buildings for greater fuel efficiency. But adaptation is a broader concept in climate terms. It means changing how we design and construct buildings, how best to restructure our cities to deal with sea level rise, and how we utilize solar and wind technologies. The questions raised by Copenhagen is whether architects have themselves adapted enough to the new realities of climate change and whether world leaders in the future will print money to save the climate just as they have done to save the banks.

Professor Brian Edwards teaches sustainability at the School of Architecture, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen and is a corresponding member of the RIBA Sustainable Futures Group. He is also the author of Rough Guide to Sustainability, now running to a just-published third edition and available from RIBA Bookshops. It explores the issues of mitigation and adaptation and sets out the ethical, professional and legislative basis for good environmental design. Already translated into Spanish and Portuguese, and with the possibility of a Chinese edition pending, Rough Guide is gathering international kudos as the simple practice handbook on architecture and sustainability.