Sam F. Miller, AIA

When I first started writing this piece I believed I was writing about architecture.  This is no surprise since I am an architect and the original ideas emerged as I contemplated how I approached design.  But as I looked deeper I saw the ideas were broadly applicable to all of human work as we create our civilization going forward. 

This inquiry is ultimately about how we answer the questions we ask regarding our relationship to the world.  An architect would call this “programming”.  This is where we seek to understand the best approach for a given design.  In a time of uncertainty, returning to these assumptions with fresh eyes reveals the opportunity to proceed down a path in harmony with this planet, our one and only home.

Indianapolis 2040: A Potential Future

It is autumn of 2040.  I am flying to Indianapolis to visit my son.  As the aircraft approaches the city, I look out over the scene below. 

It is unclear where the city begins and the country ends.  The city looks more like a forest than an area of human habitation.  As the aircraft loses altitude, I notice many roofs are literally alive.  There are wildflowers, prairie grass and small gardens in profusion.  Punctuating this riot of color is the rich blue sparkle of solar panels, their precise geometry in contrast to the fluid grace of the trees glowing in autumn’s splendor.  I also see water in the neighborhoods.  Canals stretch away toward downtown, depressed below the level of the street.  There are small boats, pedestrians and bicycles moving comfortably along them. 

We pass near Monument Circle and I think of what a pleasure it was to live here for most of my life.  The new buildings mix with the old in a tapestry of stone, glass and metal.  It strikes me suddenly that the city is beautiful.     

The afternoon light throws long shadows highlighting the moving commuter trains as they roll in and out of Union Station.  I notice two types: classic designs developed over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, and newer, lighter trains that look more like sleek, oversized buses than traditional rolling stock.  The commuter trains run in the medians of the multilane highways looping into the heart of downtown.  I’m struck by how much less automotive traffic I see.  There are still automobiles, but fewer lanes on the major highways that feed downtown. 

As we fly over the White River, I see boats moored and a fisherman packing his gear, catch in hand.  West of the river, there is still industry, but no smoke rises from these enormous facilities.  In fact, there is much industry, but it disappears, camouflaged, difficult to pick out and well mixed with the surrounding settlement. 

There is little doubt that the city of Indianapolis is prosperous and successful.  Although Indianapolis was highly regarded for the urban creativity that marked the 90’s and early 21st century, much has changed since the beginning of the millennium. 

What was just described is not a utopia.  What is essential to understand is that this vision is possible now.  No exotic technologies or superhuman effort are required.  The catalyst for this transformation follows a thread reaching back to the beginnings of the environmental movement.  We began with fear: loss of cherished creatures, genetic damage to our children, cities shrouded in toxic clouds.  The first response was to plug the pipe, to control pollution keeping it from the environment.  There was an unintended result though.  The pollution just changed form, liquids became solids and the poisons were as potent as ever.  The system creating the poison was still intact. 

In 1979 Michael Royston made an intellectual leap.  He saw the problem of pollution in a new light, and proposed preventing pollution by transforming manufacturing to avoid the use of toxics in the first place.  This was a breakthrough that slowly seeped into the thinking of a number of states and businesses reeling under a steadily increasing regulatory burden.  The benefits were manifest:  little or no regulation, no pollution and an improved bottom line. 

In architecture, the first responses to the environment were clumsy and often stunningly ugly.  The few remaining built survivors from the 1970s are a testament to concern about energy costs and the beneficence of federal tax incentives, but little else.  The design professions sensed something was wrong though and continued to worry the problem around in academia and practice.  With the founding of the American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment in 1990, architects had a voice for their concerns.  In the intervening decade and a half, the basic principles of green design were articulated by the design professions and construction industry.  At this point we are clear on the general shape of the challenge.  Midway through the first decade of the 21st Century, we see notable improvements in building energy performance, reductions in resource use and improvements in indoor environmental quality.  Many successes are available for study and emulation.  The explosive growth of organizations like the United States Green Building Council illustrates the continuing migration of the market toward green building. 

Over the last 30 years, impelled by the energy shocks of the 1970’s, new industries in wind and solar power took shape.  Sometimes these ventures grew robustly and at other times, when the illusion of cheap oil was successfully reincarnated, lost ground as they continued to innovate.  With energy price increases over the last five years, renewables have once again started to ascend and spurred research into more sophisticated technologies as well.  A rapid expansion of markets in ecological and recycled materials is underway now.  The quality of these goods varies across a spectrum from barely “green” to remarkable products that embrace natural principles at an unprecedented level.  The Mid-west is slowly turning the question of green potentials over in its collective consciousness.  My home, Indianapolis, is slowly coming to life.  In another major Midwestern city, the ongoing commitment of Chicago is remarkable and the leadership of Richard J. Daley, Jr. is at the helm of this transformation. 

There is a nagging question however; if this movement continues to its logical conclusion, will the changes be enough to offset global environmental damage?  How much must our culture change to reclaim the diversity of life that is the foundation of this planet’s resiliency?  As William McDonough and Michael Braungart note in Cradle to Cradle, is it enough to be “less bad”?  They ask telling questions about how human systems might be transformed to mirror their counterparts in nature.  To have our built environment intentionally mimic ecological systems would turn the classic human idea of controlling nature upside down.  We would literally get our cake, eat it, then return it to the natural world and have the opportunity to eat it again ad infinitum.

As we contemplate our human-made environment, the separation between people and nature could hardly be more obvious.  Yes, we are trying to move toward an ecological sensibility.  No argument.  Yet what might nature offer us as benchmarks for design of our dwellings, buildings, industry, infrastructure and cities?