How do we tackle climate change?
This is the problem of our age. There is evidence everywhere that the planet is fragile and that our lifestyle is not sustainable over time. Everyday there are articles in the media about global warming. Our government is finally about to make major commitment and investment in a solution. The moment is ripe. We are prepared to lead the initiative.
We need to effect a paradigm change.
As architects, we are trained to solve very complicated problems. We have spent lifetimes in design school focussing on how to make the world a better place. We are the only profession that has the expertise and the ability to be big thinkers. We are probably the most talented, intelligent, and creative people on this planet. There is no reason why we cannot solve this problem which is, after all a design problem. It will take a lot of strategic thinking in order to effect a paradigm change.
Coordinate our Resources.
We have already done the research. We have organized classes, lectures, programs, exhibitions, studies, knowledge networks, focus groups, and position papers on every aspect of resilient design from new materials to zero waste to smart cities. We have assembled examples of projects all over the country that were successful and many others that failed. We need to coordinate what we already have in a way that makes the information really useful to us as designers. It should start with a website / virtual library/ relational database that will frame the issues so that we can address them perhaps augmented by slack. We need the tools so that we can access the information and use it for design.
Leverage our Expertise.
The AIA has 90,000 members. We are embedded in every city and state throughout our country and many throughout the world. If we don’t know how to solve a problem, someone among us will certainly know who to ask. At the moment, resilient design is being treated locally. Each community is putting band-aids on their pressing problems with the result that all of the solutions are piecemeal. This is very much like medicating a disease. What covid taught us is that contact tracing is critical and everything has an impact somewhere else. It also taught us that in order to create the magic bullet vaccines it took developments from scientists around the country each of whom contributed one piece of the research and technology needed.
We need to use that model and structure the solution to climate change through the AIA in a way that we’ve never done before. We need to lead the way to regenerative design.
What have we learned from the vaccine?
A year ago we faced Covid 19, a new contagious disease. Six months later there were vaccines that worked almost all the time. What happened was classic. The heroine was Dr Kati Kariko who spent years on the fringes of academia bouncing from lab to lab making at most $60,000, a career path many scientists and architects can identify with. Her field was messenger RNA. It wasn’t considered very glamorous. Over a copier machine in Buffalo she met Dr Weissman from Penn. The two of them began working on vaccines in his lab. Most of their experiments didn’t work and they couldn’t get grants or pharmaceutical companies to use the technology. But their breakthrough was to figure out how they could use mRNA to briefly instruct cells to make a part of the virus and it mimicked how the body did it. Eventually they interested Moderna, a small start up biotech in Boston and Pfizer – the rest is history.
What Has Abby Done?
Post Superstorm Sandy
For New York City, Sandy brought home how fragile our 524 mile coastline is.
Because Abby had been creating maps of New York City’s cultural assets since 2002, it turned out that she actually had assembled the most complete list on the cultureNOW database which was critical to the work that FEMA was doing.
There were many programs and symposiums organized to address resiliency, planning and zoning issues which she participated in organized such as the Municipal Art Society’s Symposium at the New School
Jan 12, 2013 Charting the Road To Resilience
She was asked to serve as a Course Advisor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design Post Superstorm: Planning and Design After Sandy during the 2014 spring semester.
Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront
In 2010 MoMA commissioned 5 teams of architects, landscape architects, and engineers in residence at PS1 to create projects to mitigate sea level rise in Palisade Bay. Each team was given a different site to work on. The projects were exhibited at the Museum.
Abby Suckle was the Vice President for Outreach at the NY Chapter and was the liason between the AIA and the teams. There were intermediate presentations during the design process. The first public program was a boat tour of the sites in New York Harbor.
The exhibit in the Museum
Harvard Green Campus Initiative
In 2000 Professor Jack Spengler from The School of Public Health at Harvard teamed up with Tom Vautin the Associate Vice President of Facilities. They started the Green Campus Initiative. Their first staff member was Leith Sharp. Their problem was how to create organizational transformation at Harvard. They had a 10 point program beginning with changing attitudes and assumptions to expanding new practices. They prepared studies showing how much more cost effective high performance building services would be. In 2005 Abby began collaborating with them on their outreach into the alumni and the architectural community. She organized and moderated a few programs in Boston at the BSA and Build Boston and to Alumni in New York and at the Center for Architecture.
This is from the powerpoint and the Green Campus Loan Fund is one of the more creative ideas that were part of this initiative.
