There is a certain point in the evolution of an idea from the radical to the ubiquitous when it becomes intolerably banal. This point has been reached with “sustainability”. I attended a symposium yesterday with the title “Sustainable Architectures“ at the Italian Institute of Culture in Tokyo which demonstrated this all too clearly. The formal presentations were by five architects; two from Japan (Kengo Kuma, Terunobu Fujimori), one from Italy (Guiseppi Guichiotti), one from Argentina (Francisco Prati), and an Tokyo-based Italian architect (Marco Corbella), all presided over by the president of the Japan Institute of Architects, Taro Ashihara. The concept of sustainability, even when expanded beyond environmental dimensions to include social and cultural dimensions, was unable to gather much purchase on the divergent materials presented. The term has been reduced to a nearly-meaningless sticker, that can be applied to anything to render it “safe for consumption.”
(More commentary to come).
