What Comes After the “Green” Building?

The era of efficient “green” buildings is over. What will take its place?

Daniel A. Barber, Elisa Iturbe, & Elise Misao Hunchuck

Sep 1, 2022

#31

In mid-June, NYRA hosted a panel discussion at the offices of Snøhetta on Pine Street, prompted by the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Assessment Report 6. Spearheaded by historian Daniel A. Barber and featuring reflections from designer/educator Elisa Iturbe and researcher Elise Misao Hunchuck, the Mitigation event centered on a very specific section of the Technical Summary of the AR6 Working Group on Mitigation, “TS 4.5-E.” An edited excerpt of the conversation is reproduced here.

DANIEL BARBER: To start, I want to draw out a distinction that’s made in the language used by the IPCC between efficiency and sufficiency. Many, but not all, contemporary buildings work much more efficiently than their older counterparts. But the energy-saving innovations that go into these buildings—perfectly tuned glass panels, solar arrays, induced ventilation—are outpaced by the sheer amount of square footage going up in our cities daily. So in a sense, we’re back at zero. It’s interesting, then, that in AR6, the IPCC proposes a…

Daniel A. Barber is professor of architecture and environment at the University of Technology Sydney and a Guggenheim Fellow. He was recently an inaugural research fellow at the Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at Universität Heidelberg, where he explored conceptual and practical challenges to designing for high heat scenarios.

Elisa Iturbe is assistant professor at The Cooper Union and co-founder of Outside Development, a design and research practice.

Elise Misao Hunchuck is trained as a philosopher and landscape architect yet practices neither. She likes trees and buildings, but not trees on buildings.

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