If you’ve traveled overseas, then you’ve probably had the experience of feeling energized by the design character and vitality of an exotic city—and a little melancholy that you couldn’t bring those qualities back to your hometown. That’s been my experience in assembling this issue on some of the best recent architecture around the world by Minnesota architects. When I look at projects such as VJAA’s sophisticated, climate-sensitive Charles Hostler Student Recreation Center (cover, page 36) at the American University of Beirut and Perkins+Will’s ultra-green design for Embassy Medical Center (page 50) in Sri Lanka, I’m both in awe that we have this caliber of design talent and vision in Minnesota, and wishful that we could unleash even more of it here at home.
I asked University of Minnesota College of Design dean Thomas Fisher, Assoc. AIA, who wrote our Hostler Center feature, if he sees Hostler as an example of there being greater demand overseas for show-stopping sustainable design, or whether the project is simply the fruit of a progressive institution seeking to raise its profile. Mostly the latter, Fisher confirmed, but the question got him thinking. “I think the United States has lost a lot of its confidence and its ability to take risks,” he observed. “When you look at what’s going on in Dubai and China and even in places like war-torn Lebanon, and you’re asked a question like the one you’ve just asked—Why don’t we do more buildings like that here?—it’s almost as if our whole system has become clogged with risk aversion. Obviously there are exceptions; there still are clients who are willing to support adventuresome architecture. But I just think that, between what’s been happening economically in this country and what’s been happening in terms of litigation, it’s made clients more averse to doing projects like this.”
I put a similar question to Doug Pierce, AIA, one of the Embassy Medical Center architects. When completed, Embassy will achieve a level of sustainable design rarely seen in the U.S. in a building of that scale (it will exceed LEED Platinum standards). Is this evidence that Sri Lankans are beginning to place a higher premium on environmental stewardship than we are? Pierce offered some perspective: “Countries like Sri Lanka and India are not as developed as the U.S.; there isn’t as much infrastructure in place. So if you want to do a Western-style hospital there, you potentially have to do things like provide your own power, water, and sewage.” What makes Embassy so extraordinary is that it uses renewable energy to supply these needs. “Instead of using fossil fuel–based diesel generators,” Pierce explained, “we’re using bio-methane-driven generators. We’re dealing with sewage in ecologically based ways, and so on.”
But doesn’t the client’s embrace of renewable energy reflect a heightened awareness of environmental challenges? “Absolutely it does,” Pierce continued. “For example, people in developing countries are often much more in tune with climate-change issues than Americans are. I think part of the reason for that is, they see global warming happening. They are more directly affected by extended droughts. Getting good food and water is simply more challenging for them. We Americans, on the other hand, are somewhat insulated from the impacts of global warming and environmental degradation because we have such robust resources and so much energy.”
Perhaps if we spent more time examining green building efforts abroad it would accelerate the cultural shift toward sustainability at home. Pierce, for one, says the opportunity is ripe. “Humans can be very clever,” he observed. “We’ve got all the technology we need, and we’ve got lots of resources—at least for now. If we adjust the way that our economy and our cities work, things could work out for the better. But we need to take action now in order for that to happen.”
Christopher Hudson
Editor
Architecture Minnesota
hudson@aia-mn.org
