additional structural capacity, and maintenance. Real sustainable building practices are found among the Indigenous peoples of the world. They use local materials and build structures with a careful understanding of local climate, land, and location. Architects need to move away from the one-sizefits-all approach — monuments to ego with a green label attached — towards truly economical and spatially adaptable architecture, and begin thinking more locally and regionally. AT: If the ultimate act of building sustainably is not building anything at all, how can we reverse the worldwide tendency to always build something new — especially when cities are full of empty, abandoned buildings nobody is using? Do you have any proposals for how we can valorize existing real estate assets, while balancing people’s needs against costs and the consumption of resources? IR: Change under one’s own control is not usually a problem for most people. Buying a new car or smartphone — lovely! Change in the interest of others is much harder. And that is one of the fundamental problems of post-industrialized society. If you propose new housing in a village, people will usually object because the project is outside their immediate control and will impact their lives — new buildings mean more people. But new can also mean renewal, adaptation. Reusing old buildings is intelligent and can be marketed as an alternative form of the new. The embodied energy in these old structures demands that we think very hard about repurposing them. In their reuse, questions becomemore challenging, and not only about whether a proper and fair analysis of the economic and carbon reduction benefits justify the strategy. To establish a paradigmshift in reusing and extending the lifespan of the carcasses of old buildings requires the availability of new lightweight and safe materials, including glass, which optimize thermal performance while not imposing additional loadings on the foundations, and assessing whether the existing infrastructures can accept the new uses envisaged for them. AT: What are your views on the slow living and slow architecture trends? IR: It began in Rome, with the slow food movement to defend regional food traditions. It strives to preserve respect for regionality, quality, and sustainability, as well as to educate consumers about the risks of monocultures. “Slow” suggests a fundamentally different way of thinking. Humans evolved to thrive in small tight-knit social groups and natural environments. Our genetic and neurological predisposition for such a life and the emotional equilibrium it engenders has evolved little, in spite of our unique adaptability. The slow living and slow architecture trends are a movement toward reintegrating these ways of being into the currently all-pervasive architectural and consumerist monocultures. Architecture based upon this philosophy will not be an embodiment of the self-asserting identity of the architect and discriminatory economic thinking, but of the holistic awareness of space, local enviThe Susie Sainsbury Theatre at the Royal Academy of Music. The project to design an entirely new theatre within the space of the old one was challenging, due to the constrained site into which the functions of a modern opera and musical theatre had to be introduced. A highly coordinated approach by the architects’s design team enabled the successful integration of all requirements —aesthetic, structural, acoustic, safety, mechanical, lighting and electrical systems. Photo by Adam Scott. ARCHITYPES 24 EXCERPT
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