My Pandemic Silver Lining
During the pandemic, my personal reboot was to step back and reassess; what came into focus were two concerns, lack of sufficient affordable housing and global warming, this notwithstanding, is the reason why I work at Think! Architecture, which is at the forefront of both concerns.
As time marches on and the end of the Pandemic recedes into the rear view mirror; its effects linger on, one single event having effectively reshaped our society; we collectively underwent an instantaneous shift from in person in the office as we once knew it, to making Star Trek communications a reality, beaming in remotely from our private homes through a computer screen, conflating our personal and work spaces, effectively redefining how we inhabit our urban, suburban, and rural landscapes.
Amidst these circumstances, it allowed me a time to slow down and re-assess, in a split screen scenario, the quotidian rhythm of remote work to a backdrop in a rural landscape. Fortunate to have a corner to hunker down in the countryside, I took refuge amidst fields, trees, and the open sky above me, in stark contrast to my life in the urban setting of New York City. Like many, I felt an urge to re-plant the vegetable garden I had once abandoned to the weeds and neglect; this underscored for me the ease in our industrial society and instant access to abundant food. Each day, I would repeat the rounds and care for my vegetable patch, trees, and perennial gardens like my own children watching them grow and change each day, learning firsthand about their dependency on the natural landscape and climate.
Within this frame of mind and coddled by an idyllic rural landscape, two concerns surfaced to the top, climate urgency and lack of sufficient affordable housing. I realized that I wanted to shift my focus within architecture. I believe that change can occur if we each one by one contribute, this cumulative effort will create change.
So, thrilled to have the time to cull the resources my local library offered; I drew incredible inspiration from early advocates and thought leaders of sustainability, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) who understands that sustainability must be indelibly tied into market economy and be profitable and William McDonough, nicknamed the "father of the circular economy" who promotes the idea of shifting our idea of creating products to end up as waste to reusing, recycling, reducing, repairing, refurbishing, re-purposing, re-manufacturing, and recovering materials to cycle back into the economy, known as ‘Cradle to Cradle’.
In order to leave a world environmentally intact for the next generation, our children and their children, we must reverse global warming. We cannot reverse back to an agrarian society; we must re-shape our technological society and global economy by reducing our contribution to greenhouse gasses through the goal of carbon neutrality.
As an architect, I’ve been drawn to organizations at the forefront of leadership in environmental advocacy and I obtained certifications from LEED, a holistic approach to sustainability, and Passive House (Phius), a construction methodology to create durable, resilient and low carbon buildings, methods that contribute towards building industry standards that move the needle in our stewardship of our world.
Each step counts.