C O N T E X T 1 7 4 : D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 2 29 THE IHBC AT 25 heritage. Care for material things is ecological. We must move away from a development model that is linear, taking virgin and clean resources and creating pollution and waste. We need a cyclic development model in which we extend the life of our goods by treating waste from one process as input to another: design for deconstruction, re-use and recycling of our buildings, and our technology, clothing and cars. We have not heeded Schumacher’s 50-year-old wisdom. Consumption has increased exponentially and it is generally agreed that we are already beyond the limits, in overshoot. Rachel Carson is a significant influence on my intellectual heritage. She was a marine biologist and author of numerous books about the natural world, including Silent Spring. Carson engaged industry in addressing the food chain. She drew attention to the harmful impact of DDT. The pesticide industry marginalised her but ultimately DDT was banned after it was identified in breast milk. Importantly Carson did not have a cuddly back-to-nature agenda. She was examining, not pandas and elephants, but the very underpinning of how organic systems worked. She left a huge body of thought that revolutionised the lives of many and started a real discussion about human environmental impacts. She is the source of my Good Idea No 2: ‘Humankind is part of nature, and war against nature is inevitably a war against ourselves.’ Did we respond to this warning? Sadly not. In the intervening 60 years our use of toxic chemicals has increased dramatically.We use abundant chemicals in building products and manufactured goods that are designed to kill species on which we ultimately depend. Ubiquitous volatile organic compounds from paints go into the lungs of building occupants, causing particular damage to the young and the vulnerable. My approach is to design so that chemicals are not required. There are alternative non-toxic treatments and good design guidance. In 1980 Barry Commoner, an academic, stood for president of the USA on four unbending laws of ecology. One of them is my Good Idea No 3: ‘Everything must go somewhere.’ Commoner predicted many of our contemporary environmental problems, including so much waste lasting in perpetuity. Products and materials that can be thrown away but they can never be disposed of, including the oceanic soup of plastic waste. Commoner’s design influence means that we must select building materials that can return to earth after a useful life, such as earth, untreated timber, straw and hemp. At the first global conference on the environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, there was Glencoe Visitor Management Facility (top and below left) and the Glentress Visitor Centre, Peebles (below right), both by Gaia Architects, are made from locally grown, untreated timber. (Photo: Michael Wolchover)
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