30 C O N T E X T 1 7 4 : D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 2 intense discussion about the risks of replication of western development patterns. For example, what if China started burning lots of coal? Attendees from the poorer countries were initially unimpressed, angry and dismissive of moralising attempts by western nations that had grown rich on exploitation of the earth’s resources and were now calling for restraint on development. However, common sense, at least in principle, prevailed. There was ultimately universal agreement that in the common interest these threats should be taken seriously. It resulted in the publication of my Good Idea No 4: ‘There is only one earth.’ Sadly we now use the equivalent of more than three planets. In design terms for survival and climate justice we must commit to one-planet living, the 2000-watt society of 48 kWhr/day/person for everything: travel, heating and food.We must use low-impact materials and transport, and satisfy more of our needs locally. There are excellent models of low-impact living, including cities of small distances. Current predictions of climate change are similar to those in the textbooks that I read in 1971. As an aspiring physicist, the dangers of burning fossil fuels made complete sense to me. I did not go on climate strike (I would now) because I thought the intention was to solve the problem. Instead I trained to become an engineer and have watched as for 50 years the risks have largely been denied and the consequences – storms, floods, drought and fires – permeate our world. My Good Idea No 5, Negawatts not megawatts, recognises that energy conservation is the cheapest form of energy. Our design challenge is not to generate more but to decide how much energy we need. Using building physics and limiting mechanical services to support natural systems will help. I find it increasingly difficult to argue with that wonderful Scottish landscape architect Ian McHarg, who concluded that ‘man is a blind, witless, low-brow anthropocentric clod who inflicts lesions upon the earth’. My final good idea emerges as a consequence of the Limits to Growth report, which made clear that the number of cars or babies is not the limiting factor in a system. It is the resources that each uses and the pollution (lead, carbon dioxide, cadmium, formaldehyde) that each generates. My Good Idea No 6: ‘There are limits to growth but no limits to development.’ That designers dream provides us with real hope that we have the potential to create benign, longlasting solutions. My short history of good ideas is actually, of course, a long history of missed opportunities. I have recounted 60 years of A-class thinkers with A-class facts being ignored. Apart from a few rare examples, it is the bad and least resilient ideas that get replicated. It is unclear if our system is broken or what if anything we can rescue but it is not too late to choose the intelligent path.Thankfully there are some designers and examples that point the way toward a legacy of resilience that we can be proud of.We should give them our support.To fail now is to fail forever. The Homes-to-2030 finalist Janus, designed by Outpost Architects and others, (right) is a proposed modular housing system constructed from 98 per cent organic biomass material (primarily timber and straw). Sandy Halliday, the author of Sustainable Construction, is director of Gaia Group and a director of the Scottish Ecological Design Association. This article is based on her talk at the IHBC Aberdeen 2022 Day School. Kalkbreite in Zurich, developed by a housing cooperative, meets Passive House construction standards. The Piggery in Southampton (far right) is a singlestorey, straw-bale house designed for a young family, one of whom is a full-time wheelchair user.
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