They paved paradise and put up a parking lot…

BYT-2 It’s the refrain from a song titled “Big Yellow Taxi recently
popularized by Countin’ Crows. They go on to sing: BYT-4

‘Took all the trees, put them in a tree museum

Charged all the people a dollar and a half to see them…

Now don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone…’

The way we live, we certainly don’t seem to. Listen to what Tadao Ando, a famous Japanese architect, has to say on the subject in the foreword to the book “Architecture and the Environment: Bioclimatic Building Design” by David Lloyd Jones.

“The whole world today harbors feelings of misgiving over the crisis facing the global environment and the general loss of our spiritual culture. Now, more than ever, it is time to return to our point of origin, to deepen our understanding of the environment and to correct our ways of mishandling the earth’s forests and woodlands which play such an important role in shaping and developing the human spirit.

BYT-1 The cities of the twentieth century were built on a basis of function and rationality. BYT-3 Technological innovation and changes in social structure have caused an excess of people and things to become concentrated in urban areas. The entire world has generally shared the common belief that an economy-led society is the ultimate and desired direction. Driven by consumption, mankind has generated tremendous amounts of dynamic power, never before seen in our history, by converting the planet’s irreplaceable fossil fuels and, in doing so, we have also released massive volumes of byproducts into the air and the seas. We have also produced many non-biodegradable chemicals not found in Mother Nature.

The result of our attempt to use resources that have been the products of billions of years of solar energy within what is relatively a mere instant has been, conversely, to spew more substances and energy into the environment than the planet is capable of digesting, and this has thrown the entire global ecosystem out of balance.

BYT-6 All over the world we are finally beginning to recognize the threat that abnormal weather and BYT-7 pollution in the air, water and ground are posing to civilization. Economic development that wastes limited resources and destroys the environment brings only momentary prosperity: it lacks sustainability and threatens the very existence of future generations. Now is the time to change our consciousness in this regard and, focusing on solar energy, to come up with the appropriate means of utilizing our resources such as wind, water, and so on.

In the process of changing our ways, we should focus on the natural cleansing effects and the power of self-regeneration found within thick, foliated woodlands and learn to use these limited resources carefully under the guidance of the earth’s ecosystems.

Though it is troublesome to make biodegradable goods and to utilize natural energy in our present ways of life, it is not impossible. We have already developed sufficient technologies to effectively utilize Mother Nature while sustaining her unspoiled beauty, and now is the lime for the entire world to awaken to the limits of our materialistic ways and to change our society as a whole.” BYT-5

Pdse Architects have a special responsibility to society to take the lead by using environmentally effective design strategies. It is not only the bottom line of their client’s balance sheet that is the primary design determinant. Ecological accounting also informs design. We need to trace the environmental impacts of design and use this information to determine the ecologically sound design possibilities.