Responsive Built Environment Education

Essay by Dean R. Thomas Jones, AIA

Global Phenomenon Will Shape Our Work

At this time in history, it is clearly evident that students entering our professions, and choosing our polytechnic university must be prepared to enter a world facing three simultaneous and intertwined phenomenon: global climate change, global social migrations, and global economic integration. With increasing calls for our built environment processionals to help reduce the impact of buildings and cities on climate change, we are also experiencing unparalleled social migration and urbanization, coupled with a world wide market place for labor and materials that has profoundly altered how and with whom we imagine and realize our built environment.

We must consider the interconnections of these environmental, social, and economic phenomenon, and that how we respond to them both locally and globally will dominate the next decade and amplify the significance of built environment policies and projects.

New Tools and Methods are Transforming Our Professions

While these external forces are greatly shaping our fields, we are also experiencing a rapid change in the types of technologies used within our professions to plan, design, communicate, organize, construct, and operate our human environment. There is a major trend within and among professional firms toward team-based, integrated practice. Emerging new three-dimensional digital modeling tools present the possibilities for more sophisticated and complex projects to be undertaken with better cost and quality control, and with greater client and community understanding. Internet-based communication technologies are allowing even small firms to create “virtual teams” of individuals working in remote locations but contributing together to work on single projects. Digital communication and fabrication tools are greatly enhancing our clients and professional abilities to orchestrate the construction and completion of projects. Even smaller firms have the capacity to marshal materials, equipment, and a workforce at great distances from their home offices with a confidence and precision unheard of a decade ago.

Traditional Skills Remain Critically Important

Against the backdrop of this new world of team-based, high-tech practice, there is an equal call for young professionals to have a strong foundation in the fundamentals of our fields, which will always be rooted in our ability to marshal the bounties of the natural world and the capacities of our human skills to make human settlements. As a new tool in this process, the computer can accelerate and enhance our abilities to imagine, communicate, and construct. However, digital-based endeavors are ill-informed or misguided if undertaken in the absence of manually-based knowledge, intellectual perspectives, cultural sensitivities, and interpersonal collaborative skills.

More than ever, it is imperative that our young professionals develop an appreciation and understanding of the nature and performance of materials, the issues and concerns of society, the ecology of a region, and the capacities of a workforce, to develop the most appropriate built environment project.

Collaboration Is Displacing Individualism as the Success Model

The image of the solitary genius whose vision graces society has been replaced by the reality of a multidisciplinary group whose collective imagination and skills rise above the limits of any one member.

From the perspective of successful projects, real innovation and excellence now appear to best come out of the ability of each professional to identify and integrate many distinct and sometimes competing ideals for a project, and to utilize a wide array of media and methods in a collaborative and mutually respectful process.

Historical Perspectives and Ethical Commitments Remain Paramount

As always, our professions are accountable to our own time, while also called upon to be timeless. Our work must serve the real needs of today, yet be adaptable to and valued by the societies of tomorrow. Our task is to be that bridge between human history and human destiny. The pressures to deliver new ideas or complete new projects quickly or cheaply during periods of rapid change or volatility heighten the prospects for long lasting problems.

Well conceived cities, buildings, and landscapes created over the last 2,000 years are still in active human use, while poorly conceived structures and spaces less than 40 years old are exposed as unhealthy, unsafe or unwanted. Flaunting nature and ignoring accumulated understanding of material properties and human needs has led to an acceleration of devastating fires, floods, food and water shortages, and diseases. Blighted slums, suburban sprawl, and small town abandonment counterpoised against large-scale civic revitalization and new park projects underway around the world reveal how government and financial policies can either foster degraded environments, or enhance the quality of life for entire regions. The power of the built environment to shape the human experience has perhaps never been more evident.

The responsibilities to do right and well by society and by nature in our work is an enormous expectation particularly during our uncertain times, and this creates a special responsibility to our professions, even as it invigorates us to achieve greatness.

In this spirit and contemporary context, we are not educating our students to bear the label of their specific profession alone. While they will graduate in a particular major, they will be prepared to embrace their role in larger professional and societal efforts aimed at creating meaningful places and realizing the highest hopes and most audacious yearnings of our world. They also will be committed to bringing excellence to the full breath of their work, believing that no project is too small or community is too poor to deserve less than the best and most inspiring built environment.

Three Interwoven Themes Define a Compelling Direction

Considering the several factors all in flux at the same time, both professional and academic leaders have termed the current period one of rapid transformation. It is clear that within this context there are three overarching and interconnected themes that are inclusive of the way built environment professionals and our graduates must act. As stated in our Vision working paper, we believe our students must be prepared to help create sustainable communities, through global collaborations, utilizing innovative technologies. How do we define this more concretely?

1. The "What" of our time – Sustainable Communities
   Creation of more sustainable communities in the broadest sense includes all the traditional aspects of our professions as preservers of shared history and enhancers of the quality of life for the present and future. The call for greater sustainability adds an element of resource and social accountability and systems integration to our work. We are called upon to be professional leaders in helping society more effectively and efficiently orchestrate land use, transportation, building performance and open space performance. We will also need to interact with colleagues in sister professions involved with food and water supplies, materials and energy resources, and supporting positive economic and social dynamics of our cultures as we must all learn to live better with less.
2. The “Whom” of our time – Global Collaboration
   Collaboration with people from many backgrounds, perspectives, and cultures that are involved in a growing number of built environment projects is essential. In the undeniable global marketplace of ideas, labor, and resources, even small projects in rural towns are dependent on the world. At the larger scale, teams at multiple offices are undertaking planning, design, and construction internationally, with a significant premium placed on teams and leaders who can operate cross culturally and across disciplines.
3. The “How” of our time – Technical Innovation
   Innovation in the realm of technology offers promises of computer-based tools that substantially enhance all steps in the process of conceptualizing, implementing, and utilizing the built environment. They also provide a platform for more rapidly and accurately analyzing and forecasting long-term building and landscape performance, model the use of resources, mock-up the construction process, and monitor project operations. Technical innovation does not eclipse the need for our work to meet cultural, aesthetic and user expectations. Through innovative tools we seek to enhance our ability to envision and evaluate planning and design proposals, and integrate many disparate cultural, aesthetic, experiential, environmental, and cost variables as we move from concept to reality.