Stefan Behling gave a superb lecture on the glabal environment and the way we live in cities and the small changes we can make in order to radically reduce carbon emissions, he then went on the describe Masdar city and how it was conceived. One of the core principles is to be a zero carbon city, compared to the average 1,100,000 Tonnes of Co2 that is put into our atmosphere every year by other comparable sized cities. The goal is to use good, sustainable architecture to bring down the carbon footprint of a person in the worlds most extreme climate, where the UAE has the highest carbon footprint per capita in the world. Stefan showed figures that prove by using intelligent innovative sustainable design we can reach targets of 20% our current carbon footprint per capita that in turn give people not only a lower carbon footprint but a better quality of life.

We are now in the middle of the greatest social changing event, that will radically change Architecture and Urbanism possibly since the Industrial Revolution . We are now at a time when Architecture is at its most popular and generating the most impact it ever has on our planet, in parallel we are in the middle of a potential climate catastrophe and experts say we have less than 10 years to drastically change the way in which we live and work in order to make our planet survive for generations to come.
Today’s discussion tried to focus on the role of Architecture and how we can move forward via sustainability as a vehicle which will dramatically change the way in which we operate. Many Architects like JDS are striving to bring sustainability as a major agenda into their projects, however we are still in a minority compared to the amount of building that is going on globally. We need to do a series of things; we need to develop good Architecture with sustainability as its core agenda, an Architecture that can last, an Architecture which embraces community and public space and an Architecture which does all of this and still pushes the boundaries of our profession. We need to develop an Architecture that gives back to the triple bottom line, being not only environmentally sustainable but economically and socially sustainable, the way to do this is to demand for a better standard of building, better Architecture and stricter controls on what gets built. We need to lobby for Europe-wide Governmental Policy that will tackle minimum standards for development and buildings, that will set high limits for sustainability, that will give more than moral incentives to developers like the tax incentives happening in Singapore so that sustainable buildings will become mainstream. We need to innovate drastically and not let sustainability become a box ticking exercise but allow room to challenge the boundaries. We need to put more money into technical innovation where architecture severely lacks behind when compared to the transport and energy industries while buildings and construction still accounts for 20% of Carbon emissions.

Above all of this we need to change, we have 10 years to radically change the way we work – as a majority – in order to avoid a irreversible Climate catastrophe. The talks today pave great progress on the path to major talks in our hometown of Copenhagen in December at COP 20 where we hope major climate change policy can be adopted world wide that can catalyse Architecture. If it can happen in Masdar in the most extreme climate in the world, it can happen anywhere. We need a sustainable revolution!