Sustainable Architecture Typology: The Six Competing Logics

1. Eco-technic

1.1. Examples:

1.1.1. Case Study: Genzyme Center

1.1.2. Case Study: NASA Sustainability Base

1.2. Main concern: global environmental problems

1.3. Emphasis on: environmental efficiency

1.4. Focus: technological innovations

1.5. Success expressed in the numerical reduction of building's consumption of resources

2. Eco-centric

2.1. Examples

2.1.1. Case Study: Reynolds

2.1.2. Case Study

2.2. Main concern: protection of ecosystems and natural resources

2.3. Emphasis on: holistic & autonomous

2.3.1. Gaia hypothesis

2.3.2. Living Building Institute

2.4. Focus: ecological system

2.5. Reduction of ecological footprint: considerations beyond anthropocentric

3. Eco-aesthetic

3.1. Examples

3.1.1. Case Study: Stout

3.1.2. Case Study: Calatrava

3.2. Main concern: aesthetic and sensual values

3.3. Emphasis on: individual creativity, with inspiration coming from identification with nature

3.4. Focus: architectural form

3.5. Requires shift from utilitarian values prioritizing architectural form above physical performance

4. Eco-medical

4.1. Examples:

4.1.1. Transparency movement

4.1.2. Building biology

4.2. Main concern: sustaining individual health

4.3. Emphasis on: "Healthy people cannot exist on a sick planet" G. Cohen

4.4. Focus: physical and psychological health & wellness

4.5. Responding to sick building syndrome, to separation from nature, lack of individual control over surroundings, "nature deprivation syndrome"

5. Eco-social

5.1. Examples:

5.1.1. Case Studies: Small Scale Big Change

5.1.2. Case study: Arcology

5.2. Main concern: democracy as the key to an ecological society

5.3. Emphasis on: social factors - freedom, democracy and individual self-realization

5.4. Focus: co-operative social & ecological community

5.5. Decentralization, self-sufficiency, democratic, participatory technologies based on laws of ecology and grounded in local ecological conditions

6. Eco-cultural

6.1. Examples:

6.1.1. Case Study: Morphogenesis

6.1.2. Case Study: Hassan Fathy

6.2. Main concern: preservation of diversity of existing cultures

6.3. Emphasis on: environmental and cultural

6.4. Focus: sense of place and connection

6.5. Decentralization, bioregionalism, use of local materials. response to climat