Every Monday morning, team members in the Philadelphia and Princeton offices gather together via video-conference to discuss firm news and upcoming events and projects. Since 2003, founding partner Allan Kehrt, FAIA, has delivered his Monday Morning Musings, weekly slices of personal insight into the design profession, to the firm. To comment on any of his posts, send an email to us. We look forward to hearing from you. |
| September 29, 2008 Crowded If you access www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf you can watch the world population grow at almost 3 individuals per second. As I am writing this on Sunday, the world population stands at 6,696,339,954. By the time you read this I expect the number will be closer to 6,696,700,000, an increase of more than 360,000 people. Tom Freidman says the world is getting crowded and he is correct. By the year 2050, it is estimated by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs that the world population will reach 8.9 billion, an increase from today's of 33%. By 2029, 21 years from now, while most of you will still be practicing architecture, the population will have increased by about 1.2 billion people. All of these people will have to be housed, fed, and clothed and if Freidman is correct, and I assume he is, they will all have expectations of a much higher standard of living than basic needs. The implications for the world as a sustainable environment are staggering, particularly given the success we have demonstrated so far. The architectural world is only now beginning to awaken to the serious situation we find ourselves in, and understand we are one of the most critical professions to any solution. As the designers of the built environment we understand that the energy consumption of the buildings we create is a major part of the sustainability equation. We can no longer ignore the responsibilities we have to ensure a world that can absorb all those who will follow us. |
| September 22, 2008 Flat Tom Friedman's "Flat" is something he's been talking about since the publication of his last book in 2005. While it dealt with a variety of issues, The World is Flat predicted the increasing Americanization of the world as more and more attempt to live a lifestyle similar to ours. The implications of this are enormous; while we have had the luxury of living at a standard above that of the majority of the world, the American lifestyle is not sustainable on a global scale, even if temporally achievable. He defines a new unit of measurement for the American lifestyle as an "Americum," a unit reflecting the combined lifestyle as "any group of 350 million people with a per capita income above $15,000 and a penchant for consumerism." For a long time there were only two Americums on the planet: the United States and Europe, with perhaps small pockets in a few other places. But if the rest of the world keeps growing at the rate it has been, by 2030 there will be eight or nine Americums. China alone is currently building almost 53,000 miles of new highways to accommodate the 14,000 new cars that are introduced every two weeks, and by 2040 will have more cars on the road than the current 250 million in the United States. To put it in simpler terms Friedman states that in the next 12 years the population of the world is expected to increase by 1 billion people. If each of these individuals was given a single 60-watt light bulb and the ability to burn it for four hours a day, we would have to build twenty 500-megawatt coal-fired power plants just to supply them with the necessary electrons. That starts to put this growth in perspective. As architects who will be facing this difficult new world, we need to understand how important our role will be in shaping it within sustainable limits. The responsibilities we must assume will be enormous and our obligations extensive. We need to understand what we are doing and why very, very clearly. |
| September 15, 2008 Hot Thomas Friedman has written a new book entitled Hot, Flat and Crowded. It is another perspective tour de force, once again examining changing world conditions and explaining their causes and implications and our options for dealing with them. The "Hot" reflects the increasingly recognized issue of global warming; the "Flat," originally defined in his prior book The World is Flat, more specifically refers to the rising middle classes in Russia, China, India, Brazil, and all others who strive for an American lifestyle; and the "Crowded" to the growing world population that is putting pressure on virtually everything. Although the earth has been warming continually since the end of the last glacial period about 12,500 years ago, the "Hot" we are talking about began in the late 1700s at the start of the Industrial Revolution when man's works started spewing things into the atmosphere at an alarming rate that has only accelerated since it began. Most of us understand this issue now, but none of us understands the long term implications. Those implications range from rising sea levels, disruptions to agriculture, increases in extreme weather, and ecological disaster all the way to a runaway temperature increase that might threaten the future of the human species. It is pretty serious stuff. But the book is optimistic and very much worth reading. Freidman has once again put together another book for the human required reading list. |
| September 8, 2008 Influence The education and experience that we have gives us an astonishing depth of knowledge about the built environment. Because this knowledge is so close to us, so much a part of who we are, and so familiar, we all tend to be dismissive of what value it may have. But with the unusual education we have experienced, our continual thinking, discussing and designing of the unbuilt world, we have become of exceptional value to those often charged with thinking about the future, but who have no formal training on how to go about it. As architects and designers who have chosen this profession to make a better world, we can use this depth of knowledge in the public realm to achieve perhaps more than we can individually as designers. Planning boards, historic preservation commissions, town or city councils, and a hundred of other public entities can always use our expertise and thinking. Get involved. Join something. Run for office. Start an advocacy group. Be visible to those who can use you. Speak out. Yell. You know more than you think you do, and you are much better at this than the majority of the non-professionals who generally end up doing it. Get involved! |
| September 2, 2008 Prefabrication There is currently a show at New York's Museum of Modern Art that deals with the architectural profession's long lived affair with the prefabrication of homes. Entitled "Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling," it is a look at not only the history of the subject, but a full-scale installation of five prefabricated houses on the museum's adjacent lot. It's an impressive show that spans 180 years of an idea that asks, "Isn't there a better way to build dwellings for ourselves?" In presenting the full scale houses, the show does in a way answer its own question, and the answer seems to be that we can build good houses that architects will like and appreciate, but not many others. That seems to be the answer we have heard to most of the proposals our profession has put forward over the years. But there are a few very good houses presented in the show that may gain a wider acceptance; they are entirely from Scandinavia where they have been designing intelligently in this area for a long time. It's a worthwhile excursion to the Big Apple. |
