With the endorsement in 1987 of the Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, the

expression ‘sustainable development’ was launched into the global environmental lexi-

con alongside the definition it provided: ‘to ensure that [development] meets the needs

of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their

own needs’ (WCED 1987: 43) Sustainable development now dominates environmental

discourse, shaping our conception of environmental problems and the role of architec-

ture therein.1 Its success in this regard is due largely to the ways in which it contrasts

the failed environmental approaches of the 1960s and 1970s: it presents a positive

sum instead of a zero sum approach to environmental problems by equating pollution

with inefficiency and thus with business opportunity (Peterson 1997: 17); it supports a

fundamental belief in the problem-solving capacity of modern techniques and skills of

social engineering, while carefully avoiding any association with progress and its nega-

tive connotations (ibid.: 22) and it draws upon and reinforces existing modernist policy

instruments such as expert systems and science, without relying entirely upon them

for legitimacy (ibid.: 22-31).