ABSTRACT
An architect, at a lecture recently at my school, told a story about his early career, recalling how a couple who owned a heavily wooded piece of land commissioned him to design their house. In the process, they spoke of their desire to cut down most of the trees for the revenue that amount of wood would bring them as well for the views of the water it would create. The architect tried to talk them out of it and they seemed to relent, until, one day, he drove by the site and saw that the clients had ignored him and had the trees cut down, at which point he returned to his office and called the clients to say that he quit the commission. That event, he said, altered the rest of his 104career, convincing him that, from that moment on, he would design with the good of the natural world as well as that of his clients in mind. By all accounts as well as from the evidence of his own work, he has had a very successful career following that path.
