ABSTRACT
Architecture appropriates the environment; it uses it up. This makes one wonder: Would it be possible to partner with nature; would it be possible to contribute more in the future than we have displaced; how would we set the goals and limits of an architecture that is in harmony with the environment rather than in opposition to it? Creating a sustainable, designed-environment is not a choice; it is a responsibility! As attorneys represent our commitment to justice and doctors represent our commitment to health, architects engage, embrace, respond, defend and order our collective commitment to the environments that we design, construct, and inhabit. Restrict the water, contaminate the air, limit energy use; NOW begin to design your building. Can you do it? Can you begin without these natural resources? Not without initiating a research agenda: declaring assumptions within the environmental footprint of the project. Not without articulating claims. Not without testing strategies, evaluating alternatives, demonstrating and documenting the chosen form/solution. But wait, some problems are not deterministic, they are “wicked problems”—these are problems that can’t be solved with a decision tree. Our environmental concerns are just such a category of problem; they are “wicked” and highly contingent, so they demand a slightly different strategy of research. This chapter will focus on heuristic reasoning and examine a series of professional examples that address wicked problems that spring from the difficulty of addressing and solving issues associated with our environmental crisis.
