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TNAC:You’ve been working on environmental projects for decades now. How do you see yourself in relation to all the recent hype?

JB:Well, it’s weird. First, I feel guilty for succumbing to the term “green” because I’ve been trying like hell to find another term for it. It has good intentions, but there’s the flipside of it, the whole thing of “green bling” and “greenwash,” which is problematic. A green veneer has almost become a label you could sew into your shirt.

It’s great when there is a real effort to become more a part of systems that will be regenerative rather than entropic, but it drives me nuts when people use the word green as a verb, like, “we’re gonna green this building.” I know I’m critiquing the term here, but it represents some of the downfalls within the movement. D.I.R.T. Studio and I find ourselves trying to substantiate the term sustainability—to define it for ourselves. We’re not simply laying down the LEED law and checking things on a checklist. I don’t think it should be this kind of righteous moral imperative. For me it’s a question of education.

So what kind of education do designers need?

A lot of us don’t understand the complexity of natural or industrial systems. I was at a charrette for the project Global Green in New Orleans and the winning team didn’t have a landscape architect on it. I felt like steam was coming out of my ears. There was this assumption that it takes more effort and imperative to make architecture green while
landscape is naturally green. I started to boil.

There’s a disjuncture between ideas about architecture becoming regenerative and landscape—a gulf between so-called “green” architecture and ecological design, which has been the push in landscape architecture for the last decade. Both disciplines have this concern, but the territory that is not completely explored, exploited, or articulated are those systems that tie the two together.

So let’s talk about substantiating the word green. Who or what is doing that today?

My colleagues and I talk about thickening the section—both vertical and horizontal. In drawings, you see a single line separating a building from its climate. The ground is often represented as a line with nothing underneath. Back at our studio, you receive a really intense electrical shock for doing that.

Making clients and communities aware of how the building is interacting with the climate, which people down here in the South with porches have known for a long time, is all about responsiveness and resilience, making things alive. There are lots of great technologies out there dealing with the vertical section, but it’s also about reconditioning us. A lot of the best architects out there are starting to say, “How about you just put on a sweater in the winter.”

How can these ideas and technologies be applied at an urban scale?

It’s ludicrous to think that a city can be saved by architecture. Look at New Orleans. Don’t get me going on New Urbanists. They went down there and said, “here’s your recipe,” as though their smart code for pretty buildings was going to save the city. There is an example of where architecture is the last thing you need. Talk about a thick section; if there’s any place that needs to start healing from the ground up, it’s New Orleans.
Some people think that a beautifully rendered, superimposed master plan is the silver bullet. We want to work from the ground up to create an adaptive framework that puts some of these bones into place and allows those to be generative, to let cities flesh out. A colleague of mine, Christina Hild, talks about the future of cities as adaptive organisms and urbanized sites as living, breathing things. Cities grew up around industries, yet there is an attitude of cutting out the sick heart, chucking it in a landfill, and doing a heart transplant; I think a lot is thrown away when you do that.

What have been your primary obstacles in the past?

The toughest part has been asking folks to agree to a level of transparency. I wish I recorded all the phone calls or letters of “no thank you” that came from industries. They’ll contact D.I.R.T and say, “we’re really interested in your work.” We put them to the test. We ask them if they are willing to come out of the closet, to show the world and the local community how they operate within the landscape. Click.

You have to remember, this whole environmental thing is quite young. You still have a generation of decision-making folks out there who grew up without it. When the legislation came about in the ‘70s, lots of industries literally went into hiding. At the River Rouge project, they put up cladding on their beautiful Albert Kahn buildings. To ask them to take it off, to wash the windows, to have the community come back into the factories to take a tour and see how things are made—when that happens, it’s gonna be a happy day.

This article appeared in the Spring 2007 issue of Next American City magazine. SUBSCRIBE NOW!