Green Features Are No Longer an Add-On, Says a Harvard Architect

The Harvard Design Magazine has a lengthy examination of the significance of the new Allston campus, the design of which puts an emphasis on environmental issues.

Nathalie Beauvais, the principal architect for Harvard University’s Allston Development Group, says that designers no longer have to compromise aesthetics for environmental responsibility. (Some might say they never had to.)

“We are entering an era in which building and landscape performance to minimize negative effects of the built world on nature will take a leading role,” she writes. “The old cliché that the pursuit of greenness in buildings is inevitably in conflict with the pursuit of aesthetic quality is disappearing fast. Green features are no longer being thought of as ‘tack-ons,’ like solar roof panels, but instead as elements as integral as support beams or doors. One must design using green features and making them as aesthetically rich and appealing as any other aspect of buildings.”

Allston will be an “integrated design process,” in which engineers and designers are working closely together, and choices in aesthetics and materials are deeply influenced by materials’ performance.

That’s a trend that many have observed and written about, Ms. Beauvais says. “Rem Koolhaas has written that ‘whenever there is a revolution, or fast change, in architecture, professional barriers break down as specialists exchange roles. Architects become sculptors, engineers become designers, artists turn into architects, and all these job descriptions become fuzzy.’… In Some Assembly Required, Michael Sorkin argues for a reunion of architecture and urbanism both to meet their global and local responsibilities and to fulfill their promise of joy. Landscape architecture and engineering should be added to his list. Sorkin’s statement is idealistic, but ultimately nothing less should drive the making of cities and campuses.”