Page 22 - Between light and shade

between light and shade, TRANSPARENCy and reflection

rudimentary buildings, in harmony with nature,
towards which we are irresistibly drawn when we
are looking to relax and unwind and, perhaps,
to remember our childhood huts. In cities, pets
allow many people to make up for the lack of this
primordial connection.

Nothing, in theory, should deprive a person of
the enjoyment of their senses and yet few of the
last century’s buildings (including mine), even
those forming part of the “modernist” movement
admired by architects themselves, avoid this
pitfall. Worse still, the gradual reduction in their
sensory and emotional “performances” has gone
hand in hand with an increase in their energy
footprint, both in terms of their construction as
well as their operation and maintenance. What
is more, they can no longer be dismantled, which
further increases their environmental burden for
future generations.

The only repercussions of the warning in the
MIT report to the Club of Rome in 1972 14 and the
first oil crisis in 1973 in the world of construc-
tion are the slow and gradual establishment of
standards and regulations, which are as nume-

14 Under the leadership of Dennis L. Meadows (and influenced
by the work of J.W. Forrester), the report The limits to growth
highlighted the five main problems for mankind: the accele-
ration in industrialisation, strong growth in the world popula-
tion, the persistence of worldwide malnutrition, the depletion
of natural non-renewable resources and environmental degra-
dation.
22