The book was triggered by last year’s Zumtobel Group Award for Sustainability and Humanity in the Built Environment, a prize financed by the lighting manufacturer for which these same 40 projects were submitted. How jurors were able to compare projects as different as the above-mentioned 1 % Solution and Morphosis’ San Francisco Federal Building (which finally won the prize) will probably ultimately remain their secret. The editors were not able to structure the contents really convincingly in the book either. “Star architecture” and eco-projects that were as well-known as they were well-meant alternate with visions of the future that have hardly been published hitherto, projects with a social and essentially ecological focus are all mixed up together. And yet the attentive reader will keep coming across details and ideas that have real potential for the future and explode inflexible intellectual schemes.
Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the textual contributions to the book. The editors have brought together texts by some of the most eminent guiding intellectual forces in the fields of economics and ecology: Klaus Töpfer, Saskia Sassen, William McDonough and Ken Yeang, to name only a few. But there is a lot of old and familiar material in their contributions: the future of sustainability lies in the cities, sustainability must move from being a niche-based to a mass phenomenon, ethics and aesthetics are converging increasingly. All this is as correct as it is lacking in concreteness.
Ultimately Architecture of Change reflects one quality of architecture that is also a dilemma: architecture does not depend on measurable factors alone, but also on emotions, subjective perception and a large number of unwritten rules. And on top of all that, it is becoming increasingly complex. So who would be prepared to judge whether the projects presented here actually are as sustainable as their creators say they are? Is someone measuring the actual energy requirements or asking users about their experiences? You will look in vain for empirical insights of this kind in Architecture of Change, as you would in most similar publications. But anyone not expecting any such answers here will still find that this book provides a representative survey of all the fields in which architects are working on a better future.