Architects, Green buildings and Climate Change

(This Article first appeared in The (Easter Cape) Herald on 22 November 2011)

Climate change is a serious threat to our continued success as a species on this planet.

Thankfully we have now developed the consensus that continuously growing human consumption and destruction are a cause for urgent concern.

Much of this continuous growth and destruction expresses itself in what we call the “built environment” The UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) tells us that buildings through their life time consume 48% of all the energy consumed on this planet in any given year. That’s a lot!

This energy is consumed during the manufacture of construction materials, the transport of these materials, the construction process, lighting the building, heating the building, cooling the building, cleaning the building, ventilating and eventually demolishing the building and carting away the rubble.

But the UNEP also tells us that good news is that buildings (compared to manufacturing, transport and others) require the least amount of cost to release the greatest impact on limiting green house gasses.

More good news is that in South Africa, Architects and other built environment designers are very well informed of the strategies that are to be employed to transform the built environment. The strategies involve creatively and innovatively addressing aspects including the following:

• Passive heating
• Orientation
• Passive cooling
• Rainwater harvest
• Grey water harvesting
• Water saving
• Promoting biodiversity
• Local building material
• Public transport
• Embodied energy in Building materials

These strategies are not new. We just now, for the first time since the industrial revolution seem to have the collective will to do something about it and to change the way we build.

Clearly, changing the way we build and employing the strategies that we know need to be employed will require innovation, design leadership and creativity.

We are therefore very fortunate that we do not live in Somalia or Southern Sudan, because in South Africa we have access to the professionals able to provide top quality innovation, design leadership and creativity.

So, what are we saying?

• Climate Change is a big Problem
• Buildings are the biggest culprit in this problem
• Building Industry urgently requires increased levels of innovation, leadership, design and creativity
• The skill set is in fact already available and ready to be mobilised.

So, what then is the problem?

The problem is that we have adopted public and corporate institutional arrangements that are unable to effectively mobilise that skill to address the challenge. In fact, at a time when we are to rely even more heavily than ever before on our Architects, innovators and designers, we have been caught up in the systematic “commoditisation” of this critical form of leadership.

In both the private and public sector, we have become increasingly obsessed with standardising procurement and “supply chain management” issues. We insist that we procure the services of an Architect to innovate new solutions for the built environment in the same way as we procure toilet paper, grass cutting services or a fleet of refuse trucks. It’s crazy! What results from this standardised procurement practice where “cost is king”, is that the services of the Architect become progressively cheaper and cheaper. The cheaper the product, the poorer the service. Simple!

We are currently doing some work in a city called Chengdu in Central West china.

From our Port Elizabeth office, Architects trained at NMMU and nurtured on the Port Elizabeth design community are doing excellent work designing innovative green buildings in a country where we hear that they plan to build 800 new cities in the next twenty years!

But why are our company’s skills and the skills of hundreds or American and European firms in such demand in China? Not because we are cheaper, not because we are faster, not because we are more compliant than the thousands of Chinese architects. No. It is because we offer innovation, creativity and design leadership. The qualities that could have been abundant among Chinese Architects, if not for the wave of aggressive cost cutting, and “industrial efficiency” that became so widespread during the years of China’s construction boom.

China’s Architects and designers are now very cheap, very fast and completely compliant, but unable to live up to the expectations of the increasingly discerning Chinese private or public sector property developer. So, the developer turns to the “West” .Very sad.

But, it’s not too late for us. We can learn from these errors South Africa still has a very strong community of Architects and other designers focussed on excellence and committed to a better built environment.

So what must we do? What action must we take?

Can I suggest the following?

• Architects: Can we please snap out of our silly obsession with fashion, Top Billing and playing to the whims of the super-rich and corporate gluttons. There is serious work to be done. We need to save the plan
• Public and Corporate developers: Can you please make peace with the fact that most of the innovation, thinking and leadership you require to “green” you property portfolio will actually come from outside your institutions from private firms of Architects and other designers. (And yes you have to set up a process more sophisticated than the ones designed to buy pencils and toilet paper to get the best out of these firms)

If we build green buildings we can save the planet. It’s as simple and as dramatic as that . Failure is not an option. We must succeed!

Mvezo

Mvezo is the birthplace of Nelson Mandela. An astonishing beautiful landscape in the remote and rural Eastern Cape.

We are very happy to accept an appointment to project manage the development of an interpretive centre overlooking the Mbashe River.

Think Local and create jobs.

(I wrote this article for Port Elizabeth's daily newspaper, The Herald, it first appeared there on 20 June 2011)

The other day I went to watch our local rugby team play at our local stadium. Some local friends and I have taken a suite at the stadium to support the local economy. So, there I was, drinking some local beer and having a good time. At half time we were brought a meal to help soak up some of the alcohol. After complimenting the waitress on the meal, I was horrified as she explained that the Thai Chicken dinner had in fact been pre-cooked in Cape Town and brought in by truck up the N2 that morning. Come On! Could this be?

This meal was creating employment for someone in a Cape Town factory kitchen? What are we thinking? No, I am not picking on the stadium management. I am sure they are doing a great job. I am picking on us, all of us who live here and who need to develop an awareness that we need to support and grow our local economy. This is where jobs and poverty reduction will come from. It is unfashionable to say this I know, but we must come to see that it is more urgent for us to take action against poverty than against global warming. We must come to see that is more urgent for us to address the local economy than to address Rhino poaching. If we allow this poverty time bomb to explode, it will take out every Rhino, every Elephant, every forest and everything that this country has built up over the centuries. It’s urgent!

I had forgotten about my Cape Town cooked rugby meal by the time the May 18 local government elections came around. But, as I listened to the campaigning, I was struck by how few ideas at all were put forward about issues impacting on the local economy. All I got was a lot of hype about killing Boers, media bias, open toilets and police brutality.

I heard no-one, contesting these elections, articulate any understanding of the challenges facing the local economy. This is odd, because local government can and should play a pivotal role in leading us out of poverty and joblessness. We must, of course, be informed by policy developed at a national or provincial level, but our strategy and tactics need to be made completely relevant to the local economy. It is not clear to me from anything I have heard from local government, what our strategy and tactics are. It seems though, that we have developed the idea that we need “outside investment” or an “export programme” to get our local economy to work. We seem to believe that we need GM to get deals that see’s it export more Hummers to Kazakhstan, or that we need to build an IDZ so we can export Aluminium to Argentinean cooldrink can fabricators! We have come to think that we will be rescued by big investment from “outside”. We believe that somehow these actions will make the poor less poor. I am sorry to say, our thinking is mistaken. In order for us to reduce poverty and create jobs, we desperately need to focus on not only on getting new money to come in, but also on how we ensure that he money that is generated here remains for as long as possible. We must work to ensure that money circulates locally as many times as possible before it vanishes to the coffers of transnational corporations in Johannesburg, Hong Kong or London. This is the challenge that our small city is facing. It is not the same as the challenges that Cape Town, Durban or Dubai are faced with. It is our own challenge. It is a distinctly local challenge and in desperate need of local thinking and local leadership.

Each of you reading this will know how in your homes and in your jobs illogical purchasing decisions are being made all the time. As transnational corporations work harder and harder to expand their global reach, we find ourselves making more and more stupid decisions. We buy Irish butter , we get our takeaway from an American hamburger chain, our cars, even those made in the metro, are in some way part of a scheme to enrich a German or Japanese corporation. We watch foreign TV. We listen to American music. Every time we purchase from these transnational corporations we are taking away from the local economy, we take away from local culture, we damage the environment through waist, emissions and packaging. But what can we do?

Perhaps the first step we must all take is to help each other understand that “localisation” (not Globalisation) of the economy is: Good for the environment, Good for job creation, Good for quality, Good for well-being. Maybe the second step could be to build consciousness through our purchasing decisions. We could buy milk from a local dairy. We could support local restaurants (avoid the chains) We could switch off the TV, watch Bay United or the EP Kings at our local stadiums. We could catch a show at the Opera House. We could buy our food at a farmer’s market. We could start a farmers market! We could grow our own food. We could sell our own food. ….I don’t know. There must be a million things we can do to localise our economy. Let’s choose one, and do it today. It’s Urgent.

A New Revolution

This Article first Appeared in the Eastern Province Herald on 7 March 2011.

Mohatma Ghandi, lead a productivity Revolution from the front, by example

President Zuma, in his State of the Nation Address explains that continued and increasingly frequent, service delivery protests are an “expression of people’s frustration at the slow pace of delivery of Municipal Services”. I am no longer sure that is all that these protests are about. It is very hard to believe that the people of Ermelo, Kwazakhele and Vosloorus are really so cross about faulty street lights, potholed roads or broken manhole covers. Does it not seem more likely that these people are angry because they are still poor, still jobless and still hungry after seventeen years of democracy? Our President prefers to avoid the unfortunate truth that poverty and joblessness are not really the fault of an inept mayor or a lazy ward councillor. In fact, poverty, it is not really a local government failure at all, but rather a much more serious, fundamental national policy failure. A failure that was born in apartheid times, but now lies at the door of the presidency and with cabinet. It is convenient, perhaps to blame local government as the “fumbling, parochial, country bumpkins”, that just don’t get what “we at National” are trying to do. But it seems unlikely that this argument will stick for very much longer.

Moeletsi Mbeki believes this growing discontent will lead to a revolutionary overthrow of the government within the next ten years. I hope that he is wrong. We have a functional, constitutional democracy that allows for orderly change of government though the ballot. We should make use of it.

What I rather argue is necessary in South Africa, is a new, defiant, revolutionary approach.  Similar, in some way, to the spontaneous, revolutionary defiance that we witnessed in the streets of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Similar to the defiance we experienced in South Africa in the seventies and eighties. But, not the political defiance which was visible to all and which made headlines every day. If we look deeper than the political defiance of South Africans during that time, we see a less reported; less understood economic and commercial defiance.  A defiance that is perhaps more interesting than the political defiance. In the seventies and eighties the poor, marginalised and the underclass set up many, many businesses, against huge odds and in contravention of the law. From humble beginnings, the poor established a multi-billion rand taxi industry with revenues to match JSE listed companies. The poor and oppressed set up a network of taverns, shebeens and spaza’s, with a national spread and convenience appeal to rival the most sophisticated food and beverage operations. The underclasses established a Professional Soccer League with attendance, viewership and advertising revenues to rival competing global sports and leisure operations. This defiant, spontaneous business revolution was almost completely overshadowed by South Africa’s political defiance.

This is the revolution that Mahatma Ghandi spoke about when he insisted all Indians spin their own cotton, thus closing down imports from Manchester. This is the revolution that Ghandi lead where ordinary Indian citizens harvested their own salt in defiance of British law. Ghandi inspired a revolution, where he led from the front and by example. Spinning his quota of cotton every day and marching 288 kilometres to “illegally” make salt at the coast. Ghandi’s approach was however, very dissimilar to the top down, central planning “productivity revolutions” of Moa Tzedung’s Great Leap Forward or Julius Nyerere’s “Ujaama”. Ghandi inspires a revolution of small business, defiantly capturing the market. Street by street. Sector by sector.

 

In South Africa this defiant, spontaneous revolution began to develop momentum in the seventies and eighties, but it never grew into its full form. I never came full circle. It seems, sadly, to have been halted, or significantly slowed, with the advent of democracy in 1994. Our defiance, in this country, has rather become characterised by things that we refuse to do and not by things that we do in fact do. “We refuse to teach the children!” “We refuse vacate the homes we have invaded?”” We refuse to be governed by the North West province!”” We refuse to tolerate these “aliens” steeling our jobs!” “We refuse to allow busses to transport people to work!”

 

How was it that we lost our pro-active spirit of defiance? Was it perhaps the election promises of jobs or the lure of tenders and BEE deals that took away our sense of urgency and defiance?  Did “Freedom” take away the zeal to “Just do it”?

Perhaps it is time that this is this defiant, spontaneous, pro-active revolution should re-ignite. A commercial revolution, a business revolution; where the poor defiantly build businesses and capture market share, even breaking the petty laws and by-laws that stand in their way of growing chickens, brewing beer or running guest houses. Perhaps the role of local government in this revolution could be to firstly not stand in the way and secondly to refrain from creating conditions that continue to favour big corporate capital. Perhaps the role of national government could be firstly to come clean to the electorate about its inability to create jobs in anywhere near the quantities required; and secondly to show leadership in re-introducing the urgency and spirit of pro-active self reliance that we have begun to lose.

Government has a choice. It can lead from the front in this revolution or it can stand back, continue doing what it is doing and thus become a victim of it.

Let us see what they do.