Green buildings are great. I worked in green building consulting for years, and I believe in the opportunity and need to look at designing and building better spaces. But what never seems to make it into the conversation is how people will actually occupy the buildings. Perhaps this is due to the chasm between the design team and the building owners and occupants.The CCI Center in the South Side of Pittsburgh is (well, was) an innovative project that was way ahead of its time. But yet time has not been so kind to the building, partially made out of straw bale construction. And to be more precise, the owners have not been so kind to it either. Because of deferred maintenance that is so common it is basically the norm these days, the roof’s hyper-insulated straw bale panels deteriorated to the point of having to be completely ripped up and replaced. The kicker is that the building occupants were well-aware of the sustained leak that caused the irreparable damage. It seems that that proverbial stitch in time would have precluded the need for the upcoming “Rent Party”.
The moral of the story here is that our societal expectation of technology that believes that everything should work seamlessly without intervention or maintenance, a) also applies to our view of buildings, in addition to cars, computers, and cell phones, and b) is completely short-sighted. Building owners are given keys to an extremely complex machine without having a plan in place to make sure it continues to purr. Who’s fault is that? Hard to say, but one thing you can be sure of is that human nature is to blame. Until we overcome our own tendencies towards sloth and neglect, we will see example after example of this same symptom. And to draw this back to the larger issue of sustainability, our inability to behave differently is a recurring theme, and is what keeps us from making progress on the sustainability front. Technology is not going to solve this problem for us, since we, the people, are the root of problem!
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