K
Klaus Philipsen
Guest
- Thread Author
- #1
Missing Guardrails and Signposts
There has been a lot of talk about the missing guardrails that would keep government in check and democracy intact. However, there is less discussion about the suddenly missing guideposts and milestones that disappeared overnight. Professionals who are guided not only by rules, codes, and regulations but also by societal values.
Developers rely on these frameworks to prioritize and direct their projects. Uncertainty, confusion, and ambiguity caused by the current blitzkrieg on the status quo are the enemies of a safe environment for investment.
The tectonic shifts in Washington have removed many markers that design professionals also use to ensure they are on the right path. If objectives such as sustainability, carbon footprint, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are suddenly declared undesirable and obsolete, it is as disorienting as disappearing highway signs, malfunctioning GPS. Withdrawing funding for certain work is like the gas stations along a planned journey have been removed.
Just soldiering on isn't an option. The last time climate change and "woke" policies appeared in the crosshairs of the federal administration, local and state governments doubled down on implementing these policies. This time, with the funding sledgehammer and edicts that reach down to the local level and even to private projects which are dependent on grants, subsidies it will be more difficult. Regardless of where we operate, a wide range of our projects will be deeply affected, from transportation to school construction, healthcare, and housing. From "reconnecting communities grants" to "green infrastructure" projects, "alternative transportation" and resilience programs aimed at fortifying buildings against storms, floods, or fire. Even projects without public funding at all will be influenced by tariffs and trade policies. Universities will be affected. Hardly anybody will espace the need to reposition, recalibrate and find new orientation. There is risk and opportunity in that.
Societal Values and the big schism
It took our professions half a century or so to recognize that hidden undercurrents of our society were not always aligned with the country's proclaimed ideals. Realizing that our professions have, intentionally or not, assisted or enabled exclusion, and an environment that frequently is inequitable, unhealthy, unsustainable and not contributing to our well-being disorienting for contributors and shapers of the built environment who had too often seen themselves as the good guys. It may be tempting for some to go back to the old ways.
Thus, the realization that the system is in many ways "broken" has not universally fostered long-term global thinking or openness to diversity, equity, and inclusion or to relating projects to their societal and natural settings Easier to put the blame of all diagnosed ills at the foot of the messengers and attribute the failings to political correctness which supposedly bloated regulations and blame woke-ism, "a green new deal" and DEI for that has gone wrong.
The real issues aren't woke-ism and DEI
For anyone admitting that the state of the built environment isn't all that glorious, an analysis of the problems has to go deeper than those trigger words swimming on the surface. Unhappiness with the status quo is not limited to griping older white males who lost influence over boards and leadership roles. For many younger people of diverse background the status quo had left behind far too many in disinvested inner city neighborhoods or in equally forgotten countryside hollers, too much of the infrastructure is crumbling and too high has climbed the cost of housing.
Anyone dealing with the complex thicket of regulations with have to admit that even the environmental landmark laws of the 1960s mandating clean air, clean water, and environmental protection have degenerated into a dance of large teams of specialists needed to navigate and produce environmental impact statements (EIS) that are thicker than old-style big city phone books, without significantly improving the projects. Even local zoning has become so byzantine that specialty zoning lawyers and expediters are needed maneuver a project through the labyrinth of permitting and still finding it at times mired in lengthy litigation.
Complaints about insufficiently skilled graduates from architecture, planning and engineering schools are common sometimes accompanied by musings whether political correctness has replaced creativity and basic skills.
Stuck in between such findings and dictatorial edicts which seem to make things rather worse, the path forward is so shrouded in fog that many are torn between withdrawal, turning with the prevailing winds or even emigrating with some celebrating that finally the status quo is being broken. But blowing up the entire existing system without any idea what should come next doesn't seem a prudent option, either.
In the chaos a consideration of the foundational values of our professions might help.
History and the foundational values of the design professions
When the wayfinders are removed, a compass, a North Star and the long view provide direction. The long view back to antiquity and philosophy is one source of guidance. Architects have learned about Vitruvius and his "Ten Books on Architecture", typically summarized in just one sentence: A building must be useful, solid, and beautiful. Vitruvius expresses this in a list of nouns:
Architecture depends on order, arrangement, eurythmy, symmetry, propriety, and economy (Vitruvius, *de architectura*).
In Vitruvius' elaboration of these terms, it becomes clear that that architecture has never been a strictly technical or transactional affair, nor has it ever been pure art. Expressed in more modern terms: Design is more than "form follows function" and more than a data-driven derivative that can just as easily be produced by AI; it isn't l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake) as the product of an isolated and "absolute" creative individual either.
Nor are Vitruvius' metrics just a matter that is in the eye of the beholder which would be pure relativism. Aristotle's ethics state that all action is futile without moral virtue. Thomas of Aquinas a philosopher and foundational figure of modern thought, took ethics further by proposing that humans possess an innate understanding of basic, invariable moral principles independent of the current powers in charge.
These historical guideposts are not as far removed from our time as it may seem. Natural law, as concept is included in the US Constitution as inalienable rights. Natural law applied to the built environment lead to the 2024 European Court of Human Rights decision that a safe climate is a human right.
Before and during WWII, Hannah Arendt saw the dissolution of ethics and human rights in the grip of totalitarianism and wrote extensivley about how this became possible. She identified a vital link between an authoritarian figure and the actions of regular people. The two cannot be considered separately—a link Plato already explained in his dialogue The Republic. Real autocracy can't happen without people enabling it.
Experience as a guide
Experience is another guide. Cognitive bias shows that facts do not change minds but feelings (and experiences) do. Which explains why society is so divided in spite of unrefutable facts. We tend to act based on the values we were brought up with plus our experiences as adults. Using this paradigm I want to share a few of my own experiences as a design professional that refined my professional ethics over 50 years of practice.
Diversity: Starting in the 1970s, I practiced for ten years in Germany and England before coming to the U.S. Once here and working in a larger multidisciplinary team I noticed right away how many more women were participating in leading roles in meetings and decision-making, how many colleagues and clients came from different cultures and races, and how this diverse makeup enriched the approach to our project. I saw that differing opinions were welcomed, in contrast to the "I am right, therefore you are wrong" approach I had often encountered in German discussions surrounding historic preservation, urban renewal, or transportation. I do not want to go back to the binary adversarial thinking.
What is the role of an architect? In the U.S., many people upon hearing that I am an architect, brought up Ayn Rand's "Fountainhead", of which I had never heard. I then read the book which glorifies the image of the architect as a lone hero imposing personal convictions against societal objections. I engaged in the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and worked hard on shifting this public perception towards an understanding that architecture is more than just aesthetically pleasing buildings, just as Vitruvius had said. As "a community architect" I advanced projects on the notion that architecture is not only a team sport but also requires consideration of the community beyond the building and its lot. Architects shape the built environment in many ways, they have to be consensus builder not only among the many disciplines of a design team but also between the community and the developer.
Professional organizations: In the old world I had been a local council member trying to implement preservation, revitalization and traffic calming. Here professional organizations helped me to expand those notions. I became a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), later of the Urban Land Institute (ULI), and Lambda Alpha International (LAI). These organizations represent hundreds of thousands of architects, engineers, developers, and land-use professionals. I attended local, national, and international conferences, not only to obtain their continued education credits but also to sharpen my ability to place projects in a larger societal context. As noted, guidance from these organizations shifted over time. It isn't as precise as "exit for downtown DC in 1/2 mile"; instead, it functions as a travel guide that provides information for selecting one’s destination in the first place. I am looking to these organizations now for guidance and having the backs of professionals in the middle of turmoil.
Intentional development: Short-term project-based profit focus gave developers a bad name in the public eye. But many developers have a longer-term view that considers operational costs, potential barriers for users, and their environmental footprint. Arriving in Baltimore, I had the good fortune of working for such a concerned developer who didn't just "do" a project because he could. Instead he embedded his projects in the larger transformation of this post-industrial legacy city, mostly through adaptive re-use of industrial buildings which turned out to be also excellent place-making strategies. He was not alone. Enlightened developers planners and architects could be found across America, reviving the once desolate downtown of LA, repositioning Portland, Oregon, and revitalizing Detroit. As a participant in ULI's roving Advisory Service Panels I worked side by side with developers, marketing experts and design professionals in places across America. Participation, inclusion, sustainability, fair housing, adaptive reuse, resilience, and transit-oriented development was the North Star for those consultations.
Inequality: Working with Enterprise Foundation which was founded by Jim Rouse, a well known socially conscious developer, I saw firsthand how disinvested and neglected some of Baltimore's inner city neighborhoods are. For 30 some years I have continued to work on rehabilitation, infill and better housing in areas that many call ghettos . In that work I see not only the homeless, behaviorally challenged, addicted, traumatized, jobless or school drop-outs in the streets but also civil rights activists and organizers fighting the astonishing discrepancies in income, health and education we can find between two adjacent zip-codes.
Smart Growth: Coming to the US from densely populated and strictly planned Europe, I was struck by how wasteful land use here often is and how little attention was paid to making comfortable, human-scaled places. As a subcommittee member of Maryland's Growth Commission I learned that smart growth could curtail sprawl and its many unintended consequences. Diverse mobility is a must for better growth. Participating in a few annual meetings of the National Transportation Research Board I saw the connections between land use and transportation, carbon emissions, public participation, mobility, inclusion, equity and healthy communities. Fixing our older mixed use, diverse communities creates far better outcomes than continued outward sprawl of bedroom suburbs.
Teaching: As on and off adjunct faculty at local universities, I have seen how architecture and urban design interacted with the community and how these departments began to attract more women and minorities. I saw how new drafting, modeling, and GIS technologies changed the approach to design by allowing consideration of more options and scenarios and a better inclusion of the societal context into study projects. Traveling with students abroad fostered the insight how many issues we share around the world. Teaching young people prevents the common retro-orientation of older age with its bias that things were better in the past. It is the younger generations and their that design professionals need to consider.
What is the personal North Star?
In this quest for lifelong learning a foundation of undeniable truths emerged. As I wrote in a previous article, information, reason, and knowledge are the pillars of enlightenment. Still, facts will not change minds. Even in science facts are rarely absolute, less so in the design of the built environment. We have erred in the past and we will err again in the future. Practicing design, engineering, construction, development, or even transportation cannot occur entirely free of prejudice, opinion, emotion, or ideology. Retreat into an "ivory tower" is not an option. In the current fog the recognition that much has to change is as important as maintaining one's core values.
Nevertheless, the distinction between fact and fiction is not trivial for buildings, transportation, and land planning. Gender-neutral bathrooms, paper versus plastic, filament bulbs versus LED, gas-fired furnaces versus heat pumps are only flotsam in the bigger current of history where the built environment will last longer than cultural trends, technologies or fashions. What we build today will affect generations to come, far beyond the four-year election cycle and the momentary trends. Our projects shouldn't be simply fashionable throw-away packaging but must provide lasting value without mortgaging the future at the same time. No matter how much reform is needed, the future does not reside in the past. Our North Star will not point us backwards.
In the journey forward we have to take into account a few things that appear to be pretty certain:
Since buildings and transportation are the biggest emitters of carbon, how we design our buildings, towns, and cities is critical for the livability of the world in which our children and grandchildren will live. Responsible action requires not only reducing emissions but also developing structures that can withstand increased weather and climate adversities, thus forming a viable environment for decades to come. Sustainability, therefore, cannot be a metric we toss aside. Only sustainable products will make us competitive, from HVAC systems, elevators, glazing systems, to vehicles, to trains, planes and ships.
Building something may take a long time, but breaking it can occur in seconds. No matter how many reforms and adjustments we need, we should respect the efforts of others and in reforming regulations work with what generations before us refined over time.
Knowledge cannot be undone. Once it is known that the earth is round, there is no going back—at least not for long. Some things are simply not a matter of opinion. This is especially true in our professions.
Authoritarian rule cannot succeed without followers, nobody should follow with critical reflection and applying values. Certainly not our professional organizations. They will be more important than ever to provide guidance. Our professions are not powerless. We will still design the future. We still possess the creative power to imagine and design functional, beautiful, healthy and sustainable places. Building and construction will remain vital pillars of the economy and are a large part of a plausible narrative of the world of tomorrow.
The North Star
No ideology or party affiliation can change the basic facts. The responsibility of professionals for creating an environment designed to last for decades requires acknowledgment of reality.
Professionals active in the built environment—whether we teach about it, finance it, develop it, build it, or regulate it—must continue to gather information, apply the facts, develop perspective, be creative, take risk and use our values as a North Star. It will take courage, and persistence.
This way, we can still chart a responsible course on the right side of history, regardless of the surrounding confusion.
Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
There has been a lot of talk about the missing guardrails that would keep government in check and democracy intact. However, there is less discussion about the suddenly missing guideposts and milestones that disappeared overnight. Professionals who are guided not only by rules, codes, and regulations but also by societal values.
[td]
[/td]
[td]
Firm in the center of turmoil: The North Star (Image: NASA)
[/td]The tectonic shifts in Washington have removed many markers that design professionals also use to ensure they are on the right path. If objectives such as sustainability, carbon footprint, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are suddenly declared undesirable and obsolete, it is as disorienting as disappearing highway signs, malfunctioning GPS. Withdrawing funding for certain work is like the gas stations along a planned journey have been removed.
Just soldiering on isn't an option. The last time climate change and "woke" policies appeared in the crosshairs of the federal administration, local and state governments doubled down on implementing these policies. This time, with the funding sledgehammer and edicts that reach down to the local level and even to private projects which are dependent on grants, subsidies it will be more difficult. Regardless of where we operate, a wide range of our projects will be deeply affected, from transportation to school construction, healthcare, and housing. From "reconnecting communities grants" to "green infrastructure" projects, "alternative transportation" and resilience programs aimed at fortifying buildings against storms, floods, or fire. Even projects without public funding at all will be influenced by tariffs and trade policies. Universities will be affected. Hardly anybody will espace the need to reposition, recalibrate and find new orientation. There is risk and opportunity in that.
Societal Values and the big schism
It took our professions half a century or so to recognize that hidden undercurrents of our society were not always aligned with the country's proclaimed ideals. Realizing that our professions have, intentionally or not, assisted or enabled exclusion, and an environment that frequently is inequitable, unhealthy, unsustainable and not contributing to our well-being disorienting for contributors and shapers of the built environment who had too often seen themselves as the good guys. It may be tempting for some to go back to the old ways.
Thus, the realization that the system is in many ways "broken" has not universally fostered long-term global thinking or openness to diversity, equity, and inclusion or to relating projects to their societal and natural settings Easier to put the blame of all diagnosed ills at the foot of the messengers and attribute the failings to political correctness which supposedly bloated regulations and blame woke-ism, "a green new deal" and DEI for that has gone wrong.
The real issues aren't woke-ism and DEI
For anyone admitting that the state of the built environment isn't all that glorious, an analysis of the problems has to go deeper than those trigger words swimming on the surface. Unhappiness with the status quo is not limited to griping older white males who lost influence over boards and leadership roles. For many younger people of diverse background the status quo had left behind far too many in disinvested inner city neighborhoods or in equally forgotten countryside hollers, too much of the infrastructure is crumbling and too high has climbed the cost of housing.
[td]
[/td]
[td]
Left behind in crumbling neighborhoods (Photo: Philipsen)
[/td]Anyone dealing with the complex thicket of regulations with have to admit that even the environmental landmark laws of the 1960s mandating clean air, clean water, and environmental protection have degenerated into a dance of large teams of specialists needed to navigate and produce environmental impact statements (EIS) that are thicker than old-style big city phone books, without significantly improving the projects. Even local zoning has become so byzantine that specialty zoning lawyers and expediters are needed maneuver a project through the labyrinth of permitting and still finding it at times mired in lengthy litigation.
Complaints about insufficiently skilled graduates from architecture, planning and engineering schools are common sometimes accompanied by musings whether political correctness has replaced creativity and basic skills.
Stuck in between such findings and dictatorial edicts which seem to make things rather worse, the path forward is so shrouded in fog that many are torn between withdrawal, turning with the prevailing winds or even emigrating with some celebrating that finally the status quo is being broken. But blowing up the entire existing system without any idea what should come next doesn't seem a prudent option, either.
In the chaos a consideration of the foundational values of our professions might help.
History and the foundational values of the design professions
When the wayfinders are removed, a compass, a North Star and the long view provide direction. The long view back to antiquity and philosophy is one source of guidance. Architects have learned about Vitruvius and his "Ten Books on Architecture", typically summarized in just one sentence: A building must be useful, solid, and beautiful. Vitruvius expresses this in a list of nouns:
[td]
[/td]
[td]
Ethics, Natural Law and a North Star
[/td]In Vitruvius' elaboration of these terms, it becomes clear that that architecture has never been a strictly technical or transactional affair, nor has it ever been pure art. Expressed in more modern terms: Design is more than "form follows function" and more than a data-driven derivative that can just as easily be produced by AI; it isn't l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake) as the product of an isolated and "absolute" creative individual either.
Nor are Vitruvius' metrics just a matter that is in the eye of the beholder which would be pure relativism. Aristotle's ethics state that all action is futile without moral virtue. Thomas of Aquinas a philosopher and foundational figure of modern thought, took ethics further by proposing that humans possess an innate understanding of basic, invariable moral principles independent of the current powers in charge.
These historical guideposts are not as far removed from our time as it may seem. Natural law, as concept is included in the US Constitution as inalienable rights. Natural law applied to the built environment lead to the 2024 European Court of Human Rights decision that a safe climate is a human right.
Before and during WWII, Hannah Arendt saw the dissolution of ethics and human rights in the grip of totalitarianism and wrote extensivley about how this became possible. She identified a vital link between an authoritarian figure and the actions of regular people. The two cannot be considered separately—a link Plato already explained in his dialogue The Republic. Real autocracy can't happen without people enabling it.
Experience as a guide
Experience is another guide. Cognitive bias shows that facts do not change minds but feelings (and experiences) do. Which explains why society is so divided in spite of unrefutable facts. We tend to act based on the values we were brought up with plus our experiences as adults. Using this paradigm I want to share a few of my own experiences as a design professional that refined my professional ethics over 50 years of practice.
Diversity: Starting in the 1970s, I practiced for ten years in Germany and England before coming to the U.S. Once here and working in a larger multidisciplinary team I noticed right away how many more women were participating in leading roles in meetings and decision-making, how many colleagues and clients came from different cultures and races, and how this diverse makeup enriched the approach to our project. I saw that differing opinions were welcomed, in contrast to the "I am right, therefore you are wrong" approach I had often encountered in German discussions surrounding historic preservation, urban renewal, or transportation. I do not want to go back to the binary adversarial thinking.
[td]
[/td]
[td]
Ayn Rand's Howard Roark in the movies: Lone hero
[/td]What is the role of an architect? In the U.S., many people upon hearing that I am an architect, brought up Ayn Rand's "Fountainhead", of which I had never heard. I then read the book which glorifies the image of the architect as a lone hero imposing personal convictions against societal objections. I engaged in the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and worked hard on shifting this public perception towards an understanding that architecture is more than just aesthetically pleasing buildings, just as Vitruvius had said. As "a community architect" I advanced projects on the notion that architecture is not only a team sport but also requires consideration of the community beyond the building and its lot. Architects shape the built environment in many ways, they have to be consensus builder not only among the many disciplines of a design team but also between the community and the developer.
Professional organizations: In the old world I had been a local council member trying to implement preservation, revitalization and traffic calming. Here professional organizations helped me to expand those notions. I became a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), later of the Urban Land Institute (ULI), and Lambda Alpha International (LAI). These organizations represent hundreds of thousands of architects, engineers, developers, and land-use professionals. I attended local, national, and international conferences, not only to obtain their continued education credits but also to sharpen my ability to place projects in a larger societal context. As noted, guidance from these organizations shifted over time. It isn't as precise as "exit for downtown DC in 1/2 mile"; instead, it functions as a travel guide that provides information for selecting one’s destination in the first place. I am looking to these organizations now for guidance and having the backs of professionals in the middle of turmoil.
Intentional development: Short-term project-based profit focus gave developers a bad name in the public eye. But many developers have a longer-term view that considers operational costs, potential barriers for users, and their environmental footprint. Arriving in Baltimore, I had the good fortune of working for such a concerned developer who didn't just "do" a project because he could. Instead he embedded his projects in the larger transformation of this post-industrial legacy city, mostly through adaptive re-use of industrial buildings which turned out to be also excellent place-making strategies. He was not alone. Enlightened developers planners and architects could be found across America, reviving the once desolate downtown of LA, repositioning Portland, Oregon, and revitalizing Detroit. As a participant in ULI's roving Advisory Service Panels I worked side by side with developers, marketing experts and design professionals in places across America. Participation, inclusion, sustainability, fair housing, adaptive reuse, resilience, and transit-oriented development was the North Star for those consultations.
Inequality: Working with Enterprise Foundation which was founded by Jim Rouse, a well known socially conscious developer, I saw firsthand how disinvested and neglected some of Baltimore's inner city neighborhoods are. For 30 some years I have continued to work on rehabilitation, infill and better housing in areas that many call ghettos . In that work I see not only the homeless, behaviorally challenged, addicted, traumatized, jobless or school drop-outs in the streets but also civil rights activists and organizers fighting the astonishing discrepancies in income, health and education we can find between two adjacent zip-codes.
[td]
[/td]
[td]
AIA forum 2023: "Designing for a World in Flux" (Photo: Philipsen)
[/td]Teaching: As on and off adjunct faculty at local universities, I have seen how architecture and urban design interacted with the community and how these departments began to attract more women and minorities. I saw how new drafting, modeling, and GIS technologies changed the approach to design by allowing consideration of more options and scenarios and a better inclusion of the societal context into study projects. Traveling with students abroad fostered the insight how many issues we share around the world. Teaching young people prevents the common retro-orientation of older age with its bias that things were better in the past. It is the younger generations and their that design professionals need to consider.
What is the personal North Star?
In this quest for lifelong learning a foundation of undeniable truths emerged. As I wrote in a previous article, information, reason, and knowledge are the pillars of enlightenment. Still, facts will not change minds. Even in science facts are rarely absolute, less so in the design of the built environment. We have erred in the past and we will err again in the future. Practicing design, engineering, construction, development, or even transportation cannot occur entirely free of prejudice, opinion, emotion, or ideology. Retreat into an "ivory tower" is not an option. In the current fog the recognition that much has to change is as important as maintaining one's core values.
Nevertheless, the distinction between fact and fiction is not trivial for buildings, transportation, and land planning. Gender-neutral bathrooms, paper versus plastic, filament bulbs versus LED, gas-fired furnaces versus heat pumps are only flotsam in the bigger current of history where the built environment will last longer than cultural trends, technologies or fashions. What we build today will affect generations to come, far beyond the four-year election cycle and the momentary trends. Our projects shouldn't be simply fashionable throw-away packaging but must provide lasting value without mortgaging the future at the same time. No matter how much reform is needed, the future does not reside in the past. Our North Star will not point us backwards.
[td]
[/td]
[td]
Global temperatures from 1940to 2024
That's a measurable fact.
[/td]That's a measurable fact.
- Earth's natural resources are finite except renewable energies such as wind, solar and geothermal
- The changes in climate are already severe enough to require modifications to typical building designs.
- The global population will increase by another 1–2 billion before it shrinks.
- Global migration will rather increase than decrease, unless livability is increased globally
- More people will need more energy, more mobility, more homes, and more food.
- The diversity of flora and fauna is on a perilous low.
- Technological advance will continue and accelerate even further
- Good things come from collaboration, consensus and inclusion
Since buildings and transportation are the biggest emitters of carbon, how we design our buildings, towns, and cities is critical for the livability of the world in which our children and grandchildren will live. Responsible action requires not only reducing emissions but also developing structures that can withstand increased weather and climate adversities, thus forming a viable environment for decades to come. Sustainability, therefore, cannot be a metric we toss aside. Only sustainable products will make us competitive, from HVAC systems, elevators, glazing systems, to vehicles, to trains, planes and ships.
[td]
[/td]
[td]
Floods like the one in Ashville become more frequent requiring
different design approaches (Webpage)
[/td]different design approaches (Webpage)
Knowledge cannot be undone. Once it is known that the earth is round, there is no going back—at least not for long. Some things are simply not a matter of opinion. This is especially true in our professions.
Authoritarian rule cannot succeed without followers, nobody should follow with critical reflection and applying values. Certainly not our professional organizations. They will be more important than ever to provide guidance. Our professions are not powerless. We will still design the future. We still possess the creative power to imagine and design functional, beautiful, healthy and sustainable places. Building and construction will remain vital pillars of the economy and are a large part of a plausible narrative of the world of tomorrow.
The North Star
[td]
[/td]
[td]
Urban wind-power: Antwerp, Belgium (Photo: Philipsen)
[/td]Professionals active in the built environment—whether we teach about it, finance it, develop it, build it, or regulate it—must continue to gather information, apply the facts, develop perspective, be creative, take risk and use our values as a North Star. It will take courage, and persistence.
This way, we can still chart a responsible course on the right side of history, regardless of the surrounding confusion.
Klaus Philipsen, FAIA