Moshe Safdie What makes a building unique

June 5, 2008

Video: TedTalks

The average home, in a sense, is much the same design that reared it’s ugly head some 8 or 10,000 years ago… little more than a box with windows and a couple of doors. The better new breed of housing, on the other hand, is where the living space is well thought out and takes into account sustainability, energy efficiency and the dynamics of how we live and work. The other thing that mystifies me, about the way we build our homes, is the fact, that they are not built to last, and are filled with toxic paints, carpets and a host of other such materials.

Another thing, related to the durability of our homes, is something that’s often seen in areas of tornadoes, tropical storms and hurricanes, where houses disassemble, every time they are struck by these weather events, it’s an inane way to construct homes and is very much a phoney capitalist consumer mentality… surely there are better ventures for business to get into, surely there are better ways to use our limited resources and provide employment opportunities… if it were up to me, I would suggest that the interest of humankind, would be better served by making sure all our eggs are not in one basket, all it would take to finish our race, is one decent size asteroid and if you think that’s unlikely, do a search in Google Earth for asteroid craters.

Anyway, getting back to the video, having had a Norwegian trained Architect for a mother, who had a passionate hatred of ill thought out ‘little boxes’, I’m a huge fan of well designed and built homes and buildings in general as seen in this video.



Written by Beam · Filed Under Building, People, Sustainability 

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