Sustainability

摘要

For architects working in the private sector, it's always hard to push the sustainability angle. Clients, it would seem, are more than happy to pay lip service to it during planning stages as leverage in negotiations, but when asked to put the money where their mouth is, it tends to become the subject of value engineering exercises where their benefits are watered down or removed altogether. Sustainability may have to meet current regulation, but beyond that it can be just a bargaining tool; to be used and discounted as profit driven needs see fit. The problem for the architect is how do you really sell it to the hard-nosed developer? When there is no long-term interest in the maintenance of a property beyond the initial sale, the benefits of sustainable construction seem somewhat moot points.