An architectural sustainment involves going beyond the design of buildings with lower ecological impacts. Good design should always produce the healthiest, most energy and water efficient building appropriate to its location out of the most local, plentiful and renewable, durable and repairable, recycled and recyclable, low polluting and non-toxic materials and building techniques. No architect worthy of the name would feel satisfied with any design that did not attempt to do all this.
However all these minimisations of ecological impact can be quickly undone if that building houses unsustainable activities. An architectural sustainment goes beyond ecological impact minimisation by designing buildings that facilitate and promote more sustainable ways of living and working.
Architects who design sustainments admit that all architectural designs sustain certain lifestyles and workpractices rather than others. No building is a neutral empty space, able to be filled with anything. Buildings do not determine what happens in them, but all built forms make certain activities more comfortable than others. For example, living rooms can be designed not only to make passive solar gains but to create daylighting conditions that make watching television in the day difficult.
Sustainment architects acknowledge that part of the responsibility of their professional expertise lies in making judgements about which everyday activities should be encouraged and which should be discouraged. They use their skills to convince clients that airconditioning, double garages and insinkerators are not desirable and that 'sailing' the building in different ways to suit changing weather conditions, catching public transport, and separating waste and recycling grey water are desirable.
These sorts of architects are generally much more creative than your average architect, relishing the challenges of their principled practice and earning the respect of their clients. They are however humble about their efforts, recognising that their designs are never once-and-for-solutions. Such architects retain a sense of responsibility for what they design, returning to their buildings at regular intervals throughout their careers to monitor them and offer suggestions about how to enhance a building's more sustainable aspects and repair or remove its less sustainable ones. Their buildings are always very legible structures with clear documentation about how best to sustain, modify or disassemble the structure.
