Architecture hasn't lost it's magic but the challange of sustainable architecture is more complex than ever.

Over two decades of an intense career as practicing architect and some years as teacher and tutor in architecture changed my view on architecture. In the early years my focus was more on the general design quality. Introduced to Passive House design in the late nineties, I realised the urgency for more energy effcient and ecological design, leading to a series of Passive House projects and low energy developments.

Whilst the Passive House standard is a reasonable and achievable practical concept, it is more or less a technological standard focused on energy conservation achieved by air-tightness and heat-recovery systems. But sustainable architecture in particular in the public sector should reach beyond mere technology. My involvement as project architect in the Building Schools for the Future scheme confronted me with educational aspects of sustainable design.  Sustainability is not so much a technological challenge; it is an educational, behavioural, cultural and philosophical challenge and where possible architecture must contribute, must provoke and overcome conventions.

'Sustainability can reintroduce integrity into architecture' (Rab Bennets), this is possible with a truly holistic approach towards sustainable design. To achieve integrity in twenty-first century architecture, it needs an educational and social concept as it needs a much stronger, serioues and honest consideration of preserving and supporting the natural environment. An architecture which doesn’t support nature will in longer terms not support our survival on ‘Spaceship Earth’. Architecture should encourages us to reconnect with nature, to interact physically, mentally and spiritually. Architecture for body and soul.