Do we actually need everything we’re building anew?

In a moment where our planet is trying to survive a climate catastrophe, how does the construction industry contribute to the crisis? In other words, do we actually need so many new buildings? The built environment and construction sector accounts for almost 40% of global carbon emissions, yet the world is witnessing a surge in new constructions and establishment of entire new cities from scratch. Urbanization might not be the friendliest of human-kind processes to nature and accordingly impacts climate. But how can we, at this very critical moment, do better in understanding how the built environment affects climate change.

Maybe one way – among many –would be to look at the existing built tissue as the prime asset, make sure it is best utilized for its inhabitants and for the climate it lives within, and only build new for what we actually need. But do we have the tools for that? Can we maintain what has been already built to serve the needs of our societies today? Can our built heritage – not necessarily old – sustain itself in the face of major demographic and climatic changes? I don’t claim to have a definite answer, but for sure we need to learn ways to do so. And that makes me question, what do we actually learn, when it comes to architecture; the art and science of ‘buildings’.

Through five years of architectural education, I learned many things about the process of initiating a new building. Starting from conceptualizing an imaginary mass to actually calculating the structural load of my design to-become. Throughout different phases of this education, most projects had the same start point: a blank page – aka – an empty plot of land. Over and over, the process in its core was basically the same with minor iterations, maybe a bit of change in scale from a residential villa to a public building or even maybe a housing complex, luckily sometimes there’d be a bit of context. It became the most familiar and comfortable process.

Sadly – I must say – it was very rare that we’d be subjected to the real challenge, working within the existing built. An entirely different thinking process that requires research and understanding of multiple complex layers of the context, and the communities that inhabit it. Not just the tangible layers, but also the intangible ones. Where the act of intervention would be questioned and needs to be justified. Little knowledge did we have and even less tools acquired as young architects, going out for practice.

That being said, I’m thinking, should architects be continuously trained to think, and accordingly produce new buildings – only? Can a generation of calibers who only fit a specific scope of practice that is compelled towards financialized models of architecture and urbanism, help save this planet?

Of course this poses wider and wider questions, but we might as well, pause and think, why are building anew, while neglecting what we already have?.

Written by:Salma Belal