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Written by James Steele
Published by Thames & Hudson, 2005
Reviewed by Thomas Fisher, Assoc. AIA
Who, reading this review, wouldn’t want to support a book on
the history of ecological architecture? Too few such books exist,
and James Steele, with his Ecological Architecture: A Critical
History, deserves commendation for producing one of the most
ambitious overviews of ecological architecture I have seen. The
book covers everything from the debates over the definitions of
sustainability to an analysis of the nationalistic, socialistic,
and environmental roots of the movement to the review of the work
of a couple of dozen architects in terms of its ecological
implications. You will find a lot of information here, as well as a
wealth of illustrative material, including drawings and nicely
reproduced photographs of buildings. For that alone, you might want
this $55 book on your shelf.
But as a history of ecological architecture, the book,
unfortunately, has several shortcomings, not least of which is its
organization. At first glance, the dividing of the book into three
parts seems logical: a first part looking at common themes, a
second featuring 25 case studies of architects or topics, and a
third addressing the future of ecological architecture in the
digital age. But when you read the book, this organization leads to
repetition on one hand and fragmentation on the other. There
doesn’t seem to be any logic to the order of the chapters. Why
does Bucky Fuller come after Richard Rogers and Norman Foster or
Hassan Fathy come before Le Corbusier? Likewise the topical
chapters on subjects such as New Urbanism or Sustainability policy
seem to come out of the blue. It may simply be that a case-study
approach simply doesn’t work as a history because you end
up with 25 micro-histories that have a fair amount of general
information about the architects featured and not enough specific
information about the ecological aspects of their work.
Subtitled “a critical history,” the book also ends with a
somewhat schizophrenic view of the digital world, lauding the
efforts of architects such as Peter Eisenman for using computers to
generate fluid forms like those in nature (however unsustainable a
lot of his work might be in terms of its operation), while coming
down hard on students today for their use of electronic equipment.
Steele sees such portable technology as “the final distancing
from nature,” a rather pessimistic way of ending a book that
is otherwise about the rise of a nature-loving architecture.
We do need books like this, willing to grasp the enormous breadth
of ecological architecture. And we have to respect the tension in
our field between architects who often like to see their work
treated in a more monograph format, such as the stand-alone
profiles of architects here, and historians and theorists who try
to tie the work of many architects together into larger narratives.
This book splits the difference, with thematic narratives on either
side of a series of mini-monographs on architects. It doesn’t
quite work, but James Steele certainly put a lot of effort into
trying.
Thomas Fisher is the dean of the School of Design at the
University of Minnesota and serves on the AIA/COTE Adjunct Advisory
Group.
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