Originally published May 25, 2006.
A few recent news items have triaged the current status of sustainable design in architecture and urban development. In Atlanta, a model of new urbanism and smart growth has emerged in Atlantic Station, where urban lofts, high profile office space, hotel rooms, restaurants and retail have combined to fill a 138-acre plot reclaimed from an old steel mill (see property map image below).
Atlantic Station is tops on the list of the nation’s bold mixed-use/New Urbanism developments, many of which were previously featured in the Business Week article, Bringing Community to the City (also check out the slide show associated with the article).
While the model is exciting for its pedestrian scale, access to public transportation, and inclusive development, the New York Times (Building a City WIthin the City of Atlanta, photo below Tami Chappell for New York Times) suggests the paint is so fresh as to make the place sterile and national retailers dominate storefronts while boutique or local retailers have not yet built a noteable presence, making it awkward to create an image distinct from that of a transplanted suburb. The sustainable part may be right, but it’s not yet clear if the design works. (Atlantic Station is roughly only half complete at this point, and several more years of development lie ahead for the ambitious $2 billion project.)
As Atlantic Station is discovering, architects and designers are struggling to identify the place of sustainability in architectural design. Sustainability and Design seem to be playmates on a teeter-totter – linked together, but often facing trade-offs that raise one element over the other. In the case of architectural design, interest (and commercial demand) pushes toward architecture as high art, elevating Design above Sustainability. As students and professors of architecture put it in this New Tork Times article – Architects are a Lagging Indicator for Sustainable Design – the architectural profession is not yet widely geared toward producing practitioners skilled in Sustainable Design – though emerging standards for clean building technology and LEED certifications seem to be effectively demonstrating shifts in demand.
On a hopeful (albeit smaller scale) note, The Culver House in Chicago is a new glass-facade condo project emerging as a beautiful model of advanced, sustainable building materials and high design, finding a nexus of eco-building and Modernist design. (see the BusinessWeek article: Condo Development, image reproduced below.)
My hat goes off to the pioneers developing Atlantic Station and other bold mixed-use developments across the country. I hope you are successful in revolutionizing the way we live, the way we interact with our built environment, and the way we preserve and steward the built environment for future generations.
transformagination 
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