Place and Time - Sustainable Design: The Science of Sustainability and Green Engineering - page 168

contemporary America was a factor in its failure, making it a prime target of
terrorists.
Most postcollapse assessments have agreed that the structural integrity of the
towers was sufficient well beyond the expected contingencies. However, if engi-
neers do not learn the lessons from this tragedy, they can rightfully be blamed.
And the failure will be less a failure of applying of physical sciences (withstand-
ing unforeseen stresses and strains) than a failure of imagination. Engineers have
been trained to use imagination to envision a better way. Unfortunately, now we
must imagine things that were unthinkable before September 11, 2001. Success
depends on engaging the social sciences in our planning, design, construction,
and maintenance of our projects. This will help to inform us of contingencies
not apparent when applying the physical and natural sciences exclusively.
The Pruitt-Igoe housing development was a very different type of failure. The
buildings, like the Manhattan towers, were another modernist monument. Rather
than a monument to capitalism, Pruit Igoe was supposed to be emblematic of
advances in fair housing and progress in the war on poverty. Regrettably, the
development was to become an icon of failure of imagination, especially insights
into the land ethic.
The Pruitt-Igoe fiasco occured at a time when the environmental ethos was
changing. The land ethic was both the cause and the effect of this new thinking.
Contemporary understanding of environmental quality is often associated with
physical, chemical, and biological contaminants, but in the formative years of
the environmental movement, aesthetics and other “quality of life” considera-
tions were essential parts of environmental quality. Most environmental impact
statements addressed cultural and social factors in determining whether a federal
project would have a significant effect on the environment. These included
historic preservation, economics, psychology (e.g., open space, green areas,
crowding), aesthetics, urban renewal, and the land ethic as expressed by Aldo
Leopold: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and
beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” 10
The problems that led to the premature demolition of this costly housing
experiment may have been anticipated intuitively if the designers had taken
the time to understand what people expected. There is plenty of culpability to
go around. Some blame the inability of the modern architectural style to create
livable environments for people living in poverty, largely because they “are not the
nuanced and sophisticated 'readers' of architectural space the educated architects
were.” 11 This is a telling observation and an important lesson for green designers.
We need to make sure that the use and operation of whatever is designed is
understood sufficiently well by those living with in and around it.
This transcends buildings and includes every design target (e.g. devices and
landscapes). Other sources of failure have been suggested. Design incompatibility
was almost inevitable for high-rise buildings and families with children. However,