2 Green materials and adaptation

Solar panels, for example, long touted as a way of providing solar energy to buildings, have a high-tech quality which is not merely visual. These panels, as presently produced, are damaging because, geometrically rigid as they are, they cannot easily be re-sized or adapted, so cannot play their role in an adaptive process which makes buildings harmonious, structure-preserving, and internally well-adapted as each element is shaped and fitted to neighboring elements. Similar things can be said of many present-day high-technical elements.

The essential thing about a living architecture is not the greenness of its materials but the capacity of its materials to form living structure in the complex, geometric, life-affirming sense that has been demonstrated in this book. That requires a different kind of thinking, a determination to focus without wavering on this aspect of their adaptive performance.

#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/16 Continuous invention of new materials and techniques#