When admiring an old building's fine craftsmanship and durability, have you wondered if a new building would be similarly admired 100 years from now? Jenny Bevan is glad you are asking. A designer from the birthplace of historic preservation in the U.S., Bevan outlines how old ways hold new, sustainable solutions. Following the trend of the expanding awareness and inherent value of sustainable agriculture and local food, she recommends the use of "local architecture." Bevan repositions historic preservation from the vantage of holistic sustainability. Beyond charm and nostalgia, she illustrates what gets lost with modern design, and how some of the common practices are ultimately more expensive to taxpayers, communities and the environment. Trained in architecture at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Virginia, Jenny Bevan is one of the few contemporary designers looking to the past for sustainable building and design methods. She is also co-founded the Vision for Civic Conservation, an initiative to provide the framework of guiding principles to sustainably address progress and growth in local communities, especially their historic districts. bevanandliberatos.com This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Comments

1. Well spoken! We use our old, beautifull buildings for a very long time: that's sustainability. If we would use all our buildings at least 50 years we would make progress. And yes: you can improve installations and other features during the life-time of a building. You don't have to demolish to improve.
2. It is nice to see that the awareness of buildings lifespan grows in America, but I am afraid that the "durability" is red herring. Cause on the other side we have continously improved the technology through scrap&build approach through trial and error. It's not only about the energy, other resources are even more limited (energy is actually unlimited if we look beyond fossil fuels). So half a meter thick wall beside the massive work needs massive amount of materials, while glasswall doesn't.
   Also, not all the buildings can be adapted successfuly after 160 years.
   I work on this theme for quite some time and I think that the solution is building transformable buildings. Transformability stands between durability and scrap&build approaches which are the two extremes, and all that our economic doctrines deal with regarding optimization of resources consumption. We need to treat buildings as only temporarily finished products.
   
3. This is a joke. Let the past go!!
4. So true! My, 7 year old house has lost 3 of its 5 outside doors due to water, which in turn recruited termites!  Listen to Jenny, I added to the 170 Millions of tons of waste this year just to replace the damage that 50 cents of flashing would have fixed.  Listen to Jenny!