A longstanding interest in resourceful, “green” architectural practices has led me to examine how abstract (and often metaphorical) ideas influence and are made manifest in concrete building situations. If architects contribute to environmental degradation by designing buildings that are inefficient and unhealthy, and a pressing need exists to advance more life enhancing, sustaining practices, then perhaps concerned architects ought to engage in basic reflection as to how design problems are expressed and the environmental receptivity such expressions reveal. How are articulations of the task of architecture at the inception of a design investigation revealing of conceptions of nature and of human-environment relations? How might “enriched” descriptions influence our methods, discoveries, and sources of inspiration, and consequently the greenness of built outcomes?

In my previous professional experience, I have witnessed firsthand the transformative power of innovative, imaginative schemas that enabled designers to question preconceptions and consequently advance more profoundly green approaches to building form, organization and detail. My goal as an educator and scholar is to understand whether certain ‘types’ of generative understandings of the task of architecture have emerged in the past that have transformed design thinking, and whether new and evolving articulations can shape visions for architecture today, such that pressing issues of environmental health and quality are better addressed.