Newsletter of the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University
W. Cecil Steward, FAIA, an Outstanding Alumnus of Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, believes sustainable development, as a response to global warming, will rival the Renaissance in its effect on society.
Steward, founder and president of the Joslyn Institute for Sustainable Communities in Omaha, Neb., and dean emeritus of the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska, aired his views Nov. 18, 2008 at “Reshaping Rochester,” a lecture series hosted by the Rochester, New York, Regional Community Design Center.
He received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Texas A&M in 1956, then launched a career as an architect, educator and sustainable communities developer.
“Consumption has fueled the success of the global economy,” said Steward. “However, consumption is also the principal contributor to global warming. How can we reduce consumption and sustain the environment in balance with the quality of human life? If we look at our current footprint of consumption, it’s not pretty.”
The solution lies, he said, through two major new conversations that need to take place. Steward believes sustainable development and green design should be thought of in a much more comprehensive and complex way than it has been in our educational systems.
Secondly, he said, the discussion about health and urban form needs to be combined into one conversation.
“I believe we can design our way out of this scenario,” he said. “If you think about every product we use and consume, whether it be a comb, a car, or a home, there are resources to be used, and decisions to be made about everything we produce and consume. It’s just that we have not yet come to the condition to think about how sustainable is that decision and how something could be made differently than the way it is being made and still be useful.”
His lecture is available on the center’s website.
Steward founded The Joslyn Institute in 1996 with a mission
of education for community and environmental sustainability,
interdependent problem solving, and citizen-based participatory community visioning. The organization promotes historic preservation and the adaptive reuse of significant buildings, construction material optimization, and the creation of public policies such as establishing green design guidelines and standards into building and zoning codes.
