Ecological

COURTESY

“Ecological issues are truly urgent, and if you think about them too hard, you can become really depressed and end up in the fetal position, or simply curled up in denial like a hedgehog,” Timothy Morton wrote in their 2018 book Being Ecological. Now “really cheap,” ecological awareness, they contend, is the “awareness of unintended consequences.” What we make still matters: Morton emphasizes that “the future emerges directly from the objects we design.”

This attitude inspired the following features: Kelly Alvarez Doran considers approaches to reducing carbon; photographer Virginia Hanusik photographs at-risk landscapes in Louisiana, and the resulting images are contextualized by writer Allyn West; and Aaron Seward links a showcase of birdhouses in San Antonio to the city’s wider development patterns.

Rather than a primary focus on energy efficiency, architects should consider more holistic assessments to reduce the carbon emissions of construction.