Green Building Alliance: With a career spanning more than four decades, Dr. Vivian Loftness is an internationally renowned expert in environmental and climactic design. This is not in question. She has worked from Canada to Finland to Greece as a researcher, professor, and designer, with a brief break to create the United States’ first PhD program in building science. And yet, Dr. Loftness remains a devoted student of her calling, in continual pursuit of the precisely quantified benefits that architecture brings to the world. For her unceasing curiosity and unwavering dedication to design for all, Dr. Loftness is the 2019 Legacy Award winner.
3 comments:
Wow I didn’t know such an amazing and renowned faculty member is teaching at the School of Architecture. Dr. Loftness is advancing architectural design by incorporating new fields of analysis, especially concerning the environment. I found this quote of hers to be important and inspiring: “Architects have a tendency to think that beauty comes from unusual shapes or drape. But what if a building were beautiful by accentuating the very systems that we need?” It suggests that an efficient and meaningful system is criteria for beautiful architecture too. I think this perspective is essential because as the article set this up already, global warming and environmental degradation is a serious issue that needs to be tackled. To realize this, she pioneered the Total Building Performance Evaluation Method, which assesses the systems of a building. I hope that environmental and climactic design become core elements in architectural design in general so future designers are able to prioritize sustainable structures.
I admire and agree with the philosophies and attitude Dr. Loftness has about the use of architecture. I think that it is important to make sure that the actions of and the impact society makes on the environment are minimal, but I think that it is more important now that we start learning how to better incorporate and adapt to the changed and weakened environment we have had a big part in creating. I am currently taking a School of Architecture class that talks about this idea. We have to learn how to incorporate ourselves into the ecosystem around us in order to lessen the negative impact we have on the environment. I see this idea echoed in Dr. Loftness’s quote about having architecture be more than just an aesthetic art. I am glad that a female with these beliefs has stuck around to continue teaching these sentiments to a younger generation.
Architecture is such a fascinating field to me, because form and function are so tightly intertwined, the challenge becomes discovering new ways to perform the same processes, or creating evolutions of processes and working with them to incorporate them into existing forms. Specifically, architects have to first and foremost consider how their project is going to fit into the environment they’ve been given, or how to construct the environment that they want to work in. This is something theatre designers don’t quite have to worry about in the same way that architects do. I’m fascinated by Dr. Loftness’s dual focus in art and mathematics, which honestly does make sense considering architecture seems to be a science and an art; the building needs to not only please the eye (or not, for some architects) but also perform functions and work for the user.
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