XIX Convención Científica
de Ingeniería y Arquitectura
Palacio de convenciónes de la Habana
27 november 2018
The Language of Sustainability:
a “Metamodern” Framework
Abstract | Sustainable development has often been described as the encounter of economical, ecological and social dimensions. However, since the turn of the Century, increasing attention has been given to the cultural premises of sustainability. Architecture should be at the center of the discourse, being structurally dependent from all these intertwining factors. Research is well started on developing technical means to attain a viable ecological practice. Nonetheless, not enough reflection appears to have been done on the cultural potential of architecture in the strive toward sustainability. The modernist and post-modernist practices of the last Century were intrinsically unsustainable. Today, designers are required to overcome this dialectic by defining a new language. Possible cues for further debate come from various sources. The essay explores the potential for a new language by focusing on the concepts of “cultural sustainability”, “mentalization” and “metamodernity”, this latter as brought to academic attention by scholars T. Vermeulen and R. van den Akker. Metamodernism is a category created to describe some recent developments in art, literature and cinema that defy well established schemes of modernist and post-modernist aesthetic, in search for a more sensible and, arguably, sustainable way to express the present. Development of new materials and construction techniques remains essential to respond to economical and ecological issues. However, it is the author’s opinion that bringing to the table some critical new ideas from arts and social sciences will help architects to develop a language that embodies the environmental challenge, instead of suffering it as an additional layer of sophistication and constrain.
andrea valentini 