The Carbon Leadership Forum recently launched its Carbon Smart Building initiative with this bold objective: “We envision a thriving global building industry that safely stores billions of tons of carbon in the built environment every year and makes new and existing buildings carbon neutral in their operation. To realize this vision, we propose to lead the global building industry to transform the built environment worldwide from a carbon source to a carbon sink, by connecting network partners with diverse expertise to execute a coordinated strategy and action plan.” In conversation with Chris Magwood of the Endeavour Centre, we discuss how this industry-wide transformation would look, and in which cases it is already under way.

In almost all areas of human activity, including architecture, we are now searching for means to achieve carbon neutrality. Cutting the so-called operational greenhouse gas emissions by lowering a building’s energy demands and using renewable energy sources is definitely a good course of actio...

Can architecture speak to us? Communication as one of the functions of architecture was the main focus of the postmodern discourse, as well as the very first Venice Architecture Biennale in 1980. We spoke of the subsequently divergent definitions of postmodernism with architect and theorist Léa‑Catherine Szacka.

Czech architects, who had already been developing postmodern approaches in their work since the 1970s, considered the term postmodernism misleading and basically forbidden, much like many foreign architects. Whether they demonstrated postmodern strategies being consciously inspired by western architecture, or indirectly through their own exploration, remains a question. Though their postmodern approaches assumed subversive ironic meanings, they were social gestures and environmental calls, too. After 1989, also under the influence of critical regionalism, the terms new modernism, neofunctionalism, or simply functionalism—signifying an uninterrupted connection with the interwar tradition—were established to describe the work of these architects. As a result, there’s still some confusion about what should actually be considered the legacy of the Czech postmodern architectural heritage.

Jan Mach and Jan Vondrák, founders of Mjölk architecture office in Liberec, are very much influenced by the landscape around the foothills of the Jizerské Mountains and the Ještěd Ridge. They attended university there, and they still live and work there today. Their long term focus on architectural interventions in nature was predetermined by the surrounding setting. As a result, they built several lookout structures on nearby hilltops. In our interview, we discussed the ways in which architecture should enter open landscapes, how we should react when these structures cause controversy, and how generosity and joy are essential parts of the job.