One of the main factors contributing to climate change and global warming is architecture. The sector is accountable for about 50% of the greenhouse emissions in the country due to construction as well as the energy needed to keep buildings operational.

When it comes to climate change, building construction is a major culprit. According to the 2019 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction coordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme, the building and construction sector accounted for 36 percent of final energy use and 39 percent of energy and process-related CO2 emissions in 2018. After leveling off between 2013 and 2016, in 2018 global emissions from buildings increased for the second year in a row. In order to meet the benchmarks set by the Paris Agreement and the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Developments Goals, the report noted that the energy efficiency of buildings must be improved by 3 percent each year, a standard that will require significant and widespread effort to reach.While the architecture industry started off strong in its approach to setting benchmarks for environmental stewardship in the 1970s, Jesse Keenan, Ph.D., a lecturer at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and John F. Kennedy School of Government in Science, Technology, and Public Policy, notes that the field has now fallen behind. “At the moment, architecture is in a state of paralysis,” says Keenan. “It thought that it had gotten to this penultimate moment of environmental stewardship and sustainability, only to realize that it was fairly self-serving and that there are much bigger questions about density, affordability, accessibility, all of these other collateral social issues.” In other words, it’s not just about installing solar panels and calling it a day. “You can have an entire suburb of sustainable homes, but it’s still a suburb,” he says.