THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS FOR ARCHITECTS
What are the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s2015-2030) and how do they affect the practice of our craft within the limited capacity of our profession?. Architects are at the cutting edge of designing the built environment. The SDG blueprint starts in our own backyard. For decades there has been a gender inequality in the admission of women into Schools of Architecture and the statistics show that trend has waned little. Often young students or apprentices were employed with a very low wage level and the gender pay gap was alarming. The province of “Architecture” was also thought of as a “privileged” skillset only available to the wealthy and most people simply couldn’t afford an Architect. Architects have always sought to inspire and have certainly been responsible for some great buildings and concepts for human habitation. However, there has also been a massive shift in the global economies and the gap between “The Have’s” and “The Have Nots” has widened with little has been done to address the issues of affordable shelter, safe drinking water, managed sanitation and access to food, education & medical services. There are of course some shining examples of people trying to bring about change, but it needs a “Holistic approach” from the ground up. After all there are now 1 Billion people living in slums (that is one sixth of our humanity) and 71 million people are displaced with little access to basic shelter, managed sanitation, clean drinking water and education. Twenty six million of these displaced peoples are refugees and almost half of them are under the age of 18. Where are the Architects? Take a look at these goals. Look up the sub text and lets all start to build something useful that changes these statistics NOW! There are few professions that could have an influence on so many of these sustainable goals and that is what makes our jobs challenging and exciting.
