The built environment and modern architecture consume energy and produce waste, which are critical to combating climate change. For this reason, a stronger dose of research could be quite helpful. There was a time when sustainable development also meant economic benefits or constant economic growth. So it wasn't as we know it today - namely an environmentally friendly development.
Research for modern architecture
The change in meaning is due to the 1987 report “Our Common Future,” chaired by then Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. The report included social scientists, natural scientists, industrialists, environmentalists and policy makers. They emerged from their silos to talk to each other and understand how peoplechanging global environment. The report helped such collaborative processes, alongside the idea of treating environment and development as one issue.
In some areas it quickly became clear that interdisciplinary work was essential to understand environmental changes and to mitigate or adapt to their effects. Confirming a human cause for climate change required joint efforts by meteorologists, oceanographers, and geographers, among others. To replace the ozone-depleting chemicals in spray cans and refrigerators, chemists had to work with product designers. However, other areas have not yet made much progress on their interdisciplinary path.
In a project convened by the journal and the Convergent Behavioral Science Initiative at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, an international group of architects, designers and engineers spent a year with behavioral scientists to study how their disciplines could work better together. Along with governments, industry and individuals, the built environment consumes energy and produces waste. This is also important for sustainability. As the Nature Sustainability Report says, it can be difficult to collaborate effectively and learn from each other. However, given the planetary situation, the costs of not doing this are much higher.
Scientific perspectives
Behavioral research therefore has an existing and essential relationship with the built environment. We need to study how people live, work and move to create livable buildings and cities. However, the group noted that there is room for closer collaboration on sustainability. The report is an agenda for collaborative research. Possible questions would be how architects and designers make decisions. To what extent can behavioral science be applied to sustainable design and modern architecture in other contexts? Do architects feel obliged to promote responsible use of energy?
Interdisciplinary work requires careful communication and trust building. As the example of the definition of sustainable development shows, disciplines have their own languages and can interpret terms differently.
Lessons for interdisciplinarity can also be drawn from the “science wars” of the mid-1990s, a period in which the relationship between scientists and sociologists concerned with the way research is conducted is strained. Part of the ambition of sociologists of science is to provide researchers with a mirror to highlight possible deficiencies in their methods. However, some eminent researchers viewed these studies as an intervention and believed that scientists had little to learn from them.
One way to reduce disciplinary tensions could be to emphasize that sustainability requires behavior change at all levels. Accordingly, this calls for more research across all sectors. For example, governments often interact with independent researchers who study how policy can be improved, including how government itself needs to adapt to advance sustainability more effectively.
Similarly, business schools create such case studies about how companies can adapt to facilitate this change. Behavioral science could help all of us – individuals and communities – change our behavior, whether it's taking more public transport or just turning the heating down a little.
