Building resilience

Building resilience is one of those concepts you read about and think, ‘Of course.’ It’s an obvious next step in the evolution of sustainable design, conceived to meet a critical need, just as green building itself can trace its beginning to the oil crisis of the 1970s and the need to reduce energy consumption. Today’s need is to anticipate and prepare for adverse situations—such as earthquakes and hurricanes, the effects of climate change, even deliberate attacks— because there is nothing sustainable about having to rebuild structures before the end of their anticipated service lives and all of the resources that entails.