Abstract/Summary

The idea of designing for a sustainable future in the built environment requires an approach that considers design at a range of scales, from products and materials to furniture, rooms, buildings, cities and spaces. It also involves the consideration of systems and infrastructure to support design and integrated transport plans and energy use. This needs an attitude to design that is both inter- and cross-disciplinary. It requires a response to a context, to provide a vision or a masterplan for a whole community. A successful building needs to react to its brief and also its context, which is both physical and cultural. Similarly, a good piece of architectural design should react to its user needs and also to the community within which it sits as an essential part of its cultural context. This chapter will offer some examples of an approach to design which encourages new and reactive solutions to designing for the built environment of the future, and how that design relates to its surrounding community. There will be examples of projects that describe the building and its relationship to its sustainable community context.