This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Ruth Lectures.

This lecture in the series Sustainable City, given by Richard Rogers, was originally broadcast in 1995.

I have been warning that the misuse of resources and technology is undermining the well-being of future generations.

Last week, I focused on sustainable cities,

which used technologies that reduce their impact on the environment, and where communities are

structured around neighbourhoods. Today, I want to explore how buildings are central to the whole

concept of sustainable living,

how buildings can shape our lives, how we should be shaping buildings to sustain our future.

The art of building might have been created to protect us from the elements,

but in time it became a fundamental expression of our technological ability, and of our

social and spiritual objectives, an art that documents humanities ingenuity, sense of harmony, and ethics.

Architecture has resulted from a mix of social, economic and spiritual ambitions, the complex motives of individuals

and societies. Today, that complexity of human motivation is being stripped bare. New buildings

are perceived as little more than commodities, entries and company balance sheets. The search for profit determines

their form, quality and performance. Our bottom-line economies ensure that there is no incentive to

invest in ecological technologies that only pay off in the long run. No incentive to provide a

public gesture like an arcade, no reason to landscape

a building or even plant a tree. Look closely at an average commercial development and you can

see just how pared down how crude it is. After a century of refinement, the steel or concrete

building has never been so cheap to build

nor built so cheaply.

The pioneers of the modern movement, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Roa, Lebetkin, Pruevé,

...