Climate Changings: New Paradigms of Contemporary Architecture

The demographic explosion and the unstoppable expansion of the megalopolis, taking place on a global scale, are some of the factors contributing to climate change. Overpopulation and over-urbanization are the complementary faces of the same phenomenon. The size achieved by human population on earth doesn’t mention to contain neither the anthropic impact on the planet nor the consequential consumption of non-renewable natural resources. Since the first major energetical crisis of 1970, many countries had developed energy supply systems based on renewable resources. Nowadays, living on the earth requires both a huge change of the way of thinking architecture and urban planning and the experimentation of new paradigms. Many years later the mentioned energetical crisis, in the specific field of the organization of territories and architecture, a model of unlimited growth and urban expansion to the detriment of the environment and the very safety of people still prevails. These are the reasons why we need to test new architectural paradigms: 1. Zero land consumption/bio-remediation; 2. Building within the built, leaving nature its time to react; 3. Bioclimatic architecture that produces energy rather than consume it; 4. Architecture and Nature, the architecture as prostheses of nature; 5. Cooperation between constellations of cities as opposed to competition between metropolises - decentralization against desertification; 6. Flexibility and reversibility of Architecture using recyclable materials– reuse and prudent recovery; 7. Architecture’s new ethic. In the new XXI century, the search for other Earth-like planets, where life for mankind is imaginable, makes us understand how far we are from the will of achieving the necessary change of the actual economic organizations and consumption. As it has always been, the scientific progress fails to be fully effective in demonstrating the important results that would be achieved, because of the political and economic backwardness in following no longer current vested interest. Standards and protocols for the environmental impact have increased, but the infrastructure continues to fall with indifference on the territories breaking up settlement tissues, degrading architectural systems and increasing imbalances. Hence the need to combine the accessibility of the places to their exploitation, for an integration not only quantitative but qualitative with the territories.