Ahead of his time, visionary architect Frank Lloyd Wright was a green thinker, Prof. Cliff Davidson told the Science and Society podcast (mp3). “A lot of his buildings were designed with not only some green design aspects in mind but also aesthetically to blend with their environment...The architectural community today is attempting to make some changes to bring some of these issues to bear.”
Davidson, a civil and environmental engineer at Carnegie Mellon U., wants his field to become greener too, so he’s helping to set up the Center for Sustainable Engineering, a joint effort by Carnegie Mellon, Texas at Austin, and Arizona State universities.
“Engineers make decisions based on what's best for their clients …But in the future those engineers are going to have to think about not only what's best for their clients, but what's best for future clients and future society. There aren't any incentives for engineers to do that right now.”
The center will aim to educate engineering teachers to incorporate the larger picture into classes “and convince their colleagues to make changes, so that hopefully the way engineers are taught in this country will change.”
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