Architecture: Cause or Cure for Eco-Anxiety?

Construction is the main cause for global raw material extraction, and a key source of greenhouse gas emissions. Through the increasing consumption of resources, it is driving us beyond the planetary boundaries. We argue that in this light, the connection of the environmental impacts of new buildings and the symptoms of eco-anxiety among their designers, builders, users, and funders needs investigation and discussion.Art, culture, and rituals have been proposed as means to process and cope with difficult eco-emotions, including anxiety. Architecture is an important part of culture, oftentimes defined as, or including aspects of art, and can have symbolic meanings. Hence, it may also hold potential for dealing with difficult feelings, through e.g., memorial places. More importantly, however, regenerative, and emphatic architecture could support a shift of values away from an environmentally harmful construction culture towards building within planetary boundaries. This requires defining architecture from a new perspective, acknowledging its role in causing friction between values and acting thus as a driver for the ensuing predominantly negative emotions such as environmental anxiety. Design choices or architecture do not, however, need to be antithetical to environmental awareness, on the contrary. In this article, we present and discuss the dual role of architecture in relation to eco-anxiety. On one hand, architecture drives the consumption of resources, which causes significant environmental damage, and may hence spur difficult eco-emotions. On the other hand, architecture could be used for mitigating resource consumption as well as for offering re-evaluation of our construction culture, which is destructive for the wellbeing of our planet. Architecture could also create spaces where people are able to engage constructively with eco-emotions. Overall, we argue that architecture needs stronger value discourse. Conscious decisions, awareness-raising and skill-building can enable designers and teachers of design-related studies to better take eco-anxiety and other eco-emotions into account.