Beyond Sustainable

Beyond Sustainable presents a tour d'horizon of the prevailing conceptualizations of our planet's ecology through a clear, systematic and comprehensive summary of the relevant sources. Moreover, the author projects an agenda for contemporary architecture that questions the very foundations of current practice - and so begins to shed light on matters that are still elusive, even to open eyes and open minds. -Louisa Hutton and Matthias Sauerbruch, Architects Beyond Sustainable situates, with great acuity, architecture's current position in relation to elemental shifts in earth systems. Ludwig probes theories and histories of technology, economics, space and humanism to articulate how we might identify architecture and ourselves as integral, dynamic, parts of a live-in-the-world ecology. The book is succinct yet rich and Ludwig is an excellent writer, both principled and persuasive. -Catherine Ingraham, Ph.D. Author of Architecture the Burdens of Linearity and Architecture, Animal, Human Ryan Ludwig's book is an important addition to the literature on physicalizing phenomenology in architecture. With the environmental crisis as the governing challenge for all architectural production it is important to not succumb to solutions that simply mask but perpetuate past practices. More productively there is an opportunity to reimagine the relationship between body, shelter and ecosystem in light of the crisis. The book lays out an argument that architecture has played a role in facilitating bio-physical entanglements and with imagination and ingenuity can do so in the future. -Omar Khan, Head, School of Architecture, Carnegie Mellon University