Buildings for the Future by Alyciana

Buildings for the Future by Alyciana - February 2020 Scholarship Essay

I want to start a nonprofit organization that incorporates something we use everyday, buildings. I want to pursue architecture as a career and use it to be beneficial to the world around it. For the two years that I have studied architecture I have learned important facts about the damage buildings cause towards the breathing organisms on the planet. As a building is created, it becomes its own living organism, it breathes in 70% of our energy resources and exhales 40% of our carbon emissions. Buildings have beneficial functions, they provide shelter and comfortable controlled temperatures for it occupants, but the toxins it releases is destroying our ecosystems.

My nonprofit organization would fund a design of a building that acts as a natural organism, reflecting characteristics of a plant, breathing in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen, to provide better air quality without compromising the basic functions of a building. The building wouldn’t be able to transport carbon dioxide into oxygen, but rather clean the oxygen it takes in and releasing that clean air into the building and the outside. The building acting as a natural organism would be beneficial to its inhabitants and the world around it. I want to create this organization to bring awareness to the community that will surround these buildings, to know the differences in long term impacts of a building when it is detrimental or beneficial for their futures.

There are buildings already designed and built that incorporate ideas of the natural world and have been successful, but there aren't enough buildings to create an impact on a larger scale. As our population grows, we will need new buildings to accommodate a large number of people, designing buildings that act as a natural organism will be beneficial to our environment and could slow and even reverse the effects we’ve already made on our planet.