Miguel McKelvey Quotes

Designs are increasingly winning competitions because they are literally green, and because somewhere they feature a small windmill.

What is now called 'green architecture' is an opportunistic caricature of a much deeper consideration of the issues related to sustainability that architecture has been engaged with for many years. It was one of the first professions that was deeply concerned with these issues and that had an intellectual response to them.

Architects have to become designers of eco-systems. Not just designers of beautiful facades or beautiful sculptures, but systems of economy and ecology, where we channel the flow not only of people, but also the flow of resources through our cities and buildings.

A building that has great environmental responsibility is a political animal in a way because it becomes promotional of a cause. I think that kind of advocacy through architecture is really good.

I want to do very useful buildings and I would like to find a method of producing these buildings through our technology because I think that this is the only way that we will gain wonderful environment easily in the future.

We have to base architecture on the environment.

Sustainable development: Meeting present needs without compromising the stock of natural resources remaining for future generations. In terms of buildings, it implies resource efficiency, minimum energy use, flexibility and long life

We have to change from 'ego-architecture' to 'eco-architecture.'

By fundamentally changing how we design the places and systems that enable our daily lives, we can slash emissions way beyond the immediate carbon savings - because our own personal emissions are just the tip of a vast iceberg of energy and resources consumed far from our view.

Building design isn't trendy.

There's this very vulnerable planet of ours with finite resources. Architects and designers have, I think, a fair responsibility for conserving energy and materials, and making things durable.

It's my goal to make a building as immaterial as possible. Architecture is a very material thing. It takes a lot of resources, so why not eliminate what you don't need as long as you're able to achieve the same result?

Architecture is changing faster than some other professions.

Let us together create the new building of the future, which will be everything in one form: architecture and sculpture and painting.

There's a Danish architecture firm called BIG. I love architecture, and I always check out their work; they're very good at reimagining the way we live. They put the human experience as the focus, with access to air and outdoor space.

My job is to make desirable, luxurious, beautiful clothing and accessories women want to buy. My first decision is always based on, 'Can I do this in a more sustainable way without sacrificing design?' If I can, then there is no reason not to.

We can engineer a building and design a building with least reliance on active machinery to make it inhabitable.

In the United States alone, 450 billion square feet of glass facade is produced every year. What if we could take this chance to use the glass to harness solar energy and allow the architecture to respond to the light and heat of the sun, to create photosynthesis and generate solar energy?

When you build a beautiful building, people love it. And the most sustainable building in the world is the one that’s loved.

Many analysts now regard modest, zero, or negative growth in our rate of energy use as a realistic long-term goal.

We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.

Let each one of us not waste electricity at home. By doing this, we will also light a lamp in the home of a poor.

We need a proportional quantitative understanding of energy use, for everyone.

Ultimately, if you think about all the youth that everybody has mentioned here in Africa, if everybody is raising living standards to the point where everybody has got a car and everybody has got air conditioning, and everybody has got a big house, well, the planet will boil over - unless we find new ways of producing energy.