Is there more to sustainability than just surviving?

Sometimes, for me, figuring out how to act sustainably in my day to day life seems surprisingly complicated. Should I believe the green-washed packaging? Pay extra for "organic"? Ride my bike in the snow?

This confusion that come from weighing possible options, often without access to all the information needed, is magnified when making decisions about something that consumes a lot of resources, such as a building project. Any given decision represents a series of possible consequences to consider; competing theories and opinions promote one strategy over another; gaps in assured knowledge are approximated with scientific projections, often with questionable accuracy.

Perhaps this is why I am constantly on the lookout for some kind of working definition of sustainability that can be applied to architectural design practices. And I don't mean the kind of vague definition that you always hear: "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." This is fine sortofbut it doesn't exactly help you make design decisions. It offers a way to think about what you're doing, but not a concrete method to determine how to do it.

I like thinking about sustainability in a rural context, as opposed to an urban one, because it seems a lot simpler. Call it nostalgia, if you like, but you can't deny that there's something comforting about it.

My friend Lars, an organic pig farmer, explains his version of sustainability as such: "doing things in such a way so that tomorrow, everyone on the farm - people and animals - can do it all over again."

I.e. Surviving. Making Due. Coping. Getting By.

He also speaks about doing things sustainably because he can't afford not to. In other words, the sustainable option is the one that he can actually make happen, without putting the farm in jeopardy, financial or otherwise.

Is sustainability is really just about trimming off the excess and learning to make do with less? Should my green building strategy simply be "make it smaller"? After all, a smaller building uses fewer materials, requires less energy to heat and cool, has a smaller footprint, etc.

Unfortunately, as simple and uncomplicated, pragmatic and sensible as this strategy seems, it is at odds with some basic aspects of design. Architects are in the business not only of solving problems, but of doing so in a way that is appealing, captivating, beautiful. Bare-minimum-survival is usually not the only objective.

However, the value of these additional aspects - the aesthetic, the inspirational, the -- are nearly impossible to quantify and almost always come from "excess." Surely the proponents of sustainable building don't advocate expunging all elements of excess, or do they?