I am a registered architect. As an active contributor to one of the most damaging industries to our climate (construction & building systems), I often daydream about pivoting careers into something more productive for the planet. I’m not talking about stuff like green washing or ~LEED accreditation~. Even sustainably-focused jobs are hard to come by and usually pretty regionally specific. Architects have a broad set of skills, and it’s not always clear where I can take those skills and put them to better use.
Any thoughts/insight would be appreciated as I hop into my mid-life crisis before 30.
My thoughts too. Every month a new house is built in my neighborhood, and almost every time they chop down a shade-giving, 150-year-old tree.
Maybe you could commit (and convince your peers) to design buildings around the trees, and in other environmentally-friendly ways (supporting clean runoff water, re-wilding as much as possible, green roofs etc)?
You could probably figure out ways to build houses to make it harder to chop down trees in the future. That would be cool.
You could also put your skills to work on larger levels. There’s an awesome example in Seattle called the Thornton Creek Water Quality Channel, where two major apartment buildings flank an urban green space that’s designed specifically to restore the water quality of a previously degraded urban stream. It’s already resulting in salmon rebounding in the area. Do/advocate for more stuff like that!
https://www.seattle.gov/util/cs/groups/public/documents/webcontent/spu01_006146.pdf