Routledge has released Beyond Sustainable: Architecture’s Evolving Environments of Habitation by Ryan Ludwig MArch ’09. The book discusses the relationship between human beings and the constructed environments of habitation we create living in the Anthropocene, an increasingly volatile and unpredictable landscape of certain change.

This volume accepts that human beings have reached a moment beyond climatological and ecological crisis. It asks not how we resolve the crisis but, rather, how we can cope with, or adapt to, the irreversible changes in the earth-system by rethinking how we choose to inhabit the world-ecology. Through an examination of numerous historical and contemporary projects of architecture and art, as well as observations in philosophy, ecology, and the social sciences, the book critically questions narratives of “green” or “sustainable” design, the dominant professional and disciplinary responses to climate breakdown. Instead, the book reimagines architecture capable of influencing and impacting who we are, how we live, what we feel and even how we evolve.

Ryan is currently an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Roger Williams University and has previously held teaching positions at Syracuse SoA, SUNY Buffalo a+p and Cornell AAP.

Find the book online at Routledge

Follow Ryan on Instagram