Twenty-seven years after writing a groundbreaking book about passive solar energy design, maverick architect Edward Mazria once again is challenging his colleagues. This time, the very future of the planet is at stake, says the senior principal at Mazria Inc. Odems Dzurec, an architecture and planning firm in Santa Fe. Just as Mazria’s The Passive Solar Energy Book (1979) inspired a generation of builders to look to the sun, the activist New Mexico architect hopes his new message will forever change the way that homes and other buildings are built. Builders and planners in his home state, at least, seem to be paying attention.

“It’s not a matter of whether we can afford to do this or that in the building sector,” says Mazria. “We cannot afford not to do this. We can’t afford to wait.”

With dire predictions and devastating descriptions about the consequences of global warming, Mazria has launched what he calls the “2030 Challenge.” Right now—this very day—he calls for all new buildings and developments to be designed to use half the fossil fuel energy they would typically consume throughout their life span. Beyond that, Mazria and his supporters—a think tank of individuals, firms, and charitable organizations known as Architecture 2030—call for a 60 percent reduction in energy consumption in buildings by 2010; 70 percent by 2015; 80 percent by 2020; 90 percent by 2025; and for all new buildings to be carbon-neutral by 2030 (using no fossil fuel greenhouse gas emitting energy to operate). The challenge is laid out in Mazria’s new website, architecture2030.org.

To read the complete story, please find Su Casa at your local newsstand or order it online here or by phone at 505-344-1783 or toll-free 866-256-4925.