Resilience in Action: A New Year's Resolution for the Built Environment
The start of the year is a time for reflection and renewal. It's an opportunity to embrace a fresh start — a chance to renew our perspective, recharge our efforts, and recommit to moving society forward.
Working in the AEC at this quarter century mark can take a toll. The strain of feeling the stuckness of common design and construction practices, while also knowing that they lead to outcomes we don’t want, can sap our enthusiasm and determination. This is where inner resilience comes in.
We either learn to be emotionally and professionally resilient or we are likely to shut down and gradually acquiesce to the leadership role of the AEC in society to market forces and powerful special interests.
Resilience is also often seen as a quality to acquire or a state to achieve.
“We want to make this project resilient.”
But what if we shifted our thinking and viewed resilience as an action, something we practice daily to rise to challenges and create better solutions? This proactive mindset turns resilience into a practice — an ongoing and intentional pursuit.
Defining Resilient Buildings
Resilient Design/Architecture is a topic of discussion across the AEC industry and not without good reason. Some have deemed resilience, along with adaptation, the "new sustainability," but doing so risks losing sight of the goal - adapting building design and construction to the reality of more dynamic, unpredictable and severe environmental conditions.
Resilient buildings recognize this reality and are designed and built to maintain a high level of functionality in the face of disruption. This goes beyond simply incorporating renewable energy sources. Resilient systems must also include storage and the means to manage loads, if required. The term also applies broadly to all aspects of the built environment, including the enclosure and mechanical systems.
Beyond the buzzwords and the common misunderstandings of resilience as a synonym for renewables or sustainability, the need for resilient design practices has true significance. Resilience as an important design outcome will be here for the rest of our careers. Let’s make sure we understand resilience in the context of the AEC industry.
Resilience and “Adverse Conditions”
In architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC), resilience is typically described as:
The ability to prepare and plan for, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse conditions and events.
Understanding resilience as an action starts with recognizing the broad spectrum of adverse conditions we face in design and construction—from the subtle to the catastrophic.
Understanding The Challenges
Understanding resilience as an action starts with recognizing the challenges we face in design and construction, which can be subtle, commonly recognized, or catastrophic:
Subtle Challenges: Societal paradigms, conventional design practices, ineffective project organization, outdated construction practices, and changing financial and regulatory landscapes.
Commonly Recognized Challenges: Greenhouse gas emissions, extreme weather, infrastructure failures, and indoor and ambient air pollution.
Catastrophic Threats: Grid collapses, communication system failures, and chemical, biological, and radiological threats.
Resilience in Practice: A Call to Action
When resilience becomes an active practice, not just a static noun, it transforms our approach to these challenges. It becomes the daily effort to design and build systems that don't just withstand stress but adapt and thrive in changing conditions. It means:
Reevaluating traditional design frameworks to incorporate integrated, holistic solutions.
Choosing regenerative materials and systems that restore rather than deplete.
Innovating processes for better coordination and efficiency across project lifecycles.
Resilience as a practice means showing up, adapting, and renewing our efforts over and over again. It is the courage to act with purpose even when the future feels uncertain. It is the discipline to start fresh — every day. This is resilience in action.
This year, let's embrace resilience not just as something we seek, but as something we do. Let it guide how we design, build, and collaborate — with intention, adaptability, and relentless hope.
It's time to get to work. Let's make resilience our action plan for the year ahead.