arcCA (Architecture California) was, from 2000 to 2012, the quarterly print journal of the AIA California Council. For this season of arcCA DIGEST, dedicated to health, we revisit two issues of arcCA.
From arcCA 05.4, “Sustain Ability” comes Marian Keeler’s “PVC: the Controversy Summarized,” an assessment of the debate surrounding this problematic material at the time (2005). Keeler notes,
As design professionals, we’ll need to make up our own minds as to the validity of the conflicting messages we manage to extract from the noise. Emerging from the pervasive clamor of today’s PVC debate is yet another buzz, the voice of the precautionary principle. . . . Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development of 1992 states: “In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”
The application of this principle, she concludes, “will assuredly be the measure by which we guide, not squelch, the technological ingenuity we so value in our culture.”
Based on the number of requests for extra copies (of which none remain), arcCA 09.2, “Design for Aging,” was the most popular issue of the journal. It contains, in addition to the editor’s comment, essays by Tom Brutting, Tim Culvahouse, Dorit Fromm, Michael Malinowski, David Meckel, Andrew Sharlach, Susanne Stadler, Jimmy Stamp, Avery Taylor Moore, and (jointly) Andrew Lian, Carolyn Karnovsky, and Lauren Zmood, as well as an interview of Joyce Polhamus by Kenneth Caldwell and a portfolio of recent architecture for aging.
