Winston Churchill once said, "We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us." Buildings live through their symbiotic relation with us, (see previous article) thus they share our destiny. Many believe that destiny does not in fact exist. They don't believe that our lives are predetermined - the playing out of an unalterable script written by some superior hand. They insist that we are all masters of own fate and the only force responsible for our individual and collective future. Frankly, I don't believe in the rigid script scenario either, yet I do believe in destiny.

Fate and destiny, although often used interchangeably, are not the same thing. Fate is an unalterable outcome predetermined by an outside force, while destiny is determined by our own makeup. Our predispositions, temperament, intentions, habits, biases, perceptions, convictions, motivations. . . all work to give direction to our lives and a certain continuity to our behavior that lead to predictable ends. Our make-up puts our life on a trajectory which may be consistent and predictable, due to momentum and inertia, yet not necessarily rigid or unalterable. We can change it. We can change it by changing ourselves. The apparent inevitability of destiny is simply the reflection of our own difficulty with and resistance to change within ourselves.

Here at the new millennium, technology is the prime force of our Destiny. Two hundred years ago, the dawn of the Industrial Revolution began a process that fostered the development of International Commerce and Big Business, witnessed the ascendancy of Capitalism, pronounced Modernism as a credo for the future, and produced unimagined technical advances. Technology has brought us sweeping change that has served to benefit our human condition, yet it has done so at a price. It also made us more distant from one another, perpetuated conflicts and weapons that threaten to extinguish life on this planet, disconnected us from nature, molded us into soulless consumers, poisoned our environment, and replaced the nurturing Community with a culture founded on the principles of competition and exploitation. Many at this point in time, are wondering, as did the proponents of the Arts & Crafts movement, whether the increasing costs do not outweigh the diminishing benefits.

Where are we headed? What view of the future can our current Destiny provide? What will happen if we continue on our current trajectory? It is increasingly difficult to ignore the realities of the environmental degradation caused by world industrialization. Continued destruction of the biosphere predicts a gloomy future indeed. There is hope on the horizon, however. On January 22, 2007, ten major corporations, including GE, DuPont, and Caterpillar, joined with Environmental Defense in a "Call to Action" urging the federal government to act swiftly and thoughtfully to produce legislation to reduce greenhouse gasses emissions. The tone of conviction and urgency of this pronouncement gives cause for optimism that change is possible especially in the light of the fact that no corporation had ever supported any environmental legislation whatsoever. This is change - the kind of change that can alter destiny.

Buildings are the key to our future. Besides being the single largest piece of technology, our symbiotic relationship offers the real possibility that by changing our buildings we will also be changing ourselves. Changing what our buildings are and how they are built, even in small and gradual steps, can have huge cumulative consequences on our environment. The environment could benefit because 40% of all that is extracted from the Earth goes into buildings, and building demolition contributes nearly that percentage to landfills. Small changes scale up to large consequences. Buildings could evolve from being disposable envelopes to being permanent bridges to nature. They could become more lifelike finding a harmonious place within the pattern of nature rather than displacing it. In doing so they might teach us lessons that we need to learn about our own relationship to nature. These changes have already begun to occur and are giving rise to a whole new technology. This technology is based on cooperation rather than competition, and mutual dependence rather than exploitation. This technology is Green - the force of our new and improved destiny.