Tanner Merkeley // AMO’s Process and The Paradox of Sustainability

Last night our guest lecturer Tanner Merkeley, invited as part of the Fall Lecture Series 2016, inspired the audience with his lecture: AMO’s Process and The Paradox of Sustainability.

Tanner Merkeley – IAAC Lecture Series

Tanner is a project architect at OMA & AMO since 2005. Throughout his time at OMA, Tanner has worked on a wide range of projects focusing on: culture, politics, business, energy infrastructure, urbanism, post-occupancy, product design, teaching and how these forces influence our own contemporary architectural production. He has also been is involved in OMA strategic management planning.

Tanner Merkeley – IAAC Lecture Series

The lecture looked at AMO’s interest in Geopolitics and the important role energy has in shifting the power balance of countries and trade relations, from the early involvement of AMO in the Image of Europe, where they investigated the possible meaning of the EU and the benefits of unification.

Tanner discussed what is actually sustainability, underlining that the word is used so often and so carelessly that it has rendered itself almost completely meaningless. He followed saying that the discussion in architecture about sustainability was confined to trivial details or symbolic intensions and when we investigated the collective contribution by our profession we discover that architects were having almost no impact.

Tanner Merkeley – IAAC Lecture Series