By Martin Pedersen: an interview with Edward Mazria and Susan Szenasy. Featured in Common Edge.
This month marks the 20th anniversary of the Metropolis cover story that launched Edward Mazria’s career as a climate and environmental activist. The blunt and glaring cover—designed by Pentagram’s D.J. Stout and commissioned by Criswell Lappin—showed a rolled-up set of architecture plans shaped like a smokestack and billowing black smoke, with the accompanying headline “Architects Pollute”. The idea that buildings, and by extension the architects who designed them, were somehow environmentally culpable is pretty much accepted wisdom now. Two decades ago, however, the connection between architecture and climate change wasn’t as clear cut. And that urgent message kickstarted the green building movement and ignited the field. As then–executive editor at Metropolis, I played a small role in helping to make this groundbreaking article happen. To talk about how it happened, where we are now, and where we’re going, I talked to Susan Szenasy, former editor in chief of Metropolis, and Mazria…
