Goals and objectives

SLA: SMART ARCHITECTURE
Buildings consume almost half of all energy consumed by humans. The overconsumption of our finite fossil resources, and the resulting environmental deterioration is one of the major problems facing society today.
These problems can no longer be ignored when assessing the quality of a building or city plan. The mission of Stichting SLA is to propose and discuss concepts and ideas for buildings and cities that combine an optimal performance with a minimal use of materials and energy.
Many of the so-called 'green architects' tend to look upon nature as the victim, brutalised by the fierce attacks from 'unnatural' technology. Others look upon environmental issues as a nuisance, a complicating factor in the design process. Stichting SLA rejects both views. It is their belief that nature and technology should be looked upon as allies, not enemies or victims.
Thus, truly sustainable, integral, SMART solutions can only be found by rethinking the starting points, concepts and typologies of architecture and city planning itself.
Stichting SLA searches for powerful, green, smart ideas that deliver the much needed innovations in architecture, design and urbanism.

Research objectives
To collect, interpret and discuss ideas, concepts and projects that qualify as smart architecture and city planning.
To create awareness in the architecture community of the potentials of the smart architecture concept.
To inspire the architecture community with these innovative concepts and ideas.
To use Internet as an innovative and promising way of connecting interesting minds from geographically dispersed locations.
To experiment with new and playful ways of interacting through the Web. .

Online reserach
The internet is a vital research tool for Stichting SLA. Stichting SLA will, together with ArchiNed (the Architecture site of the Netherlands), build and maintain a website that will act as a stage/laboratory for the Smart Architecture project.
This laboratory is an exciting and user friendly site, designed to attract an online community of researchers and architects.
Over the period of 6 months of the Smart Architecture research project, this laboratory will be used intensively. A shared database of ideas, reactions, essays, examples, resources and links will be built up. And after that.....