(1926-2009) 

Many years before the word ‘sustainability’ became a fetish of contemporary architecture, the American Malcolm?Wells – who never received an architectural diploma, in spite of having taken engineering courses and having been a trainee at a studio –, was a pioneer of environmental defense with his designs of respectful and self-sufficient structures, often buried in the landscape and covered with green roofs. These features were gathered in a handful of projects, most of them offices and dwellings, as well as in several publications, like Gentle Architecture (1981), Infra?Structures (1994) or Recovering America (1999). Malcolm Wells also developed an important academic activity, first at Harvard University in the mid-1970s, and later an itinerant one throughout the eighties. His philosophy was summed up in the fifteen goals set forth in an article published in Architectural Digest in 1971. These goals included that buildings should strive to “consume their own waste, collect rainwater, use solar energy, provide wildlife habitat and human habitat, and be beautiful’.