Ivan Jovanovic, Director of Sustainability and Environmental Design at Atelier Ten, suggests we must learn to operate within contemporary systems, understand their structure, and change them from within.

Working with natural systems

For Ivan Jovanovic, Director of Sustainability and Environmental Design at Atelier Ten, the shift is partly about rediscovering a way of engineering that works with natural forces rather than overpowering them.

There are limits, he argued, to the industry’s current reliance on advance measurement. “Sometimes we will have to skip the actual concrete measurement in advance,” he said, while stressing that this does not mean abandoning evidence. “There will be a way where we will find connection between our actions and, I don’t know, climate change in Mongolia.”

That means learning to operate within today’s systems while working to change them. “I think we have to fight the current system with its own rules until it’s changed.”