1. Sustainability operates as a dialectic between time and abundance. In this sense, sustainability is not (only) a philosophy, a politics or an economic model. It is a protocol for the manipulation of materials or resources.

2. In this sense, sustainability is no different from the artistic manipulation and transformation of materials. Just as Rodin manipulates marble to expose its latent expressive capacities, and to ignite the life of the material in the imagination, so too is sustainability a technique for the transformation of material according to its relationship with duration and plenitude.

3. Sustainable resource management must thus be understood as a compositional endeavour. Sustainability is too often subsumed by other protocols: economic efficiency, moral rectitude, utilitarian egalitarianism. Essentially, however, sustainability is formal endeavour that, like art, involves the negotiation between the realities of the material and the possibilities of creativity and generation.

4. Sustainability is not an idea or a practice adjacent to design. It is, instead, a strategy of composition, inherent to innovative design practice.

5. Sustainable design is adaptive design.   This type of design incorporates the possibility of future transformation in resources and needs. As such, this type of design incorporates uncertainty in its parameters. It mediates between the constancy of material and the volatility of possible futures.

6. At IPD, our water sensitive urban design takes sustainability as an art. The provision, behaviour and possibilities inherent to water shape the beauty, facility and potentiality of our WSUD sites.