
Ghost Buildings: How Architecture Haunts Our Future
GreenCE’s mission is to support the necessary transition to a sustainable built environment by empowering design professionals to address the environmental, economic, and social impacts of buildings. GreenCE’s course catalog includes LEED exam preparation, continuing education to maintain your AIA or LEED credential, as well as specialty education focused on topics such as ADA/Barrier-Free requirements. We are committed to designing the highest quality continuing education programs in the construction industry.
What if buildings weren’t just structures—but vessels for memory, imagination, and the ghosts of what might have been? Join us as we explore how architecture holds onto dreams and disappointments, carrying the echoes of modernism’s bold promises of infinite progress. We'll look at sustainable design not just as a technical solution, but as a haunted practice—one shaped by the failures of the past and the urgent demands of the future. Step into spaces where time bends: where ancient materials meet digital futures, where ruins don’t just decay—they teach us resilience. We’ll uncover how architecture embodies time itself—linking past traditions, present conditions, and speculative futures. And we’ll dive into the psychological impact of haunted spaces—how they shape our wellbeing, influence design, and awaken something deeper in how we feel and move through the built environment.
- Analyze how temporal consciousness in sustainable design affects occupant mental health - understanding deep time thinking, lifecycle awareness, and intergenerational responsibility as sources of psychological grounding and anxiety
- Evaluate the psychological impact of material memory and cultural preservation - investigating how buildings that embody historical continuity and local identity contribute to sense of place and mental wellbeing
- Examine the relationship between architectural decay, entropy, and occupant psychology - exploring how designing for graceful aging, disassembly, and death creates both acceptance and unease in inhabitants
- Assess how spectral architecture and memory spaces influence collective and individual mental health - analyzing trauma-informed design, memorial architecture, and the therapeutic potential of spaces that acknowledge loss and absence