Peter Buchanan, who has died aged 80, was an architect, critic, essayist and teacher. The touring exhibition Ten Shades of Green: Architecture and the Natural World that he curated in 2000 for the Architectural League of New York, and the book of the same name that followed, had a critical impact on thinking behind the design of contemporary sustainable buildings.
“The League’s goal with Ten Shades was straightforward,” Rosalie Genevro, its former executive director, wrote in her preface to the exhibition catalogue: “To show examples of work that combined environmental responsibility with formal ambition. Peter Buchanan accomplished that goal, beautifully. He also created something larger: a context for understanding those projects, and for evaluating all works of architecture and land planning, that embraces a range of concerns from technical efficiency to communal wellbeing to emotional resonance.”
