SOUPERgreen features five architectural propositions that explore the way technology—reviled by many as the source of the environmental problem and revered by others as its potential solution—can promote a more constructive, meaningful, and effective engagement with the environment. This "souped up" approach to green architecture leverages the expressive potential of a meaner, greener technology to produce architecture that is not only environmentally responsible by quantifiable measures, but which also promotes more engaging, exuberant, rad, boss, sick, and totally stoked, green experiences.

SOUPERgreen offers a critical alternative to the prevailing image of environmentally conscious architecture, with its uninspiring, normative application of technology or exotic superficial bio-mimicry. At its roots the environmental crisis is not an engineering problem to be "solved," nor should it be taken as a convenient excuse for an otherwise unrelated "(per)formalism." It is first, and above all a matter of human interaction with the planet, and it is only by addressing the character of this interaction that disaster might be averted. Dude.

Wes Jones is a partner in Jones, Partners: Architecture, founded in 1993. Previously he was the design partner at Holt, Hinshaw, Pfau, Jones. His technologically inspired designs for completed buildings and theoretical projects have received acclaim for their critical engagement with contemporary culture and their disciplinary sophistication. His eight Progressive Architecture Design Awards include recognition for the Astronauts' Memorial at Kennedy Space Center and the South Campus Chiller Plant for the University of California, Los Angeles. His work has been widely exhibited and published, including his monographs Instrumental Form and El Segundo. A recipient of the Rome Prize in Architecture, he has lectured internationally and has taught in the schools of architecture at Harvard, Princeton, Illinois Institute of Technology, Columbia, UCLA, University of California Berkeley, Ohio State University, and SCI-Arc, where he is currently leading the School's 2011 DOE Solar Decathalon campaign. He received an AB with highest honors from University of California, Berkeley (1980), and an MArch with distinction from Harvard University (1983).