Jack Potter, AIA, CSI, Architect — Sustainability In The Environment and What Does It Mean to Us

Speakers Friday, August 25, 2023

Sustainability is a great and deceptively simple idea in which we operate our world in a way that we will never run out of resources or energy. A full accounting of whether a process or invention is sustainable needs to examine a host of secondary and tertiary consequences to the original idea. An example of a current debate centers around the fact that electrical vehicles do not use gasoline to power themselves, which means at first blush they are automatically better for the environment. However, others cite the offsetting impact of generating electricity, the mining of materials for batteries, building out additional transmission lines, etc. Few people, however, ask questions about the efficiency of pollution controls on a single car versus an electrical plant. Others ask questions about land use creating the highways to carry the vehicles and others claim that mass transit is far less efficient because the number of people using mass transit is not typically high enough to offset the fact that an individual bus can use much more energy than a single car.

So what could we mean when we say “sustainability” and what can we do with this term?

John (Jack) R Potter, Jr AIA, CSI Member Emeritus graduated from the School of Architecture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 1970. Spending over 50 years with HFR, Jack served at various times as a Director, Treasurer, and Chair of the Board. His projects included commercial, educational, governmental, medical, and senior living centers. Jack served in the Army Reserve for over 25 years and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel with deployments throughout the United States and 7 countries, including the first Gulf War.

Jack and Connie have been married for over 52 years with 2 grown daughters and 4 grandchildren.

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