This
report on a sustainability colloquium held in the late 1990’s was found sitting
in the file of articles written some time in the past. It has never been
published, just handed out to friends and colleagues. While the event was held many years ago,
the text remains of interest. It shows how little the sustainability debate has
progressed, or moved onto/developed into other relevant and realistic outcomes
based to the subject and its ideals. The writing records how the subject has
grown into our current era by touching on some of its origins and early
thinking from which attitudes, ideas, and approaches have developed. It is also
of interest to review the solutions proposed in this past era, strategies that
still remain elusive or forgotten today - questioned anew to be classified as
the results of academic analysis of the past, therefore irrelevant. The
excitement and interest of the 1990’s seems to have faded. Our era only wants
things ever new and different. Very little has happened with matters concerning
sustainability in any broad practical sense. It is no longer considered a core
subject for debate let alone action. Do all such convention-styled events only
ever turn out to be ‘talk fests’ that allow academia to collect points,
complete CVs and enhance reputations?
If
anything, the sustainability debate seemed to have much more critical energy in
the 1990’s than any debate holds today. Have we become too soft, too lazy –
intellectually careless? Perhaps the story is somewhat like the core concerns
in the 1970’s that were stirred by the suggestion that the world was running
out of oil, and argued fiercely that new energy sources and systems had to be
developed without delay. We know how this idea has faded into nothing, or worse
- how we now again have come to believe that we have an infinite source of
energy available forever from our oil and gas, and some other source that
science has yet to discover/reveal. We act as though this is necessarily so,
even if we know or sense things could be otherwise. Is our forgetfulness merely
a shield for our ‘feel good’ existence, the best ever of all times? Our
architecture likewise presses on mindlessly with its great interest in style
and stars rather than sustainability – the ‘ME’ star and my genius work, and
only occasionally the mathematical ‘green’ star that has more to do with
schedules, addition and promotions than actual outcomes.
We may
have to think again about our world. We certainly need to be reinvigorated, as
we seem to have become disinterested and distracted: lazy and careless of
principles as we meander through the decorative and deluding diversions of the
digital world, dazed by computers and their gadgets, believing everything will
get simpler, easier, faster and cheaper just by doing nothing but purchasing
the latest gismo and enjoying its games, an experience enhanced by any choice
of stimulating relaxants. Why should anyone worry when the statement on the packaging
promises so much: ‘NESTLÉ ROLO has a dreamy, caramel centre inside delicious NESTLÉ DOUBLE BLEND milk
chocolate’ – all available to anyone, everyone, any time. One can see why
sustainability becomes a boring subject for all but spoilsports. MAD magazine’s
“What, me worry?” seems to have gained a new life, and meaning.
The publishing of this old report at this time
seeks change by the reading of the ideas again in order to start a rethinking
of matters before we fail - fall into the void of indulgent, irresponsible,
careless comfort. Hopefully the re-reading might embarrass us enough to do
something meaningful. Why do issues generate their own sense of time and
fashion and never get resolved? Why do we find it so easy to forget, to ‘move
on;’ to ‘go forward’ as the politicians keep saying, ‘progress,’ when all we
are doing is acting like greedy children in a sweet shop, darting over to the
newest, and most interesting, most attractive lolly indulgence when there is
serious work to do with the ordinary, everyday matters of life and its living?
No wonder obesity is increasing in the developed world.
THE HEDGEROW AND THE
KINK
reflections on
sustainability
Any session which causes one to ponder beyond the immediate
confines of the venue can be considered a success. Such, it seems, is the lack
of rigour and commitment in today's climate of flexibility and compromise that
appears to be based on popular research that only seeks to succeed with the
implementation of self-fulfilling indulgences. Indeed, education itself is not
free of this awful, circular phenomenon that seeks only safe approval and ticks
in boxes. So it is that one can say that the QUT 'Design for Sustainability'
Colloquium was a great ‘success’: hence this piece by way of reflection, to
record impromptu ponderings that might test the ground of complacency.
I must admit to having some dissatisfaction with the word
'colloquium'. It is not a normal part of my vocabulary. I acknowledge not
really knowing what it means; or rather, not being able to easily adapt the
knowing that it means 'a colloquy - 1609, (Latin); a talking together; a
dialogue; converse; a meeting for conference - 1679; an assembly for discussion
- 1765; a conference; a council - 1844' (Shorter Oxford) as a tongue-twisting
addition to my normal, everyday, conversational understanding. The Oxford dictionary
has an odd, but relevant aside: 'not in ordinary English use'. In short, the
word leaves me uneasy. Is this because it promotes a certain elitism which gets
confused with another branch of the root, 'colloquial' that holds other
meanings: 'of or pertaining to colloquy; conversational - 1751; of words,
phrases, etc. belonging to common speech or ordinary conversation - 1752' -
(Shorter Oxford) - that is, everyday chat, which it seems to estrange? Or is it
that the unease arises from its physical sounding that leaves the tongue in an
uncertain, spatial numbness on the edge of fumbling over the uncomfortable
repetition of 'l's beside the ‘q’?
Be that as it may, the session can truly be described in
this hybrid and potentially confusing way because it did embody a little of
everything academic and chatty - even with a few fumbles. 'The Vales' - Brenda
and Robert Vale - opened the session with a bumbling 'nuts and berries' style
presentation that disguised its content. The performance was the typical goodie/baddie
sequence. Peter Greenaway might have called it: 'The drainer and his lover'.
Brenda Vale noted in this unsynchronised but seemingly rehearsed duet, that
Robert once 'taught drains'. In the way that the chime of their plural naming
changes their precisely formal titles of 'professor' and 'doctor' into a dizzy
haze, with the type of romance that engulfs the cliche, quaint English cottage,
their laid-back presentation, complete with the necessary - 'absolutely
indispensable' - annotated goat that was used as an explanatory guide, clothed
a harsh world of facts and figures with an easy, mystic delight that preached
of the simplicity of this world: 'It's all really so easy.' ‘The Vales’ have
made a business out of this chant. The accent was important here too. One was
transported back into the 1960’s world of hippie love, wild dreams and
beautiful futures, and recalled that 1990’s Nimbin is really not the 1960’s
settlement that held more honest innocence, if no less enthusiasm.
The irony was that the presentation started by Robert Vale
declaring that 'suddenly in the 1990's . . . . sustainability'! - in spite of
the fact that discussions on sustainability reach back to their roots even
beyond the 1960’s when Schumacher, Carson, Packard etc.- as noted by Catriona
McLeod in 'The Myth of Green Design' paper - first raised the important issues
that have slowly started to change our attitude to our world. One can refer
also, for example, to the small book titled 'Soil and Civilization', and its
importance, published in Australia in 1945. The issues raised in this forgotten
publication have still not yet been seriously adopted into our understanding,
let alone our actions. The almost too simple message is that if we don't care
for our soil, then our civilization will fail, as others have. The end of World
War 2 seemed to be a starting point for thinking about a future which might be
able to sustain material production and a certain lifestyle - as well as peace
- forever. There was hope for a renewal that, unlike the peace wish, has had an
impact on some aspects of our lives - off and on. That there shall be wars no
longer has been a futile wish in our world that has, sadly and ironically,
known war somewhere at all times since World War 2.
Instead of any sudden enlightenment in the 1990's, the real
danger is the slow forgetting over the years since the war, a process that
seems to be able to mock the energy and efforts that once made these issues and
their importance so public. Does anyone today even think that the oil resources
will now run out in our lifetime, as Schumacher argued? ‘The Vales’, (the word
gives one a lovely, vacant, homely feeling of Yorkshire 'dales', such is the
power of rhyme), base their position on an oil-free future, but there is no
general public debate to drive this idea or to give it credence. Does anyone
really care as much as folk did in the 1970's? Just look at the fuel that is
used in pushing those overweight, four-wheel drive vehicles that drop children
off at school! Instead of slowing down, the rush is on! It seems as though
petrol consumption and the use of oil-based products are only increasing
exponentially. The concerns of the past seem to have vanished with the growth
in our awe, our astonishment with the technological wonder in this age of the
computer. Yet I can recall Schumacher's talks and writings critical of this
approach in such subjects as 'Good Work' and 'Buddhist Economics' that remain
unfashionable today, devalued as mere ‘old’ readings. The phantom notion of
'progress' is alive and well in our world which continually demands originality
and individualism - forever - and ignores the ‘essences’ of ‘qualities.’ These
have become two very contentious words to use in our rational era of
measurement.
Are we becoming as our media, which only seeks more and more
drama and hype as it avoids the boredom of resolutions, results and 'good'
news? Do we concern ourselves with distractions that tend to entertain us,
rather than continue the struggle with the issues and their implications in
order to achieve some sensible outcomes? Too often only illustrated words or
annotated illustrations appear to be of interest to our media rather than real
and useful outcomes - other than those, of course, that go terribly wrong!
One of the ironies and undoubted complications with the
concept of sustainability is best exampled in the unquestioned love of computer
power and its potentially redemptive possibilities in the desire to be more
sustainable. This can be best revealed in Jim Woolley's lovely graphic
encyclopedia of design for climate. There is no doubt that this clever,
interesting learning tool will have a broad acceptance that will reach into
every architect's office. Indeed, it should!# It has the power to act as a
refreshing reminder - a comprehensive checklist. But there is a worry: does it
feel too good as graphics; too delightfully easy? There is a hidden concern
here. It is not only our forgetting that where an eraser once corrected a
mistake on paper, now it is a matter of discarding the wrong page and
reprinting it or the whole text on more and more paper. The vision of a
‘paperless office’ seems to be a theoretical farce, a grand deceit.
A recent report schedules the dangerous chemicals that are
now listed as restricted or banned by the UN, and comments on the fact that two
of the most potentially damaging products for the environment have not been
scheduled. A Swedish scientist on Radio National AM (9/9/98) also recently
raised this matter. These chemicals are the fire retardants used in the cases
of computers! The UN has not included them because their impact has not yet
(apparently) breached national boundaries! Yet they have been found in the
bodies of whales washed up from areas well beyond any mainland already. The
call for an holistic approach to sustainability must be reinforced beyond just
that indulgent need to use nice-sounding academic words. These too easily
become jargon that generates only a dumbness that fades before the intense
interest of the blare and the glare of the new. Vigilance is needed - and a
commitment to act, even when it might become personally difficult, which, of
course, is always easier to say than to do. It may be that, with such serious,
self-referential concerns with computers, particular ambitions for sustainability
gains might have to be modified.
Computers still do tend to dazzle us - to entertain us - in
the same way that media outlets love to engage us. Jim Woolley's dotty
explanation of heat transfer and the pretty water models - colour and movement!
- tempt our indulgence. The retardant chemicals are forgotten in much the same
way as other issues are so eagerly pushed aside. That 'The Vales' complained
about their consternation with the planners who made them put the kink into
their medical centre to avoid a hedgerow, highlights a weakness in the ideals
of sustainability that seem to be able to separate environmental and heritage
issues from things sustainable when one is encouraged to sense the wholeness of
the subject – its coherent interrelationships. One ponders on the game - is it
one? Is it 'at one'? Why is the goat essential when ancient hedgerows might be
a problem, a nuisance? Why does the medical centre have a garden of medicinal
herbs quaintly promoted as being ‘able to be plucked from the surgery window,’
when to open the window would lose so much fought-for warmth and reduce the
boasted efficiencies? It is an odd joke when the heart of the Vales' effort was
to ‘almost excessively’ (their words) insulate all surfaces. There are inconsistencies
here that seem to get adjusted for the telling of the best story.
Does that great desire of architects to be funny and odd - a
little clever or smart with their own ideas - take over from the real task?
Does the hedgerow garden episode illustrate this situation? The desire of
architects to tell how they outsmarted their clients, or the local authority or
planners, to be able to give achieve some 'ripper vision' - here I think of
Michael Graves speaking in Sydney - has often been told. How many conventions
or talks have been peppered with this style of joke that only seeks to
highlight the sheer intellectual, clever brilliance of the architect and the
naivety of the client with the 'note how I got that subtle message in!'
bragging chat? Ordinary Australians might know it as 'being a smart-arse'. Is
the goat a sign of this genre that only alienates those beyond the boundaries
of the game who become bemused by the relevance of the bovidae reference?
I recall the architect with a client who apparently loved
polishing his car. Can you believe it? The architect gave this client a
fibreglass garage that required frequent polishing, forever! One can just
imagine the giggles at this perceived ‘contextual’ cleverness as the project
was being documented. Perhaps it generated as much a self-satisfied smirk as
that where an architect was sneakily giving the client something the client
knew nothing of and was unwilling to pay for! I wonder which surprised client
got the goat? Are all the decisions made with such a chirpy nonchalance and
apparent lack of true understanding of factual issues as, e.g., with the idea
of the goat or the reed waste disposal system seem to have been? Did the reed
waste disposal really work when it was frozen? How? No one seemed to know the answer
to either question, even though the concept had been implemented! Was this
implementation merely for the photographs and the publications? Are these ideas
mere diversions to highlight or to introduce a certain mysticism into such a
bland subject, to make it less scientifically sterile - more 'architectural'?
If John Hornibrook is correct in suggesting that
sustainability must become more and more an ordinarily accepted attitude rather
than a unique quirk of a professional specialist, then such games must go. The
only point of profit in these matters is the architect's ego. John Hornibrook
emphasized that the dollar profits had to be shown to be real for both
developers and ordinary clients if sustainability is to thrive. Just being
cunningly clever was seen to be counter-productive.
The RAIA president, Ric Butt, suggested that architects had
already lost it! Is this their future? He seems uncertain. His opening
statement included the observation that architects were well considered by the
public - that they were the leaders in the sustainability debate. This
certainty became a warning towards the end of his presentation - architects had
better be careful if they do not want to be forgotten as a useless profession.
And then at the end - the profession had already lost it! Was he himself clear
on this matter. Is the profession? Maybe this is the problem? For an issue so
important to remain so unclear can only confuse the appropriate response - as
Ric himself did as he continued to present the summary for the day in spite of
this being scheduled as a task for Professor Andrew Seidel.
It seems to me that Ric's uncertainty reflects a dilemma
inherent in the 'sustainability' debate - its actions and outcomes - and holds
a truth in all its contradictory diversity. Architects will not be sustainable
if they remain unclear about sustainability issues. They will become irrelevant
if they continue to pursue their love of the smart, the quaint and the unique
self-expression and promotion of their individual brilliance; and in so far as
they seem not to want to make any changes, they have already lost their old
authoritative position. Perhaps our ordinary language indicates this latter
reality. We hear repeatedly of the ‘architect’ of the health care system; the
‘architecture’ of the computer - and of clocks; and the universe; and then
there are computer ‘architects,’ and hair ‘architects’ too! As the word
'Architect' is disappearing from the 'Professional Employment Wanted' columns
in our papers, it is reappearing in those supplements specialising in 'IT'
machines and positions. We are losing our relevance and are doing little about
it. 'Sustainability' seems, sadly, to be only a word clutched by smart
fingertips and sly lips, rather than by lives and real futures.
Rarely do the words 'architect' and 'architecture' get used
in its traditional understanding - that of the individual who designs,
documents and supervises building, and the buildings that this process
generates. Let's not pretend otherwise with clever, endless academic-style
debate that always seems to seek to confuse and disperse ordinary
understanding. The profession itself may not be helping as it seeks to expand
or modify this understanding in an attempt to diversify - to manipulate a concept: to make it more
adaptable to general fashionable theories, like sustainability and project
management.
Architects have allowed their demise to occur through
exaggeration, with that unique understanding which sees architecture as
'special' building, and therefore, architects as 'special' people. Usually the
media locates the architect either in this heroic mode or as the posing fool.
It will take a lot to break this mould, perhaps more than the 'sustainability'
argument, but success in this field might help. I am reminded of the
traditional concept of the artist, (as explained by Ananda Coomaraswamy), who
is seen, not as a special kind of man - rather, every man is seen as a special
kind of artist; or architect. The challenge must be to become sustainable as
ordinary architects.
We must drop the goat specification and the jokes on the
clients - and on ourselves. That a tiny butterfly resting on a solar panel
might be able to make 'The Vale's' solar system lose two-thirds of its power
capacity will seem stupid to a lay-person who could be forgiven for uttering
the 'wouldn't you have thought' cliche response with some astonishment. But it
does make a nice story for an audience of fellow travellers to snigger about.
These yarns offer wonderful temptations that we have all
been involved with over time. Has it to do with a peculiar, professional sense
of humour? Perhaps this is an approach that our education systems encourage -
that smart, quick-witted explanation at the crit that floors them all and
disguises the flaws in clever justification. Should the crit with these
endless, arrogant rationalisations be abolished? Should we outlaw clever chat
and train ourselves not just to listen to others, but also to act on the advice
given? There is a growing intolerance with listening, as though it made sense
that a student could know what should be taught! Zen masters always have
something to say on this matter. They point out that the proposition has an
awkward, circular silliness about it; that it has none of the rich sense of ‘one
hand clapping.’
Again, one is left wondering if the use of the word
‘colloquium’ is even appropriate. Professor Richard Hayward noted that he
dislikes the word ‘charette’ because it came from a system that disapproved of
everything we now seek to understand by its present sense in ordinary use. Is
‘colloquium’ just too academic to remain useful today if the profession is
serious about avoiding elitism in its race for survival via the sustainability
ticket? Can we complain about hedgerows kinking our buildings if we are really
serious about an holistic approach to a future that is really nothing without a
past - or very much less? These are not hypothetical questions; they touch real
life and death issues and demand an answer in action - but only if we can see
beyond the self-interest in the calm comfort or clever retort.
Of course, it is the definition of just what this future is
to be that is important. 'Sustainable' is nothing without careful definition.
One can have sustainable hunting; sustainable rape; sustainable forest
clearing; etc. Other issues inevitably become involved. Sustainability, as ‘The
Vales’ noted, requires qualification – ‘to be measured against something.’ It
is this something that introduces matters of morality and ethics. There is a
latent understanding that ‘sustainability’ is good. ‘The Vale's’
‘sustainability’ is based on the no-oil proposition; that of Professor
Manzini's is rooted in the use of our resources. ‘Why’ needs to be explained,
just as the theories, ethics etc. should be. John Hornibrook sees it in a more
practical sense of sustaining sustainability in the common sense of real life
and living, which make ‘celebrity’ a silly concept (‘Uncensored’ 9/9/98).
Behind all facades there is an individual with ordinary feelings and daily
wants and needs.
We must be careful that the word ‘sustainability’ itself
does not become mere jargon in the hype of discussion about real issues -
matters that really have to do with existence and its meaning. It was Professor
Brenda Vale who summed up the vital issue. While it can be argued that there
are many levels that have to be attended to, her suggestion was that the desire
for action must come from a basis of personal involvement (c.f. Kandinsky,
'inner necessity' and 'Uncensored' 9/9/98, 'this inner thing'). Interest and
care lie at the heart of this matter - and others like it: 'Make a diary of
your activities over the next week and review them in the light of
sustainability'. This personal involvement is as vital as that which comes from
the top down. We can sit around for years waiting for others to do something.
We already have! But we might be able to use that awful weakness of politicians
who love to give people what they want, by starting to change the world from
the bottom up. It will be a success only if there is a total commitment.
Disagreement and battles for power will only confuse. Ric Butt sensed the
political principle of giving the masses what they wanted and was using it to
get funding for research. This will be good only if it does not end up in
research for research's sake. John Hornibrook's pragmatism is needed.
Other pragmatists do exist. Philip Crowther's disassembly
notions expressed in his paper 'Design for Disassembly', raised more issues.
Should ‘sustainability’ via re-use be systemised or formalised? Can it be? ‘How
Buildings Learn’ (Stewart Brand) shows a history of adaptation with many styles
and types of buildings that gave no thought to futures, but held the potential
for much whimsy and unusual fancy with ordinary adaptation. Herb Greene, (I
wonder what Catriona McLeod would think of his name?), spoke of buildings as
armatures - of making them to be adaptable without self-consciously being
fabricated and jointed (bolted?) so as to allow them to be systematically
pulled apart. The notion of a co-ordinated set of parts - a kit - is nice, but
is it too logical? Is Greene's way better - more positively fruitful? Must
rational minds always manage our lives? Why should silliness and oddity be
removed? Who wants a world of bolts and 'Foster-style' aesthetics, (not the
beer)? I cannot think of a building that is unable to be disassembled. It’s
just the usefulness of the parts that are left that is important for re-use -
and the effort needed to make things from these jigsaw pieces. Are we in for a
world of sheds; even 'green' sheds?
Ted Harkness liked the disassembly idea that was similar in
essence to the subject of his new book with that long, and almost
over-impressive title: 'Building Investment Sustainability: Design for Systems
Replaceability'. In his enthusiasm for his subject, and his new book, he gave
us everything except the price of this recent publication - 'just from London'
. . . cringe! - then a name drop: Cox; SOM!! - all a world first! But is it
good enough that we plan our environment on a future of how it can be
dismantled when we have so much difficulty in getting it together properly?
While one cannot reject the real sense of it all, it seems that this approach
has all the very worst aspects of 'functionalism' that becomes the function of
pulling the parts asunder. Rather than a machine for living, we are being asked
to consider life in a machine shaped for easy disassembly: a machine for
machine's sake? Surely this must be secondary to immediate life issues? But one
knows that it will be argued that it is
an important life issue! Here one is thinking at this time, not of the
practical issues of sustainability, but of the issue of symbolism - that other
practical and important life issue which is so often misunderstood.
And the plural enthusiasms of the Italian Professor: Ezio
Manzini? I record that I cannot speak Italian, but can admire his skills to
communicate his vital vision for change, which we should all encourage, as
Professor Andrew Seidel noted, with some degree of honest talk. Why were 'The
Vales' connected to the grid? How did Jim Woolley do his tricks? Architects
must stop making the same mistakes time and time again.
Yes, architects must start making changes now - we all must;
but it is so easy to return to the habits of ordinary living. I've done it all
my life! This is the core problem with sustainability. Will it cost me? Will it
change my comfort - my lifestyle? What return will I get for my effort? Will I
have to live in an ordinary, awful building that can be pulled apart easily?
Does design ordinariness and awkwardness necessarily come with a concentration
on the singular issue of sustainability? Does the attention to one remove the
happy resolution of the other? Is the problem the one mentioned by Ric Butt: a
minium of architecture and a maximum of science, as though the two could never
successfully meet? It might make 'good science' as 'The Vales' pointed out, but
does it make good sense in every aspect of building and shelter?
Professor Manzini raised the issue of aesthetics, albeit
with a certain apologetic ambiguity. Aesthetics will save the world! Yes, he
loved aesthetics and suggested that Russia fell because of its' disregard for
this subject - an extreme view he attributed to a 'friend'. It is interesting
that his fellow Italian intellectual, Umberto Eco, has noted that even the
average of good Italian design could not - did not - save Italy. Professor
Manzini argued enthusiastically for us to live well with less, (a Schumacher
call of the 1960's); to shift to physical interaction; to see reality as a
network of relationships; that sustainability had to be seen as a reduction of
consumption of environmental resources, as a transition towards
dematerialisation; that businesses had to reduce physical production: and he
called for a new cultural paradigm that accepted complexity as a condition of
existence. His example was persuasive: instead of the present model of business
that sees, for example, the sale of more and more poisons as the desirable aim
for profit in spite of the environmental outcomes, (and offers the repeated
argument of the type that, e.g. smoking is not harmful), Professor Manzini
exampled the idea of pest management where a company took control of the whole
circumstance that placed a profit incentive on the use of fewer chemicals. It
is a wonderful 'de Bono' type piece of logic, but touches on the idea of
self-regulation that has been promoted so often, so recently, by all its'
failures. Is the weakness in fewer controls - in the ambition to cheat and
manipulate the system so that, as in the pest example, fewer or cheaper
chemicals will be used when other more expensive action might be proper? It is
clear that many more subtle issues are involved - perhaps just simple honesty?
It was this frustration with a lack of honest intentions
that Catriona McLeod spoke of in her polished, critical summary of things
'green'. It was a unique presentation in so far as it was so precisely and
thoroughly cynical and critical. Too often the nice feelings on issues
'sustainable' are allowed to overlook the awful reality; but the paper had a
hollow, naive ring that was easily accepted with a slow shrug .Are we really so
desensitized? Yes, we all know it goes on - such is our normal skepticism: so
what's new? Why complain? This is part of our life, our era, as Professor
Manzini pointed out. Is it just that we have to deal with these things rather
than wish they were not there, or should we seek to modify or eradicate them?
Ours is an era of cynical promotions - to the rich and the
poor - as Professor Richard Hayward illustrated with his Lima photographs of
regional South America. His work held not only a breath of hope, but also a
lingering doubt: what real difference will urban renewal or sustainable urban
design make to the poor interested just in ordinary survival - or, less
pretentiously, vitally concerned with just being? Is it all a middle class,
academic game that displaces guilt with an applied tidiness? Yet there was a
glimmer of light: he was happy to accept a random mess and commercial
competition, (if this term can sensibly be used between rich and poor), as this
did physically help the poor. We need to learn more of these acts that empower
and enrich rather than just 'tidy up'. Is this Professor Manzini's cry for an
acceptance of a greater complexity? Too much of our world is already tidied up
with only a negative social outcome and very little 'aesthetic' improvement in
townscape or lives - just look around.
The cry to 'educate the masses' has failed to stimulate the
hoped-for response. Yet the call for sustainability remains appealing. Perhaps
it is this attractiveness which deceives and clouds the essential and necessary
emergency of the call that was expressed in all its odd, intellectual diversity
by Professor Manzini.
But is the call itself too complex? Does the call sound just
too tritely, introvertly academic? Does giardia and cryptosporidium in Sydney’s
water, (and Adelaide’s), stimulate any more positive determination to act, or
is it merely the reverse that is promoted? What will work? The anger and
impatient intolerance that arises from Sydney's frustrating problems, (and
Melbourne's puzzling gas problems too), is just what the ideals of
sustainability do not need. Love and co-operation seem to have been left in the
1960's dream when Schumacher originally said that one should live as elegantly
as possible with as little money as possible. Will today's self-centred
importance have to be harnessed differently, or will it have to change? Will we
have to change?
Can sustainability survive on an economically, rational,
competitive basis, or is this position its antithesis? Are political changes
essential to the proper implementation of this new vitality that is only possible
with the concept of sustainability?
Maybe. Any new cloak on the old beast will remain only that.
Sustainability is not a makeshift nicety or a 'politically correct' gesture.
Real political and personal changes are needed. Production will not alone modify
the world, just as 'use patterns' will not; but these user demands are a little
closer to the personal effort required for change and can drive the outcomes of
production - hence the hope arising from individual action.
Professor Andrew Seidel's summing up was to the point. It
reminded me of my daughter's pinboard item that says simply: 'insanity is doing
the same thing again and again expecting different results'. It is clear that a
definitive change is needed - now. As all the speakers responded to Professor
Gordon Holden's Saturday question, 'What should one do?': one must start on
Monday, the joke being that Sunday was a day off. They were all wrong: one must
start now - Sunday or not - if sustainability is to be taken seriously, for it
is not a question of choice or getting a joke in. There is no choice in the
answers to the questions concerning a sustainable future. It is not good
science or good architecture: it has
to become to be seen that good architecture is not possible without good
science - and vice versa. Umberto Eco has argued that a more obviously
functional design is not only more beautiful, but also more human: but we
should never forget the importance of true symbolism. Tradition tells us that
architecture, (and art), was never considered to be beautiful unless the
symbolism was correct. This was and is a primal matter, not a silly, indulgent,
'post-modern' aside. We might as well learn to understand this, too, as we
probe into an unknown future, learning how to use this world in an ordinary and
sensible, that is, sustainable way.
The urgency and necessity clearly becomes self-evident in
these thoughts of David Bohm. The only pause we should take before making a
commitment to sustainability is that brought about by the necessity to read this paragraph:
Development, which is called progress, has become a menace.
As long as there is money to be made by developing and money available to do
it, it seems almost impossible to stop it. You may resist it for a while, but
they are going to keep working until they find a way around it. That is, again,
the way we think. Development is thought to be absolutely necessary, so that we
mustn't stop it, no matter what it does to destroy the ecological balance of
nature or its beauty, or to turn our cities into unlivable jungles of concrete.
But we've got to stop this heedless rush into development, because that way
lies a meaningless life and eventually disaster.
There is hardly a politician who would dare say that sooner
or later this sort of growth must stop. Yet you can see that such growth must
ultimately destroy the world. Thus, as we pointed out earlier, if all the
nations in the world tried to obtain the present Western standard of living,
our planet would be devastated. Just to consider one point alone, the amount of
carbon dioxide would multiply many times. Indeed, you can apply the sort of
calculation that I have made about population growth to the economy instead. If
the economy grows by 2.5 percent per year, which is very small, in a thousand
years it will have grown ten thousand million times! We will have to stop it
somewhere, and it is clear that we have passed the point at which we should
begin seriously to consider what would be a right approach to this whole
question. For it makes no sense to go on giving growth such a high priority, so
that it ultimately overrides almost everything else. What is of primary
importance is to have a healthy ecological balance in nature and a good quality
of life for everyone. Within the context of these requirements we can then see
the kind and degree of growth that is called for.
(Changing
Consciousness - a dialogue of words and
images David Bohm and Mark Edwards
[Harper San Francisco,1991], p.51 - 52)
The time to act is now! But even this is too dramatic a
cliche that sounds like a washing powder advertisement and generates the same
dumb response. Forget the words and make a concerted, real personal effort that
can become the beginning of a new future. Big journeys start with small,
sometimes - most times - almost insignificant, unidentifiable steps as desires.
What is clear is that the journey has to be taken, if not by us, then by
others. It is our commitment to future generations that is being challenged.
What do we want our children to inherit - a future of blame and discontent?
What is needed is a new contentment, a new way of being whole again in new and
changed circumstances. Our role is not just as takers, users and abusers, but
also as caretakers. Let us take care, carefully - sustainably.
Spence Jamieson
NOTES added 24 March 2014
# Alas, Jim Woolley passed away some years ago. Nothing ever
became of his clever computer programme: see http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/subtropical-urban-design-forum.html an idea that likewise came to nothing. Other
more ‘interesting’ adaptations of computing power have taken over, like
‘morphing’ and 3D CAD extensions. Any interest in designing for climate seems
to be a matter of the past. Gehry and Hadid have set the example for the
directions of future ideas and ideals: the latter seem to have suffered the
most, to have lost rigour.
It is
interesting to read this article so many years later. Now that style has taken
over architecture, the energy that drove the sustainability debate of the
1990’s has dissipated. It has come to nothing but a few ad hoc political
slogans and parties, and some slogans on commercial promotions.
The meticulous
interest displayed in this paper also highlights today’s complete lack of
rigour in things architectural. These hold a different flavour today: they are
sweeter, softer, more pliable, less critical. The idea that some factual matter
might drive anything architectural – like sustainability issues or functional
matters – appears to be some ancient philosophy of the early 1900’s that has
been superseded. Function and form was something Sullivan’s era was concerned
with; not ours! Today, matters have become indulgent and fanciful. Instead of
incorporating these other theories in new ones, as in science, our world has
superseded these old ideas, discarded them. It has moved on to newer, hence
better ones – or so it seems to want to believe.
NOTE - 15 MAY 2017
see: http://www.gaiadiscovery.com/design-building/brenda-vale-on-autonomous-houses-and-design-for-sustainabili.html for Brenda Vale on house design
&
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