This free monthly newsletter starts conversations on issues to do with design for resilience, and announces Doors of Perception events. For back issues, or to (un)subscribe, please visit: http://www.doorsofperception.com/mailinglist/archives.php
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THIS MONTH’S HIGHLIGHTS
Food and finance- - - Food and "poor washing" - - - Who will control global urine flows? - - - Energy follows its bliss - - - Defence spending and culture spending - - - Our doomsday machine economy - - - How to tell a design story - - -The art of mediated presence - - - Book events in The Netherlands - - - Simultaneity in Vienna - - - Connected community design in Glasgow - - - Microbanker on a bike - - - Green map iphone app - - - Fashion Futures - - - Sex and Drugs book offer - - - Ludicrous architecture - - - Film about game design - - - technology for development - - - Doors of Perception Portfolio
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] FIVE COMPLICATED ISSUES AND A SIMPLE VIDEO
FOOD AND FINANCE (COMPLEX ISSUE 1)
Which country do you suppose receives the largest amount of food aid right now? Haiti, after its terrible earthquake? Somalia perhaps, or Zimbabwe, in sub-Saharan Africa? The answer is: the United States. The cost of its food stamps programme will top $60 billion during 2010. The number of US citizens receiving food stamps has reached 35 million and the program is growing at 20,000 people a day. The cost of feeding poor US citizens is five times the $12 billion it would cost to address malnutrition for 90 percent of the world's most malnourished children - except that this smaller number is not being spent. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reports that less than two percent of development and emergency aid actually addresses malnutrition. What is one to make of, or do about, these grim and perplexing numbers? A first step would be the read the latest issue of the Food Ethics Council journal; it's all about food and finance.
http://tiny.cc/YiAH3 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/us/03foodstamps.html?hp
http://tiny.cc/br35e
http://www.doctorswithoutbordersdonations.org/publications/reports/2009/MSF-Malnutrition-How-Much-is-Being-Spent.pdf
http://tiny.cc/O2T2g
http://www.foodethicscouncil.org/system/files/fec%205-1%201-3_0.pdf
FOOD AND "POOR WASHING" (COMPLEX ISSUE 2)
Proponents of genetically engineered crops insist that they will increase yields to end hunger, reduce costs, and improve the livelihoods of farmers and poor people. It's less frequently mentioned that these crops will be grown from seeds owned and controlled by private companies. Hence the term "poor washing", in which the interests of poor people are cited in support for a new green revolution, especially in Africa. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), for example, states that its aims are "to achieve a food secure and prosperous Africa through the promotion of rapid, sustainable agricultural growth based on smallholder farmers". It all sounds well-meaning and innocuous, but critics charge that AGRA and the Gates Foundation (AGRA is the Gates Foundation biggest grantee, with over $262 million committed) are glossing over the forced displacement of populations, and privatisation of food, that this new green revolution entails. "AGRA and its biggest benefactor speak about 'land mobility' - but this means moving farmers off their farms so the land can be used for large scale mechanized agriculture...there is no mention of where these people will go and live, and how they will be reemployed". Read more here:
The Future Control of Food edited by Geoff Tansey and Tasmin Rajotte. http://www.earthscan.co.uk/?tabid=310
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa: http://www.agra-alliance.org/
Voices from Africa: African farmers and environmentalists speak out against a new green revolution in Africa, edited by Anuradha Mittal with Melissa Moore http://tiny.cc/OEabi http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/voicesfromafrica/pdfs/voicesfromafrica_full.pdf
Greenwashing and poor washing: http://tiny.cc/RAYTR http://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/agra-monsanto-gates-green-washing-poor-washing/
Africa’s Land and Family Farms – Up for Grabs? by Joan Baxter http://tiny.cc/Tx6Sf http://www.americanpendulum.com/2010/02/africas-land-and-farms-up-for-grabs/
WHO WILL CONTROL WORLD URINE FLOWS? (COMPLEX ISSUE 3)
The complexity, interdependence, and monopoly control of food systems is one reason they are not resilient: disruption to one element disrupts the whole. The same goes for sewage systems. The sanitary revolution tranformed public health, but there are increasing doubts about the long term sustainability of large-scale, centralised, water-based sanitation. The highly inflexible nature of existing sanitation systems, burdened with over a century of capital infrastructure investment, and assets that require 30-50 years to pay back, make centralised sanitation both economically unsustainable and institutionally rigid. Large-scale sewage systems also waste a valuable resource: phosphorous. Phosphorus is an important element for many essential processes in the body. In combination with calcium it's necessary for the formation of bones and teeth. But mining phosphorus for food fertilizer is consuming the mineral faster than geologic cycles can replenish it. Urine is a potential source of the mineral. So far, there is no indication that Bill Gates wants to monopolise world supplies of urine: this may be because it's complicated to do so. To capture, value, and reuse urine requires a multi-dimensional transformation in how we think about and treat sewage. Technologies, regulations, business models - and especially attitudes and behaviour - all have to change. Dena Fam, a design researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Futures in Sydney, is involved in some facinating projects to 'close the phosphorus' loop locally. "Sewage is a resource, not a waste product", Fam explains, "yet conventional sanitation systems struggle to capture, recycle and reuse sewage constituents in sustainable ways". Fam and her colleagues will pilot urine diversion, recovery and reuse at UTS with the aim of illuminating the interdependent factors that determine successful uptake and potential scale-up of radical sustainable urban sanitation.Read more at: 'The challenge of system change - analysis of Sydney's sewer system' in Design Philosophy Papers 3/2009 _ http://tiny.cc/1aYMx http://www.isf.uts.edu.au/publications/fametal2009challengesystemchange.pdf
ENERGY FOLLOWS ITS BLISS (COMPLEX ISSUE NUMBER 4)
"Industrial civilization is a complicated thing" understates John Michael Greer in his blog this week,"and its decline and fall bids fair to be more complicated still. But both rest on the refreshingly simple foundations of physical law". Greer uses the behaviour of a cup of coffee to explain why projects to replace for fossil fuels using sunlight, or any other readily available renewable energy source, or nuclear, are doomed to fail. "People don't realize", adds Greer, "that when a plane full of tourists flies from LA to Cairo so they can visit the Great Pyramid, that one flight uses as much energy as it took to build the Great Pyramid". He's right, I didn't realize that. There's so much to realize these days.
http://tiny.cc/VN1W9 http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2010/02/energy-follows-its-bliss.html
DEFENCE SPENDING VS CULTURE SPENDING (COMPLEX ISSUE NUMBER 5)
A few weeks back I was talking to Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, a partner in the Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta, when we were drowned out by the roar of a Eurofighter passing overhead. "One of those costs the same as a medium-sized opera house", Kjetl observed drily. Kjetl's throwaway comment prompted me to start looking for numbers comparing military versus cultural spending on a country-by-country basis. In round numbers, Germany appears to spend 25,000 euros per person on defence, versus about 100 euros per head on culture. I have to assume that the gap in the US and UK, were the numbers to be available, would be a good deal wider. Time to despair? Not necessarily. Read more at:
http://tiny.cc/O15cN http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2010/03/culture_cuts.php
WHY OUR GDP-CHASING ECONOMY IS A DOOMSDAY MACHINE (THIS ONE IS EASY)
This one's easy: watch this New Economics Foundation video.
http://tiny.cc/MSywB
] DOORS OF PERCEPTION STUFF
HOW TO TELL A DESIGN STORY
I spent a terrific day in Falmouth, England last week with 60 about-to-graduate design students. They are preparing to present their work at an important exhibition, and I was one of the guests invited to act as a friendly critic of their plans. I pleaded: don't plaster your exhibiton space with 60 portfolios, because visitors, dazed by hundreds of portfolios elsewhere in the show, will blank out. Over the years I have often seen years of work by design researchers wasted, or at least ignored, because they did not communicate well. If you're about to graduate, here are a couple of stories about such near-disasters, followed by 15 tips for design research presentations.
http://tiny.cc/ay7W5 http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2002/11/does_your_desig.php
THE ART OF MEDIATED PRESENCE
ICT developers have been working on videocommunication since 1946 - but the experience still sucks. If massive amounts of bandwidth are not the answer, are there more artful ways to enhance remote communication? Preparations for the ElectroSmog International Festival for Sustainable Immobility in Amsterdam (and the internet) are gathering pace. Doors of Perception has agreed to co-host a session on Friday 19 at deBalie, in the afternoon (13h-15h). Our focus will be on practical design and artistic steps that could be taken right now. Our panel will includes Martin Butler, a dancer and choreographer; an Alternate Reality Game designer; and Caroline Nevejan. a founder alumnus of Doors who recently completed a PhD on expert on witnessed presence. (See following story).
http://www.electrosmogfestival.net/news/
DID YOU SEE ME?
The performing arts conjour up the presence of someone who is not there using words, lighting, orchestration, and choreography. They've done so for centuries. Technology-mediated presence confronts similar design challanges to the performing arts: how to set a context, how to induce attribution, how to show the unsaid, and more. Caroline Nevejan is guest editing a special issue of the journal AI and Society on the theme Witnessed Presence, and invites papers from engineering, social science, philosophy, architecture, psychology, art & design, performance arts, IT.
http://tiny.cc/njjsT http://www.xs4all.nl/~nevejan/index.php5
http://www.being-here.net/
ME, AND MY EVER-EVOLVING BOOK, IN NEDERLAND
Rule one in book publishing (where I worked for ten years) is: promote your own book, because nobody else will do so with as much commitment. In that spirit, please note that my new book, Plan B, is now out in Dutch. I use the word "new" here in a contemporary, post-linear sense. Although Plan B is based on In the Bubble: Designing In A Complex World, which was published by MIT Press, this latest version is much changed: I reduced the original English text by half, to 45,000 words, and then added five new chapters on: Sustainability; Metrics; Food; Development; and Telepresence. This prompted my publisher, SUN, to go with the title of the Brazilian edition, Plan B. I'll talk about its content (and hopefully debate with you) at the following three events:
Wednesday 17 March: 17h (time to be confirmed) Lecture/debate with Marcus Fairs, Design Academy Eindhoven;
Thursday 18 March: Book presentation at Nederlaands Architectuurinstituut (NAi) early evening;
Friday 19 March: Electrosmog at deBalie 13h; Plan B presentation at de Balie 16h.
http://tiny.cc/e0aWC
http://www.sunarchitecture.nl/publicity/news.html#4b8d06ea28d495.26988266
or just buy the book at:
http://tiny.cc/XnxqI
http://www.sunarchitecture.nl/catalogue/categori/sun-statements/plan_b_9789085067870.html
] OTHER NEWS AND EVENTS
SIMULTANEITY IN VIENNA (CONFERENCE 19 MARCH)
"Gone is the time where can just focus on technology, or political change, or personal change. The challenge of the times require tackling all aspects of change simultaneously". Thailand-based Michel Bauwens, founder of the Peer to Peer Foundation, always has something wise and interesting to say. His keynote talk at the Lift conference in Vienna on 19 March is about "an integrative approach to enabling open infrastructures (and) value-driven social practices...we need to change ourselves, as well as our ability to cooperate in groups".
http://tiny.cc/n0ZaZ http://liftconference.com/lift-at-home/events/2010/03/lift-austria/program
GREEN GORILAZ (CONNECTED COMMUNITY DESIGN)
Congratulations to Ian Grout, their professor, and a team of students from the Glasgow School of Art : they are this year's overall national winners for ‘Sustain our Nation’ – a competition run by the Audi Design Foundation that challenged young designers to create design-led social enterprises. Glasgow's winning project, Green Gorillaz, sets out to to create a connected community within the Wyndford estate of North West Glasgow.
http://tiny.cc/TmDoD http://getgoglasgow1.org/getgoglasgow/Welcome.html
BANKERS ON BIKES (MICROFINANCE VIDEO)
Andrew Hinton has made a short film about a banker opening up access to money to rural communities. Two-thirds of India’s one-billion-plus population live in the nation’s 600,000 villages, and South Indian bank manager J S Parthiban set out to to improve their economic circumstances. He encouraged beggars to open bank accounts in New Delhi, and pioneered micro-loans to villagers in his home state of Tamil Nadu. "Microfinance is not without its detractors" says Hinton, "but Parthibhan is a man operating with a real sense of conviction and purpose". Hinton's film was one of the winners of the BRITDOC/Co-operative Competition "It's Good To Know http://www.vimeo.com/8758822
THINK GLOBAL, MAP LOCAL (GREEN MAP IPHONE APP)
Green Map System proposes a new way to answer the question: "What's Green Nearby?" A mobile version of Open Green Map enables you to interact with the world from "a unique perspective that is ideal for any internet-enabled phone". What’s Green Nearby?™ provides an array of green living resources, arranged with those nearest you first. http://www.greenmap.org/
FASHION FUTURES (RESEARCH PROGRAMME LAUNCHED)
The stated aim of Fashion Futures, a joint project between Forum for the Future and Levi Strauss & Co, is to "put the global fashion industry on the path to a sustainable future". Fashion Futures 2025 describes four scenarios of what the world could be like in 2025, and asks: How will the industry react to shortages of cotton and other raw materials? How could the fashion workforce be affected by shifting supply chains and technological development? How might technology influence fashion and change the way it is produced and sold? As the project evolves, all materials will be available to download and use free of charge.
http://tiny.cc/2802v http://www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/fashion-futures
SEX AND DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL (NOW AVAILABLE)
Ted Polhemus is an insightful and entertaining ethnographer of popular culture. Ted's latest chronicle, "sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, protest, architecture, design, streetstyle 1947-2022" ranges from ‘Sweet Sixteen’ to Grey Power, Playboy to Punk, the rise and fall of suburbia, and beyond. Ted wants to put his new text out there before it is incarnated in physical form, so If you want a free digital copy email ted.polhemus@ dsl.pipex.com. If you are a book publisher, or exhibition or tv producer, and you don't know Ted's work, you are missing out:
http://tiny.cc/JJVnh http://www.tedpolhemus.com/main_homepage461.html
LUDICROUS ARCHITECTURE (LANGUAGE POLICE CAUTION NEW BOOK)
A new book poses an intriguing question: what connects the design of a board game, an athletic competition in a stadium, a videogame, an Alternate Reality Game, a location-based mobile game, or any combination thereof? Sadly, the author of Toward a Ludic Architecture dampens my interest by telling me that his main question is "How are play and games architected?" - because architected is not a word. I am further dispirited to read that the author is available for "conceptual design consultancy". Insofar as "conceptual design" has any meaning, which is not very much, it means that the designer is divorced from the real world. But Ian Borden, a heavyweight architecture professor, says the book is "indispensable reading for anyone interested in the joyful qualities of cities and architecture” - so you be the judge.
http://tiny.cc/YAom3 http://www.etc.cmu.edu/etcpress/content/toward-ludic-architecture
PLAYMAKERS (FILAM ABOUT DESIGN AND GAME PLAY)
I often think that we should all just play more rather than write books or make films about the subject. But I'm on weak ground here: we once organised a big Doors of Perception conference on the subject. This must be why NESTA, thinkpublic and Hide&Seek have invited me (and by extension, you) you to the London Premiere of playmakers. This 35 minute documentary is the culmination of a six month project in which film maker Ivo Gormley followed the progress of designers Alex Fleetwood and Holly Gramazio as they developed a new game. Following the screening Gormely, Gramazio and Fleetwood will be in a discussion chaired by Margaret Robertson.
http://playmakerspremiere.eventbrite.com/
http://tiny.cc/jy6pm http://museum.doorsofperception.com/doors5/doors5index.html
GOOD INTENTIONS, AWFUL LANGUAGE (TECHNOLOGY FOR DEVELOPMENT)
The aim of Kopernik, a new non-profit venture, is to "provide life-changing technology to the poor". I do not doubt that Kopernik is well-intentioned - but I'm afraid that anyone who talks about "the poor" risks losing my vote. As with "the elderly" or "the disabled", this use of language dehumanises the people it refers to. Whatever: Kopernik makes technology designed for the developing world accessible through the Internet by harnessing the power of individual donations. Products in the scheme include the life straw for water purification, the solar powered lamp, and self-adjusting eye glasses. “By providing individuals with a way to donate directly towards the purchase of the products, we're creating a more efficient supply chain from manufacturer to recipient without getting bogged down in the inefficiencies of large agencies that have historically acted as the go-between."
http://www.thekopernik.org/
WHAT DO YOU GUYS DO? (DOORS OF PERCEPTION PORTFOLIO) Bulb-planting has started early at Doors HQ: We've posted summary descriptions of the last ten years' Doors of Perception projects - the idea being that we plan to do more projects like these ones, only better. All City Eco Lab posts are now in one stack; [City Eco Lab never had its own website]; so too are all posts on new economic metrics. We've started a new category on transition and resilience; here we reflect on our encounters with the Transition movement and the ways it is building resilience in communities around the world. Read more at: http://tiny.cc/IdxhW http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/doors_of_perception_portfolio/
"CONFIDENT, CONNECTED, OPEN TO CHANGE"
According to a new Pew Center study 'Millennials' - teens and twenty-somethings who are making the passage into adulthood - are "confident, self-expressive, upbeat , and open to change." Isn't this marvelous news. If you know any Millenials - perhaps one lives in your house? - please suggest that they need to subscribe to Doors of Perception Report.
http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/751/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-change
http://www.doorsofperception.com/mailinglist/
Why Are We Here? - - - Greener on paper? - - - Telepresence With No Illusions - - - Designing An Associative Life - - - Transition: The Movie - - - Read My Lips, Not the Label - - - Hand-made Clothes For All? - - - Move Your Money - - - - Visual Voltage - - - Sustainability in Bangalore - - - Social Media In Brazil - - - Mass Design of Health - - - World In A Shell - - - Barter Economy Section
WHY ARE WE HERE? [Good question]
In March, this email newsletter will be eight years old; its sister Doors of Perception blog will be ten; and the Doors website, where it all gets archived, will have been online for sixteen years. That's a lot of content - and to what end? The way we see it is that we hang out near the door of the design tent; look outwards; and tell people about interesting things happening outside. Sometimes we invite passing strangers into the tent to make new friends. And from time to time, we set up our own tent when we spot an interesting new challenge for design. People seem to find what we do valuable - if hard to place. And we enjoy doing it, even if the business model to pay for it remains....emergent. But if the the stories below are true, we have to start doing what we do differently, and soon. All suggestions welcome.
GREENER ON PAPER? [Communicating sustainably - or not]
Are we e-writers really so green and virtuous? There’s growing evidence that humble emails, such as this one, pack a hefty environmental footprint. McAfee, for example, calculate that a single spam email generates 0.3 grams of CO2 emissions. On that basis, this newsletter has a ten kilogramme footprint. Once the internet's infrastructure costs are factored in, that number probably underestimates things by a factor of ten. Kris de Decker, in "The monster footprint of digital technology", has written an excellent explanation of the hidden costs of communications hardware; and Don Carli, who coined the term "media carbon", reminds us that "computers, eReaders and cell phones don’t grow on trees; their spiraling requirement for energy is unsustainable". Buoyed by studies such as these, paper-using industries are fighting back. Martyn Eustace, for example, director of the newly-launched TwoSides initiative, states that “producing and reading a traditional newspaper can consume 20% less energy than reading news online for more than 30 minutes...print and paper products can be far more sustainable than the equivalent electronic version". Decker's argument is disingenuous. "Far more sustainable" does not mean sustainable: It means, "unsustainable, but less so than the other way". Greenwasherish language games diminish public appreciation for the many positive actions that the paper and fibre industries are engaged in. Framing the question as print vs. digital is a bad idea because the life cycles of both print and digital media have negative environmental impacts. Don Carli puts it well: "This is not a time for the print media pot to call the digital media kettle black. The fact is that neither print nor digital media supply chains are sustainable as currently configured".
http://www.forumforthefuture.org/greenfutures/articles/campaign_debunk_myths_print
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/06/embodied-energy-of-digital-technology.html#more
http://www.sustainablecommunication.org/resources/articles/53-which-medium-is-more-sustainable-paper-or-digital
http://img.en25.com/Web/McAfee/CarbonFootprint_web_final2.pdf
TELEPRESENCE - WITH NO ILLUSIONS [Tools for not traveling]
So it seems as if carbon footprint of the "virtual" newsletter you are reading is heavier than we thought. But it's still nothing compared to the travel footprint of its author. For the last nine years my business model has been: write interesting stuff for free, and then get paid to give talks, run workshops, and organize conversational festivals. Face-to-face is always best, but the carbon footprint of my travel to work has been, and remains, excessive - tonnes and tonnes a year from my flights and TGV journeys. For the last three years I've reduced the total number of trips by ten percent a year - but that's too slow a change. I simply have to do a lot more of my work remotely. That's where you can help: tell me of real remote models that work for you, and how.
LINE LOSS [The problem with videoconferencing]
In power grid design, 'line loss' refers to the waste of electrical energy due to inefficiencies in the distribution or transmission system. Line loss affects mediated human communication, too. Despite decades of effort by engineers and designers, the experience of video-conferencing remains mostly awful. So what to do? and how? As a start, there are several events about the subject of telepresence one could go to this year: in March, "Electrosmog: A Festival of Sustainable Immobility" will take place in Amsterdam, Riga, New York, Madrid, Helsinki, London, Banff, Aotearoa, and Munich. Then, in November, the theme of the Saint-Étienne International Design Biennial will be Teleportation. In parallel with these events, Caroline Nevejan is editing a special edition of the research journal AI and Society about the concept of Witnessed Presence. Nevejan poses a question: Could the performing arts do better than the engineers and designers? After all, artists have practiced orchestration, dramatization and choreography for centuries; by now they know how to set a context, how to spark the imagination, how to show the unsaid.
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/thinktank/tt_thackara.html
http://electrosmogblog.wordpress.com/about/
http://www.citedudesign.com/sites/Evenements/
http://www.springer.com/computer/artificial/journal/146
TRANSITION - THE MOVIE [More useful than Avatar]
One way is achieve effective eco-communication is to be James Cameron and spend $300 million making Avatar. Another way is to be the Transition movement in which hundreds of communities around the world are both stars in, and users of, their own film. ‘In Transition’ is the first detailed film about the movement filmed by those who are making it happen on the ground - communities around the world responding to peak oil and climate change with creativity, imagination and humour. The film is positive, solutions-focused, and fun. It has has already been shown in communities around the world and is now available as a special edition two disc DVD set, "beautifully packaged in entirely compostable packaging".
http://transitionculture.org/in-transition/
DESIGNING AN ASSOCIATIVE LIFE [Region-wide social innovation in France]
Government departments responsible for sustainability, or "the environment", are too often constrained by small budgets and modest influence. Their very existence allows traditional departments - "industry", "economic affairs", "finance" or "transport" - to carry on their ecocidal ways as normal. A growing number of individuals in government want to work collaboratively with their peers in other silos - but they are often stymied by a system that imprisons them. So what to do? Rather than rage against the iniquities of politicians, a new French organization called La 27e Region (The 27th Region) has set out to help regional governments change by running collaborative projects that enable them to experience a new approach to social innovation in practice. Read more at:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2009/12/designing_an_as.php
READ MY LIPS, NOT (JUST) THE LABEL [Transparency and labeling]
The UK government has published a new food policy, Food 2030. Among the most feeble of its proposals is that companies should clearly label food with its country of origin - but voluntarily. As with Copenhagen, we citizens will have to do the work that governments cannot or will not do. Some great tools are becoming available: Platforms to enable citizens to communicate directly with the people who make or grow things. We have written here before about ThingLink, and about the Fair Tracing project at the Oxford Internet Institute. More recently, GoodGuide has been launched "to lift the marketing veil from consumer products and give shoppers better information about the impacts of what they buy". Also welcome is an open source project called SourceMap. This is "a supply chain publishing platform dedicated to transparency" that is dedicated to tracking, documenting, and mapping where all of the components for our everyday goods come from. What these projects have in common is a commitment to openness, and a degree of socially-grown trust, that today's supply chain monopolizers will find hard, over the medium and longer term, to compete with.
http://www.goodguide.com/
http://www.sourcemap.org/
http://www.thinglink.org/weSwitch
http://www.fairtracing.org/
HAND-MADE CLOTHES FOR ALL? [Platforms for design sovereignty]
Could countries such as Sri Lanka achieve design sovereignty by producing clothes for customers using communication platforms that connect maker and designer and customer directly? A radically dis-intermediated relationship is feasible technically. But, as with food, a key requirement will be transparency concerning costs. Read more at:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2009/12/if_the_shoe_fit.php
MOVE YOUR MONEY [How to be a David to a Goldman]
What concrete steps could individuals take to help create a better financial system? A new web-based campaign responds with a simple idea: Move Your Money.
http://moveyourmoney.info/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/move-your-money-a-new-yea_b_406022.html
] OTHER EVENTS
VISUAL VOLTAGE [Design for energy awareness, Berlin]
Myriel Milicevic writes with news of Visual Voltage, a series of Interactive exhibits at Nordic Embassies in Berlin that explore how to engage different senses in an awareness of energy consumption. A one-and-a-half day workshop for professional designers will explore design strategies for raising awareness about energy-efficiency without imposing a gloomy feeling of guilt. http://www.visualvoltageworkshop.de
SUSTAINABLE IN BANGALORE [Sustainability conference]
A conference in Bangalore called "Sustainability in Design: NOW!" will focus on opportunities for design research, education and practice in product, service and system design. Participants will share swap notes on ways to promote sustainable systems thinking in design education. The conference concludes a three year EU-funded programme called LeNS - Learning Network on Sustainability - whose partners are Politecnico di Milano; Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi; King Mongkut's Institute of Technology, Bangkok; Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore; Tsinghua University, Academy of Arts & Design, Beijing; Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands; and the University of Art and Design (TAIK), Helsinki. 29 September to? 1 October 2010. Deadline for abstract submission 31 March.
http://www.lensconference.polimi.it
SOCIAL MEDIA IN BRAZIL [Rate our friends!]
The Knight Foundation has committed to to invest at least $25 million over five years in the search for bold community news and social media experiments. The deadline for entries is now closed, but you can still comment on and rate the 320 entries for the 2010 challenge. There are some terrific projects here, but the Doors house favourite is MetaReciclagem. MetaReciclagem is an open network, present in all regions of Brazil, that connects together hundreds of people and several organizations with an interest in critical appropriation of technologies for social change.
http://tinyurl.com/mutgamb-knn
MASS DESIGN OF HEALTH [Coordinating multiple actors in a complex system]
One way to redesign a health system is to allow an army of lobbyists employed by insurance companies to do it for you. That has been the the Obama way. Another approach, tested in Canada last year, is to design a process that allows all the different stakeholders to decide priorities together. From April to June 2009, close to one thousand health service providers, physicians, community leaders and local citizens had a chance to weigh in on health care priorities for their region. MASS LBP designed an innovative engagement model to capture this diverse range of voices. Their website describes how they did it:
http://www.masslbp.com/projects_detail.php/mhlhin.html
THINKING INSIDE THE BOX [Design tourism]
"Indigenous peoples have been living harmoniously and sustainable with the Earth for millennia. They are not only the most affected by climate change, but also by its false solutions, such as agro-fuels, mega-dams, tree plantations and carbon offset schemes". The World in a Shell project will take a polliniferoused container on a journey around the globe to connect with a wide range of peoples and cultures. It is scheduled to visit Botswana, Greenland, Mongolia, New Guinea, Congo, Ecuador, Laos, the Solomon Islands, Mauritania, Rajasthan, and Queensland. The idea is that "it will become a metaphorical treasure box of the peoples, cultures, living conditions and natural surroundings of these locations". This sounds like another example of design students putting more effort into engineering than empathy - but I am sure the "indigenous people" they turn up to meet, with their box, will be unfailingly polite and hospitable.
http://www.worldinashell.net/
] BARTER SECTION
HELP GROW OUR RELATIONAL CAPITAL [Spread the word]?This newsletter is free, but it creates value through cross-fertilisation. Please share it with your friends, colleagues, clients and collaborators. http://tiny.cc/rCArh
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John Thackara, who wrote this newsletter, gives talks, and runs project clinics, that help organisations embark on transformational change. He also organises regional-scale events that help real-world sustainability projects cross-fertilise, and grow. If you would like to support this work, please send the speaker brochure below to someone in your company (or elsewhere) who organises events that include paid-for talks - especially remote ones. Merci!
http://tiny.cc/YNSzN
This free monthly newsletter starts?conversations on issues to do with design for resilience, and announces Doors of Perception events. For back issues, or to (un)subscribe, please visit: http://www.doorsofperception.com/mailinglist/archives.php
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THIS MONTH'S HIGHLIGHTS ?
Learning from King Parakramabahu - - Can fashion be ethical and green? - - Lean manufacturing is not light - - The true cost of cotton - - Fair Trade only for the big? - - Forward to price fixing and a guild economy - - De-growth in the Palace of the Popes - - -From Farmville to Transitionville - - Edible City the movie - - Five books to give this season
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LEARNING FROM KING PARAKRAMABAHU
During his reign as King of Sri Lanka from 1153–1186, Parakramabahu asserted that "not even a little water that comes from the rain must flow into the ocean without being made useful to man". He went on to construct or restore 165 dams, 3,910 canals, 163 major reservoirs and 2376 minor tanks - all in a reign of 33 years. Parakramabahu started a tradition whereby every Sri Lankan king would build dams; the island now contains more than a thousand; no country in the world contains so much man-made irrigation per square km. True, many of the eighty largest ones, built by foreign contractors using international development finance, would today be frowned on. But the most intense - and indeed sophisticated - fiddling by man with nature took place 1,000 years ago.
CAN FASHION BE ETHICAL AND GREEN?
More than a million people (out of population of 20 million) work in Sri Lanka's fashion industries, so it's critical to the country’s economy. Companies there face pressure from two sides. Powerful foreign buyers impose ever tighter time and cost constraints. There are also other fashion producing countries, from Turkey to Bangladesh, to whom the big global buyers can and do switch production at a moment's notice, if it will add a bit more to their margins. Squeezed like this, it's impressive that Sri Lanka has resolved to compete on the basis that it's productiuon is ethical and sustainable, not just cheap. The question, how to develop in this direction? was posed to last International Symposium on Ethical Fashion. My contribution was this talk on Fashion in a Green Economy:
http://tiny.cc/7m0jN
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2009/12/king_raindrop.php
LEAN MANUFACTURING IS NOT LIGHT
Monsoon buys a new collection every month. H+M has a display team that changes its ground floor displays every day; this innovation makes it possible for office workers to browse during their lunch hour, be confronted by new products every time, and often leave with a new garment. One delegate described this iteration of fast fashion as “two wash, two wear”. It’s hardly surprising that in the lifetime of the average British consumer, he or she will throw away an average of twelve thousand pounds worth of fashion purchases without evening opening the bag. The perpetual acceleration of product innovation is enabled by so-called “lean manufacturing”. As practised by the thousands of (mostly women) workers in Sri Lankan factories, the lean system may be lean, but it is not light. Production workers are enabled by enlightened managements to organise production to a degree. But each factory must operate within design parameters, and price points, that are dictated by big foreign companies on behalf of spoiled consumers on the other side of the world. The transport intensity of lean production is also extreme; it is economically viable for the global brands only because they don’t pay the true environmental costs of of things like aviation fuel, which is tax free.
WHITE GOLD: THE TRUE COST OF COTTON
Sri Lanka’s ambition to be ethical and sustainable is also constrained by its reliance on raw materials from other countries. As the Environmental Justice Foundation has reported, over two thirds of the world’s cotton is grown in developing countries and the former Soviet Union. “Valued at over $32 billion every year, global cotton production should be improving lives. But this "white gold" too often brings misery”, they report. Uzbekistan, for example, is the second largest exporter of cotton in the world, selling over 800,000 tonnes of cotton every year. But while the former Soviet Republic is at the forefront of global cotton production, its human rights and environmental record lags far behind the rest of the world. “Forced child labour, human rights violations, excessive pesticide use, the draining of an ocean and severe poverty are all rife in cotton production in Uzbekistan”.
http://tiny.cc/KEUr1
http://www.ejfoundation.org/page142.html
FAIRTRADE – ONLY FOR THE THE BIG?
Fair Trade answers some of the misgivings felt by consumers in the North – but it, too, favour bigger producers over smaller ones. The average $2,000 certification fee is the small part; most firms expect to pay external consultants $12-18,00 to help them prepare for certification – a bit like driving lessons. These sums are far beyond the means of most microbusinesses. The stress on small suppliers is so severe that hundreds of them go out business every year. The loss of human and industrial capital is therefore severe and ongoing. A thought occurs: would it be feasible to introduce the peer review processes that assure the quality of so much free software into the fashion ecology?
FORWARD TO A GUILD ECONOMY?
Kumar Merchandari, a founbder of Garments Without Guilt, told us he was proud that Sri lanka had progressed from being a “nation of tailors” to become a provider of optimised solutions to global labels. I told Kumar that I prefer the idea of a nation of tailors, but recognised that more would need to be done to connect northern consumers with Sri Lankan tailors on an equitable basis. Once disintermediated communications were in place, I can imagine sellers and buyers negotiating fixed prices. Right now , Sri Lankan apparel producers are forbidden by anti-trust law from fixing prices. But it was not always so. As John Michael Greer writes in his blog this month, the medieval guild had the legal responsibility under feudal municipal laws to establish minimum standards for the quality of goods, to regulate working hours and conditions, and to control prices. The economic theory of the time held that there was a “just price” for any good or service. That idea merits a revisit.
http://tiny.cc/qbQd6
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-relocalization-worked.html
http://www.garmentswithoutguilt.com/
SEE-THROUGH CLOTHING
A key to equitable exchange in clothing will be transparency during all exchanges in the fashion ecology. The technical platforms for radical transparency exist, and a number of sites (such as Etsy and ThingLink) already connect people who make things, such as crafters, with their customers. The clothing company MADE-BY (based in Copenhagen) is promoting sustainable clothing manufacture using track-and-trace communications. The company enables you to find out who made your T-shirt or skirt, and who picked, spun and wove the cotton.
http://www.fairtracing.org/2008/11/made-by-tracktrace/
] OTHER STORIES
AFTER GDP: De-GROWTH?
Is culture something that’s produced to be sold, or a description of the ways people live? It’s an old question, but last month’s Forum d’Avignon, at the Palace of the Popes, put a new spin on it: could the culture industries lead the way out of economic crisis? The Forum came to life with an apostatic riff by Lawrence Lessig on the subject of Remix culture. Along with open source, the free software movement, and so on, Remix is a powerful challenge to the 'read only’ or permission-based culture of mainstream media and culture. Read more at:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2009/11/avignon.php
http://tiny.cc/jX2HI
http://www.les-cercles.fr/economie/economie-societe/politique-economique/1334-l-apres-pib-mesures-ou-esthetiques
FROM FARMVILLE TO TRANSITIONVILLE
If I were a PsyOps specialist at Monsanto, I'd have invented FarmVille. More than 62 million people have signed up to play the Facebook game since it made its debut in June, with 22 million logging on at least once a day. It's quickly become the most popular application in the history of Facebook. FarmVille players outnumber actual farmers in the United States by more than 60 to 1 - and it would be hard to imagine a better way to distract people from re-localising food in real-life. "The whole concept of ‘I’m sick of this modern, urban lifestyle, I wish I could just grow plants and vegetables and watch them grow,’ there is something very therapeutic about that,” said Philip Tan, director of the Singapore-M.I.T. Gambit Game Lab. Sad but true. Read more at:
http://tiny.cc/ikfhW
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2009/11/farmville.php
EDIBLE CITY: HELP MAKE THE MOVIE
Edible City is a forthcoming documentary from East Bay Pictures about “folks who are digging their hands into the dirt, fighting for sustainability and social justice by doing something truly revolutionary: growing a local food system”. The East Bay Pictures team needs to raise $5,000 to finish the film by March.
http://tiny.cc/ikfhW http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewhasse/edible-city-faces-of-the-food-revolution
] SEASONAL BOOK SUGGESTIONS
I submitted a bunch of suggestions to Core 77 for their Holiday Gift Guide - among them, the books that follow. But there 77 other ideas at Core 77 - not all of them quite so serious: enjoy!
http://www.core77.com/giftguide/
JUST ENOUGH: LESSONS IN LIVING GREEN FROM TRADITIONAL JAPAN,
Stories and sketches, depictions of vanished ways of life, told from the point of view of a contemporary observer. It tells how people lived in Japan some 200 years ago during the late Edo period, when traditional technology and culture were at the peak of development, just before the country opened itself to the West and joined the ranks of the industrialized nations. Only a few centuries earlier, the country had been on the brink of disaster, its environment pushed to the edge through overly aggressive use of natural resources. “Just Enough” is about a mentality that once pervaded Japanese society and tcan serve as a beacon for our own efforts to achieve sustainability today.
http://tiny.cc/vVbeo
http://www.justenoughjapan.com
THE NEW ECONOMICS
"What are we to do about an economic system that destroys the biosphere for economic reasons? What would a politics based on wellbeing be like?” David Boyle and Andrew Simms propose a new approach that turns our assumptions about wealth and poverty upside down: Real wealth, they explain, can be measured by increased well-being and environmental sustainability rather than just having and consuming more things.
http://tiny.cc/VgcMa
http://www.earthscan.co.uk/?tabid=74731
ANIMATE EARTH: SCIENCE, INTIUTION AND GAIA,
An interpretation of Gaia and some of its connections and systems. The book explains that the planet is a vast living interconnected system, not the dead, mechanical object that many 19th and 20th Century philosophers and scientists in the West have based their ideas upon. Stephan Harding writes beautifully about the science arising from systems theory. The book finally Gaiad me. http://tiny.cc/gtrZO
http://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/staff/stephan-harding
LOCAL FOOD
Some 50 million Americans were too poor to guarantee being able to put food on the table in 2008; that number is a good deal higher this year. This new book by Transition Towns founder Rob Hopkins, and Tamzin Pinkerton, explores a huge range of local food initiatives for rebuilding a diverse, resilient local food network – including community gardens, farmers’ markets, Community Supported Agriculture schemes and projects in schools – and includes all the information you will need to get ideas off the ground. In today’s culture of supermarkets and food miles, an explosion of activity at community level is urgently needed. This book is the ideal place to start.
http://tiny.cc/oLGEq
http://transitionculture.org/shop/local-food-how-to-make-it-happen-in-your-community/
FORBIDDEN PLACES
I like Sally Hammond’s description of this as “a coffee table book without the pretty pictures”. Forbidden Places – An unusual exploration of a forgotten heritage is the result of 10 years of work during which Sylvain Margaine travelled the world in search of abandoned and forgotten places - from the 1936 Berlin Olympic village to some terrific ex-nuclear facilities. I’m confident that readers of this newsletter will be triggered to seek out these places, stage events in them, or even go and live in them. It’s a fantastic catalogue of opportunities for architectural re-use.
http://www.forbidden-places.net/
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This free monthly newsletter announces Doors of Perception events, and starts
conversations on issues to do with design for resilience.
For back issues, or to (un)subscribe, visit:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/mailinglist/archives.php
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THIS MONTH'S HIGHLIGHTS
Four Days in Halifax - - The Antigonish Movement - - Citizen Assemblies - - Doomer Trades - - Ecological Stewardship - - Spacing - - Lifeboat Workshops - - The Hub - - The Hots - -
Urban Forests - - Power Without Energy -- Smart Grids as Social Grids - - The
New Economics - - Design and the Green Economy - - Melons We Can Believe In
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FOUR DAYS IN HALIFAX
I went to Nova Scotia for "Four Days Halifax" - a time-compressed mini-festival whose aim was to help the city get its hands muddy in a green economy. One quickly felt the influence of Moses Coady, a key figure in the cooperative movement in Atlantic Canada and founder of the Antigonish Movement during the 30s and 40s. Coady, who helped small, resource-based communities, was a pioneer of what today is called asset-based community development. It's an approach which advocates the use of skills and resources that are already present within the community, rather than relying on help from outside. Until the global crisis, this philosophy was thought to be most relevant in developing countries - but we are all emerging economies now. Many of Coady's innovations in adult education, co-operatives, and microfinance could surely be dusted off and re-purposed for Halifax today.
http://coadyextension.stfx.ca/people/leaders/moses-coady/
TIME COMPRESSING SOCIAL INNOVATION
Our starting point in Four Days was that many elements of a resilient Halifax already exist in embryonic form - but not all of them are visible in their own backyard. The most important preparation work was to identify these local assets. Peter Wuensch and Rachel Derrah from Breakhouse, a Halifax a design firm that's headed strongly into social innovation, and Joanne Macrae and Sera Thompson from The Hub Halifax, duly rounded up some inspiring people and projects. http://4days.ca/
ONLY CONNECT
Our next step was to figure out what practical steps might help these projects improve and multiply. First off, we kick-started five "social innovation charrette" teams from Nova Scotia College of Art + Design (NSCAD). Next, we did a Dragon's Lair event in which social enterprise start-ups pitched their case for investment to local entrepreneurs; the pitchers included a car-share start-up, and a chef with a roof-top herb garden. The next evening, a local team staged a mini TEDx conference. This was followed by a Four Days workshop for politicians, officials and business people. Friday night there was
a Pecha Kucha in which, inter alia, the design student teams reported back. The final event was a street party where we exchanged stories about who we'd met and what steps needed to be taken next.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianlarter/sets/72157622524944577/
CITIZEN ASSEMBLIES
One of the TEDx speakers was Peter McLeod. Inspired by Canada's first Citizens' Assemblies, Peter is out to "reinvent public consultation" and develop a new provincial-municipal approach to collaborative decision-making. His group is developing Citizens' Reference Panels whose work can vary from a weekend-long learning process that produces new understanding and strategic direction - to a year-long process that can reach difficult decisions with popular support and produce a clear mandate for public action. http://www.masslbp.com/people.php
COMMUNITY COLLEGE DELIVERS DOOMER TRADES
Peak-oil doomers are fond of publishing lists of the skills that will have value when industrial civilization has collapsed: blacksmithing, hat-making, baby-delivering, that kind of thing. The effect of such lists is to increase the anxiety of those - such as this writer - who are stronger, to put it mildly, on theory than on practice. So I was thrilled by our visit in Halifax to Nova Scotia Community College [NSCC]. This remarkable organization trains 25,000 students a year in a wide array of life-critical skills: cooking, energy sustainability engineering, ecotourism, truck repair, refrigeration, funeral directing. NSCC offers 'journeyman diplomas' to those who successfully complete an extensive combination of technical training, essential skills education, and practical experience in a designated trade. But the most inspiring thing of all about NSCC is its guiding ethos. NSCC's President, Joan McArthur-Blair, told us that a commitment to ecological stewardship is "not an option, but an obligation, for every student, teacher and business partner that works with NSCC". This is remarkable. NSCC is a major teaching and training institution, heavily linked to industry - and yet sustaining, regenerating, and preserving the earth's ecosystems are the institution's non-negotiable bedrock.
GREEN TECH TEST-BED
McArthur-Blair took us on a tour of NSCC's new building, the Centre for the Built Environment. Opening in 2010, this $26m building is unlike unlike any other trades and technology building I've seen. [My first job was as a publisher's rep visiting 50 technical colleges a year all over the UK and Ireland]. The NSCC facility is a live test-bed for green technologies - and for the skills needed to deploy them. The facility pays equal attention to ecological remediation and restoration, land conservation, and biomimicry, as models for energy- and eco-efficiency. The building has been designed so that five different rooftop photovoltaic panels systems at any one time can be compared in real-time. Other features include planted rooftops and two huge interior biowalls, planted from floor-to-ceiling with plants that act as natural air filters. 50,000 cubic yards (38,000 cubic metres) of industrial debris have been re-used to create vegetated berms, a bio swale, a retention pond, a one million litre rock-lined sedimentation pond, landscaped areas, and gathering spaces. http://www.nscc.ca/sites/CBE/
SPACING IN
Spacing is an excellent new-paradigm magazine and multi-city blog (Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Atlantic (including Halifax). The blogs feature daily dispatches from the streets of these places; they with architecture, urban planning, public transit, transportation infrastructure - just about anything that involves the public realm of our cities. http://spacingatlantic.ca/
LIFEBOAT WORKSHOPS
On a visit to Halifax's fabulous farmers market, I met a permarculture pioneer and teacher called Alex de Nicola. Alex has just launched a programme of 'Lifeboat Workshops' which focus on natural building. Participants build a cob oven & wall and, in Alex's words, "apply a lot of earth plaster". Among other workshops are making veggie ferments and growing great garlic.
http://www.novascotiapermaculture.net/?page_id=128
HAPPY ABOUT THE HUB
The Hub Halifax proved a fabulous base from which to run Four Days. The availability of a well-located space supported by expert and welcoming hosts brings a region's social ecology literally to life: our residency coincided with an International Herb Symposium and a B2B Expo, at the World Trade Centre, which had a particular focus on sustainable business practices.
http://thehubhalifax.ca/
PERPLEXED BY THE HOTS
Something in the Nova Scotia air causes weird buzzwords to breed like crazy. When I expressed an interest in facilitation skills and training, I soon received information about groups with names like "Emergent Futures", "Courage Group", "Genuine Contact" "Integral Visions", someone (or something) called "Marquis Bureau"..... and my favourite, "Holistic Organizational Tranformation Inc" which I have nicknamed The Hots.
TORONTO'S URBAN FOREST
As the effects of climate change and urban heat island continue to escalate, urban forests can provide essential cooling, shading, pollution sequestration, and protection from droughts and floods. The city of Toronto has set itself a target of 35% canopy coverage the City by 2050, but coverage in Toronto currently stands at 17%, and it has been estimated that it will actually decline to 10% over the next several years as aging trees deteriorate and die. So the need to plant trees has never been more urgent. An organisation called GreenHere GreenHere works with community stakeholders on a fascinating array of tree stewardship and urban forestation projects. I specially like the sound of their tree stewardship workshops where citizens can learn about everything from mulching, the planting bean-yielding climbing vines, to making seed bombs for 'guerilla gardening' of abandoned spaces. GreenHere also trains trainers. http://www.greenhere.ca/GREENHERE/Reforestation_projects.html
GOOD WORK
I was much impressed by GoodWork ,"Canada's green job site". It connects passionate, green-minded people with opportunities to contribute and be employed. Facing reality head-on, the site advises, "rather than compete for existing, or non-existent, jobs, why not create your own?" There's a ton of useful information on conservation jobs, stewardship jobs, volunteers, barter, work exchange and other ways to do good work without having a job. http://www.GoodWorkCanada.ca/
] OTHER STORIES
PLENTY OF POWER BUT NO ENERGY
Tessa van der Zouwen asks this pertinent question: "Of the total energy usage in
the US in 2007, seven per cent was renewable energy of which just one per cent
came from solar power. Compare this to the fact that in one hour, the sun
provides more than enough energy to supply the earth's energy needs for one
year; and in one day, it provides more energy than the world's population could
consume in 27 years. So if we have a plentiful, universal source of energy – why
aren't we totally solar powered?" Writing in Material Connexion's newsletter,
van der Zouwen says one explanation is "our, to-date, clumsy and inefficient
(compared to nature at least) methods for harnessing that power". Solar cells
have taken many years to improve their efficiency range from a mere six per cent
in 1954 to 30 per cent by 2007. The article goes on to describe innovations in
the shape of new materials and device structures that are "putting the means for
energy generation in the hands of consumers rather than 'big energy'".
http://www.materialconnexion.com/Home/Matter/MATTERMagazine/TheInfinitePoweroftheSun/tabid/702/Default.aspx
A SMART GRID IS A SOCIAL GRID
Echoing van der Zouwen's pointed question about who should best control new
energy systems, a special issue of the Innovations says a "new institutional
structure" is needed if emerging solutions are to be deployed effectively. Nobel
laureate Thomas Schelling, joint editor of the special issue, proposes the
equivalent of a Marshall Plan for energy to coordinate assistance from advanced
industrialized countries to developing countries. Another contributor, Bill
Drayton, founder of Ashoka and of Get America Working, writes that "it makes
no sense to subsidize the use of machines by keeping energy prices low while
penalizing the use of labor through payroll taxes". He urges structural changes
in the economy "to favour people, not things".
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/userimages/ContentEditor/1256325608624/in.pdf
THE NEW ECONOMICS
Measuring success solely in terms of money blinds us to those aspects of wealth
that are not measurable in that way. And the way money is created, bearing
interest - so that debts have to be paid back in a way that demands
unsupportable infinite growth - is a built in driver of unsustainability in the
economic system. What are we to do about an economic system that destroys
the biosphere for economic reasons? What would a politics based on wellbeing be
like? David Boyle and Andrew Simms, authors of an excellent new book, The New
Economics, propose a new approachthat turns our assumptions about wealth and
poverty upside down: Real wealth, they explain, can be measured by increased
well-being and environmental sustainability rather than just having and
consuming more things. The book is entertaining, eye-opening and very clearly
written: do read it.
http://www.earthscan.co.uk/?tabid=74731
NOMADIC OBSERVATORY
As urban or peri-rural agriculture becomes more important for our food security,
the fate of un-built urban spaces becomes important. The Stalker Group, based in
Rome, continuously monitors areas around the city's margins and forgotten urban
spaces. Two weeks back they staged an "urban action" to defend left over
agricultural spaces, 'agro romano', not yet been subsumed by speculative
housing development.
http://primaveraromana.wordpress.com/
DESIGN AND THE GREEN ECONOMY: 3.0, TOKYO
Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
told the US Congress last week that Japan's debt path was out of control. Simon
warned of "a real risk that Japan could end up in a major default". This febrile
situation added energy to the International Design Symposium held to mark
Musashino Art University's 80th anniversary. I gave a new version of my
ever-evolving talk about design and the green economy:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2009/11/high_entropy_mo.php
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This free monthly newsletter announces Doors of Perception events, and starts conversations on issues to do with design for resilience.
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TRANSITION COUNTRIES AND TRANSITION TOWNS (POZNAN)
I went to Poznan, in Poland, to speak at a conference called World Innovation Days. In brushing up on the history of the Wielkopolska region [of which Poznan is the capital] I was reminded that Central and Eastern countries of Europe are still called "Transition Countries" - as in, transitioning from communist statehood to membership of a bright, shiny and high-tech European Union. To help them along, the EU wants transition countries to grasp the holy grail of Innovation, which is why EU money paid for most of this event. Now in the EU, "innovation" is interpreted as high technology innovation - but, to their credit, the organisers in Poznan invited several speakers [including me] to talk about social innovation, too. I devoted a fair bit of my piece to Transition Towns which, I told my hosts, are the most important development happening anywhere right now. I would like to report that everyone in Poznan said "Yes! We must link up with these fellow Transtioners" - but as this would entail a 180 degree policy about-turn, they didn't. It will take a while yet.
http://www.rsi-wielkopolska.pl/Page.aspx?v=3&se=5&sse=18&aid=66
CONCENTRATION CAMP FOR PIGS
Polish agriculture is becoming a cheap resource for globalised food "value chains" that are are based on high energy inputs, growing transport intensity, and ever more complex forms of food processing. These latter refinements are lauded as the fruits of innovation. But a grim reality lies behind this glossy image. An animal welfare blogger, Tom Garrett, visited what look to me (on his blog) like concentration camps for pigs. The rows of hog sheds are owned by Poldanor, a Danish producer, which describes its sheds blandly as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs); in central Pomorskie alone, Poldanor slaughters 300,000 pigs each year. Funding for Poldanor's massive expansion in Poland came from interest free loans advanced by the Danish Investment Fund for Central and Eastern Europe (IO), supervised by the Danish Foreign Ministry. Garrett, sceptical that the huge scale of investment he saw was within the capacity of the owners of record, a Danish farming cooperative with 160 members, discovered that sitting members of the Danish government, along with prominent politicians, were among Poldanor investors. Sadly for them, these upstanding citizens have not had the quiet and profitable ride they no doubt wished for: Civic committees opposed to factory farming have been established in many Polish villages; roads have been blocked to protest farmers who have signed contracts with agribusiness incomers; animal welfare activists are fighting to inform the public about the terrible conditions within CAFOs; and Denmark's SiG trade union described Poldanor's "takeover of slaughterhouses in Eastern Poland by the Danish Crown (as) the outsourcing of Danish jobs", and called for a boycott of 'Danish' pork products.
http://www.awionline.org/ht/d/ContentDetails/i/1904/pid/2506
http://www.themeatrix.com/intl/poland/aboutpoland_english.html
http://www.ccb.se/pdf/CCB%20Press03-03-04%20Helsinki.pdf
DIRTY MONEY (EU POLICY)
Another massive pork producer, Smithfield, financed its acquisition of industrial pig farms in Poland using $100m dollars in loans from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and other banks. Anna Roggenbuck, of Green Federation Gaja, says that the role of the EBRD is especially important, since the Bank is supposed to follow an environmental mandate rather than, as in this case, fund ecocidal agricultural practices and industrialised cruelty to pigs. For more on this, check out CEE Bankwatch Network; its mission is "to prevent environmentally and socially harmful impacts of international development finance, and to promote alternative solutions and public participation".
http://www.bankwatch.org/
AGRO-ECOLOGICAL FOOD SYSTEMS (POLAND and CALIFORNIA)
Denouncing dastardly Danes, and the EU, is therapeutic, but will not of itself change the bigger picture. Poland has 33,000 food processing companies, for example. Anyone wishing to be taken seriously has to address the question: what are they to do, if not what they do now?
Polish agriculture, with its 1.6 million small farms, vast tracts of land, numeous watersheds, and rich biodiversity, can be a model of diverse agro-ecology for the rest of the world - but how? For its small=scale system to survive, there's a need radically to reconfigure relationships between food growers and consumers. Transparent economic relationships need to replace attenuated private supply chains. Change this radical sounds, and is, hard. But there are numerous new models and schemes that might be seeded in Poland. In my talk I gave, as examples of adpatable models, Fair Tracing and California's FarmLink. The latter is a social venture that supports the development, expansion, and succession of local farms and sustainable land use; FarmLink provides microfinance for projects between $1,000 and $100,000. The EU's scandalous $100m soft loan to Smithfield could, on its own, have been used to support tens of thousands of small farmers in Poland. http://www.californiafarmlink.org/joomla/index.php
FAT IS AN URBANIST ISSUE (ALSO POLAND)
Luckily, I had talked with Geoff Mulgan at the Young Foundation in London on my way to Poland. He told me not to waste my breath warning politicians about agribusiness or food security; they don't think these issues, or the sustainability angle, are important. Tell people about the health impacts of industrialised food instead, he counselled. This is because the on-costs of obesity, in terms of chronic illnesses such as diabetes, really do alarm policy makers. By some estimates 20 per cent of the already out-of-control health expenditures in the US can be traced back to diet - especially, poor people eating over-processed food. So, for my talk in Poznan, I showed them a chart on which Polish chldren come third in a global league table of childhood obesity - behind US and British children.
FISH SYSTEMS
A grim new film, The End of the Line, reveals the impact of overfishing on our oceans. It exposes the extent to which global stocks of fish are dwindling; features scientists who warn we could see the end of most seafood by 2048; and includes chefs and fishers who seem indifferent to the ecocidal consequences of their business practices. "We must act now to protect the sea from rampant overfishing” says Charles Clover, author of the book of the film. Must, must. The difficulty with films like The End of the Line - as with 'An Inconvenient Truth', Michael Pollan’s 'Food, Inc' - and my own story about pigs, above - is that so much bad news obscures positive developments. The End of the Line received far more publicity, for example, than the launch of FishChoice.com FishChoice.com is one of many business-to-business (B2B) innovations that begin to unlock an intractable problem: how to reconfigure food systems that lock their participants into ecocidal behaviour.
Read more at: http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2009/08/post_50.php
INTER-CITY BUS AS A PRODUCT-SERVICE SYSTEM
Plug-in electric cars are very popular with politicians and car companies: they embody the myth that we can all carry driving around in private vehicles as normal, and the planet gets saved. It's a dangerous con: the true costs of electric cars - from the heavy metals in their batteries, to the coal-generated power needed to run them - mean that their viability as a long-term alternative to unsustainable mobility is an illusion. My other unsolicited proposal in Poznan, therefore, was that Poland should develop inter-city coach travel as a Product Service System [PSS]. Buses are by far the most envronmentally friendly form of public transport: they produce 29g of CO2 for every passenger kilometre travelled, compared with 52g for trains and 170g per passenger km for cars and airplanes. There's a huge opportunity here for Poland to take a global lead. Car, road, and aviation industries have a death grip around the necks of policy makers in most countries, so bus travel is not developed. Poland already makes a lot of buses; what's needed next is an integrated combination of vehicles, enhancements to existing infastructure, informatics - plus web 3.0 platforms and social innovation to enable bus-to-home car sharing.
NEXT GENERATION DESIGN CENTRES
Whether it be agro-ecological food systems, or inter-city bus travel as a PSS, the individual components are available. The missing element is an entity that will coordinate the actors and components of a Product Service System. It occurs to me that Europe contains a growing number of regional design centres, innovation centres, enterprise observatories, cluster support offices and the like. Policy makers could usefully change their brief and tell them to focus on sustainable, multi-actor food and moblity systems, instead of often-purposeless high tech. http://www.eif.org/jeremie/
GREENING DESIGN EDUCATION
If design centres don't seize this opportunity, could design schools? Poznan's Academy of Fine Arts is in a project called DEEDS whose aim is to speed up the diffusion of sustainable development practice in Europe's design schools. Bogumila Jung, the Academy's Dean, told me that they focus on experiential learning in which students engage with real-life situations. These experiences help designers develop the holistic thinking needed if they are to be useful when working among complex, multi-layered and interconnected systems.
DE-CARBONISED MOBILITY: URBAN SPORTS IN URBAN DESIGN
I was thrilled to receive an email from Claire Alleaume, Skate Champion of France, no less. As well as being an ultra-modern form of de-carbonised mobility, skateboarding is also Claire's job: she works for a communication agency that works with architects, urban planners, and street furniture designers on new ways to integrate urban sports like skateboarding, rollerblading and bmxing. Anyway, Claire asks, "Is there anything I can read which could help me reflect on this issue, make the right choices, and concretely act with councils so as to work in the right direction?". My sad reply to Claire was that I know more about urban composting than bmxing - but what about you, dear readers? Please suggest *the* best book or site for Claire that will help her develop these activities in cities. Send your suggestions please to: john at doorsofperception dot com - and I'll pass them along.
BERLIN: "POOR BUT SEXY"
One reason Berlin's mayor calls the city "poor but sexy" is the city's art scene. Anna Krenz inspired us in Poznan with a talk on how her tiny 20 square metre shop-front and art space, Galerie Zero, has generated social and cultural energy in the Kreusberg area of Berlin. Krenz and her partner, Jacek Slaski, have produced 100 pioneering art shows, installations and events over a six year period. I calculate that these 100 events cost less than building the men's toilets in a Frank Gehry-type art museum. The importance of projects like Galerie Zero is not just that they cost less than fancy museum buildings; their activities, being created in and by a community, also create a lot of the social capital that policy makers are so keen to foster. Urban planners and policy makers should all get hold of of their new book: Zero, Berlin, 2003-2009 . http://www.zero-project.org
SWORDS INTO PLOUGHSHARES - WELL, NEARLY (ST ETIENNE, FRANCE)
A TGV-full of of political and business leaders travelled from Paris to St Etienne for the opening of Cite du design. Sixty four million euros ($93m) has been invested in the conversion of a former armaments manufacturing complex into a new design centre and design school. Everyone from the Minister of Culture (a big deal in France) to St Etienne's Mayor turned up to celebrate this ambitious project. They all agreed that design is a key ingredient in urban design, high tech innovation, and regional development. One suspects that that they all had different ideas about what those words mean, but that probably doesn't matter. At a conference in St Etienne next month called "Cities of Design" the design-minded cities of Minneapolis, Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, Seoul, Portland, Eindhoven and Dortmund will all be represented. 30 November and 01 December, St Etienne. Info: camile.vilain@citedudesign.com
PLOUGHSHARES AS TECHNOLOGICAL DISOBEDIENCE (CUBA)
Cite du design is a broad church. Whilst hordes of courtiers flocked around the Minister like starlings at sunset, copies of a subversive new book, by Ernesto Oroza, were being distributed by Cite's publications team. Rikimbili - "a study of technological disobedience and other forms of re-invention" - describes how Cubans have adapted and recycled industrial objects during fifty years of US sanctions. The book's title, Rikimbili, is named after a two-wheeled vehicle that started its life as a bicycle. The book is subversive because, for me anyway, it describes the kind of design we'll be doing in the coming age of scarcity industrialism (a phrase of John Michael Greer). Design shows filled with shiny objects, by contrast, are best perceived as historical events about a pardigm that has passed. Write direct to obtain your copy of Rikimbili to: emilie.chabert at citedudesign dot com
http://citedudesign.com/sites/Editions/index.php?page=87&article=112
http://oroza.net/
MENTALISTS AND MATERIALISTS
I was at a most interesting conference in Plymouth, Making Futures, about the crafts in the context of sustainability. We discussed the prospects for people who can make things in an era of scarcity industrialism. I was especially impressed by an organisation called Ethical Metalsmiths. Its founder, Susan Kinglsey, told us that 20 tonnes of waste, among them river-poisoning sulphides, and mercury, are needed to produce one gold ring. A significant amount of gold (40%) is supplied by an estimated estimated twelve million artisan (ie, by hand) miners around the world. Many mining operations bring about environmental degradation, involve child labor, and lead to the exploitation and further impoverishment of these workers and communities. Kinglsey described a horror phenomenon called Acid Mine Drainage as a "perpetual pollution machine".
http://www.ethicalmetalsmiths.org/
http://makingfutures.plymouthart.ac.uk/index.php?page=Conference-Home&pag_id=2
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2007/10/age-of-scarcity-industrialism.html
] FORTHCOMING EVENTS
DO TRUE COST ECONOMICS SPELL FINITO FOR THE MILAN DESIGN SCENE? (MILAN, 8 OCTOBER)
Few artefacts embody so much mental, but also material energy, as a high design furniture from Milan. Will this sector be viable when the true social and environmental costs of industrial production start to be charged, rather than hidden? Well maybe, and maybe not: my lecture is followed by a debate. Thursday 8 October, Design Library, via Savona 11, Milan. Tel +39 02 894 21225
DESIGN FOR DEVELOPMENT (LONDON. 10 OCTOBER)
The poster asks, ""How can the benefits of design be extended beyond the worlds wealthy to everyone?" This question begs many questions, as will be evident in this discussion chaired by Alastair Fuad-Luke, author of Design Activism. Speakers include Guy Robinson, Director of industrial design consultancy Sprout, Ann Thorpe, researcher and author of The Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability, and me. 15-17h, 10 October, Bargehouse, London.
http://designfordevelopment.eventbrite.com/
2012 IMPERATIVE TEACH-IN (LONDON, 12 OCTOBER)
This Global Emergency Teach-in for ecological literacy in design education will be "a massive social learning project" based on the example of a similar teach-in, held in 2007 at the New York Academy of Science, that reached a quarter million people from 47 countries. Any university or college can participate in this new Teach-in by hosting a viewing of the event. If you're in the London area, you need to obtain tickets for the Teach-in at the V&A.
http://www.teach-in.eco-labs.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=73&Itemid=94
DOES THE IDEAL ECO CITY EXIST? (CAEN, FRANCE, 14 OCTOBER)
This event is in France and will be in French so here's the blurb in French (I'm in a round table there on 14 October): Quelle sera la forme de la ville de demain? Comment construire plus vite des logements à la fois moins chers et plus économes en énergie ? Comment concilier la qualité de vie et une forme d'habitat plus dense et plus durable ? La voiture sera-t-elle encore la reine des villes dans 50 ans ? L'éco-cité idéale existe-t-elle ? Autant de questions à l'ordre du jour de "Caen Les Rencontres, Première", qui feront de Caen une vaste agora citoyenne sur l’urbanisme, l’architecture et le développement durable durant tout le mois d'octobre. Autour de l'exposition "voisins - voisines", et sous la présidence de François Barré, les Caennaises et les Caennais sont invités à échanger avec les plus grands architectes-urbanistes lors de quatre journées de conférences, de débats et de convivialité.
http://www.caen-lesrencontres.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=57:seconde&catid=38:rencontres&Itemid=160
THE NEW ECONOMICS (BOOK LAUNCH, LONDON, 14 OCTOBER)
Why do modern Britons work harder than medieval peasants? Why are Malawi villagers paying the mortgages of Surbiton stockbrokers? And why did China pay for the Iraq war? A new approach to economics – deriving as much from Ruskin and Schumacher as from Keynes or Smith – has begun to emerge. Skeptical about money as a measure of success, this new economics turns our assumptions about wealth and poverty upside down. It shows us that real wealth can be measured by increased well-being and environmental sustainability rather than just having and consuming more things. This new book by David Boyle and Andrew Simms is published on 14 October.
http://www.earthscan.co.uk/?tabid=74731
POPULAR E-GOVERNMENT (MALMO 19-20 NOVEMBER)
Are you full of aspirations about what e-enabled government could do for us in Europe but also a little frustrated by official conferences and Ministerial pronouncements? Then perhaps this is the chance you've been waiting for. The first popular European e-government conference, which takes place in Malmö, Sweden 19-20 November 2009, "aims to offer a memorable creative statement of what Europeans really want from e-enabled government". It is particularly aimed at European digital-rights organisations, consumer advocates, and those with a political, academic, artistic or design interest in e-government. No presentation will last longer than eight minutes. http://malmo09.org/
FOUR DAYS IN HALIFAX (NOVA SCOTIA, 21-24 OCTOBER)
If you're in or near Halifax Nova Scotia during 21-24 October, we're part of an event called 4 Days Halifax that will explore the ways design can help this lively region in its transition to sustainability. I told the organisers, Peter Wuensch and Rachel Derrah, to think of Doors of Perception as a "Hubble Telescope turned backwards" - the idea being that it often takes an outsider to help grassroots people and groups, who are the acorns of a sustainable future, become better known or visible in their own backyard. 21-24 October, Halifax.
http://4days.ca/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/4-Days/137754558339
ANY MORE QUESTIONS?
I did an interview with Design21, a social design network:
http://www.design21sdn.com/feature/6355
This free monthly newsletter announces Doors of Perception events, and starts conversations on issues to do with design for resilience.
For back issues, or to (un)subscribe, visit:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/mailinglist/archives.php
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THIS MONTH’S HIGHLIGHTS
Doors event: How to recycle an office block
Food systems: is urban farming the new dot.com?
Measuring what matters: GDP as a doomsday machine
Social innovation: from philanthrocapitalism, to social venturing
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] DOORS OF PERCEPTION EVENT
HOW TO RE-USE AN OFFICE BLOCK (SAO PAULO)
We’ve agreed dates for our experimental “pocket conference” at the Momento Monumento project in Sao Paulo: Tuesday 3 and Wednesday 4 November. The two days will consist of design clinics and discussions around two questions: what kinds of social enterprise might re-animate this abandoned 24 story skyscraper as a place for people to live, work, learn,and connect? And, in what practical ways can design help them do that? The following organisations have agreed to meet there: Doors of Perception; Coloco; Exyzt; Transforma Design; DESIS (d-schools working on service design); the MetaReciclagem network; and The Hub, Sao Paulo. The event is an experiment: how to leverage the value of our respective networks to help an important project – but without encouraging people to take long flights to participate. http://www.momentomonumento.org/en/
] FOOD SYSTEMS AND DESIGN
ONE IN NINE ON FOOD STAMPS - WHILE OBESITY COSTS SOAR
One in nine Americans already relies on federal food stamps to help buy groceries – a startling number that will grow as unemployment rises. At the same time, medical spending on obesity - a major cause of diabetes, stroke and heart attacks, reached $147 billion in 2008, an 87 percent increase in a decade.
http://tiny.cc/E7KJb http://tiny.cc/lv2ZI
SO: HOW MUCH IS A SCHOOL GARDEN WORTH?
California is spending $65,000 (45,000 euros) per classroom seat in a schools rebuilding programme – but only $1 per child per year for garden upkeep and support. Mud Baron, whose job is to help 500 L.A. schools develop gardens and nature projects, has fought a lonely battle to persuade planners and architects that contact with nature - not just buildings – is a crucual ingredient of a "green" school. When Mud explained his campaign to a Doors of Perception workshop at The Planning Center, in February, we came up with the idea of re-labeling school gardens as “outside classrooms”; this would have resolved Mud’s resource problem at a stroke.?But the situation in California has deteriorated fast since then:The budget crisis has left countless teachers unemployed, and a $1.7-million grant to Los Angeles Unified School District for its Instructional School Garden Program has expired. Mud’s boss has agreed to match the funds that Baron and his network can raise – if they reach $100,000. We don’t usually run campaign appeals here, but when the issue is schools + food + learning-to- grow, we simply have to make an exception. Donate what you can, here:
http://tiny.cc/u9Ymy
http://www.laschoolgardens.com/
IS URBAN FARMING THE NEW DOT COM?
Emergency appeals are not a long-term solution to Mud Baron’s situation – nor to myriad other social programmes for which government funding is collapsing. In the US, a first response has been to start a business to fill the gap. A September event in New York, Agriculture 2.0, will introduce alternative agriculture entrepreneurs to investors. Organizer Roxanne Christensen says innovators are developing profitable models for sustainable alternatives to industrial agriculture that "can help create a post-industrial food system that is less resource intensive, more locally-based, and easier to monitor and control". The perkily-named of start-ups include BrightFarm Systems, SPIN-Farming, Virtually Green, Aquacopia, NewSeed Advisors. 17 September, New York City.
http://tiny.cc/A4Ek9
http://www.newseedadvisors.com/conference
NURTURE CAPITALISM
Slow Money also promotes itself as a new economic vision. It's “an emerging network of investors, donors, entrepreneurs, farmers, and activists committed to building local food systems and local economies. It's about the soil of the economy. It's the beginning of the ‘nurture capital’ industry”. The slow money community meets 9-11 September in Santa Fe.
http://tiny.cc/GAXHu
http://www.slowmoneyalliance.org/national-gathering.html
FOOD AND CITIES: LEARNING FROM THE SOUTH
In countries where hunger is a lived reality, growing food in cities is taken seriously. The South can teach the North a lot here. A new book by leading experts on urban agriculture drawns on original field work in cities across the rapidly urbanizing global south; it proposes practical strategies to integrate city farming into the urban landscape. City farmers, politicians, environmentalists and regulatory bodies need to work together, the book concludes, to improve the long term sustainability of urban farming as a major, secure source of food and employment for urban populations. Agriculture in Urban Planning: Generating Livelihoods and Food Security, is edited by Mark Redwood and published by Earthscan with the International Development Research Centre.
http://tiny.cc/qxgGn
http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-133761-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
NO FOOD WITHOUT WATER
There is no food without water, and the best source I know for design challenges posed by water projects is the journal Water 21. They publish an excellent free online newsletter, too.
http://tiny.cc/nq9B4
http://www.iwapublishing.com/template.cfm?name=mailings
] MEASURING WHAT MATTERS
MEASURING ECONOMIC PROGRESS
Enrico Giovannini, Chief Statistician of the OECD, is pleased with with his new visualization tool, the OECD Factbook Explorer. Few people on the planet are exposed to a larger volume of statistics than he is, and he’s well aware that the more data proliferate, the harder it is to extract meaning from them. But making numbers look interesting is not its main point: Its longer-term potential is as a tool to help change the ways we perceive and measure economic progress.
http://tiny.cc/5RKta
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2009/07/post_48.php
GDP AS A DOOMSDAY MACHINE
Over at Adbusters, they don’t want to wait. “Conventional economics to a bucket full of water that's ready to tip. So, let's kick it over” says their True Cost Economics Manfesto. It describes neoclassical economics as a “gigantic fraud upon the world” and promises that “in the months and years that follow, we will begin the work of reprogramming your doomsday machine”
http://tiny.cc/K6twi
https://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/truecosteconomics/sign
GREEN MAP IMPACTS
The Green Map platform enables local communities to map assets and resource flows. A new book features fascinating illustrated narratives by local green map makers in ten countries. http://tiny.cc/PGTBX
http://www.greenmap.org/greenhouse/files/Green_Map_Impacts_09.pdf
WHO TRACKS THE TRASHED TAGS?
If we knew exactly where our trash was going, and how much energy it took to make it disappear, would we think twice about buying bottled water or "disposable" razors? A team of MIT researchers wants people to think more about what they throw away. Trash Track involves the development of special electronic tags that will track different types of waste on their journey through the disposal systems of New York and Seattle. A dilemma for Tracking Trash: in their present form, RFID tags are themselves eco-unfriendly waste, and less than 20 percent of US e-waste is recovered for recycling.
http://tiny.cc/zY35u http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/trash-0715.html
THE 121 POUND IPHONE
A hard dilemma confronts those (such as this writer) who have too fliply promoted networked communications as “the infrastructure of sustainabiity”. The amounts of energy, materials and waste associated with the lifecycles of digital media are too often underestimated or just plain ignored. According to information recently released by Apple, for example, the footprint of an iPhone includes 121 pounds of CO2-equivalent green house gas emissions over a three-year expected lifetime of use. Read Don Carli’s startling article:
http://tiny.cc/kSGvh
http://www.sustainablecommunication.org/resources/articles/53-which-medium-is-more-sustainable-paper-or-digital
THE CHIPS THAT WEIGH AS MUCH AS A CAR …
The energy consumption of electronic devices is skyrocketing: the electricity consumption of computers, cell phones, flat screen TV's, iPods and other gadgets will double by 2022 and triple by 2030. And that’s just the power needed to use them; more important is the energy required to manufacture electronic equipment. A handful of microchips embody as much energy as a car. Low-Tech Magazine has posted a long and detailed analysis:
http://tiny.cc/X2dns
http://krisdedecker.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0099229e8883301157108f109970b-pi
… AND THE HEAVINESS OF GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS
Of humanity’s 50,000 ecocidal mega-tonnes of annual CO2e greenhouse gas emissions each year, around 2,800 mega-tonnes are caused by logistics and transport activities. Road freight is a major element of this footprint; minerals and food transportation are the largest contributors by product category. Possibly shocked by these numbers, the World Economic Forum has published a report on Supply Chain Decarbonization.The report talks
bluntly about “a clear need to move beyond corporate and geographic barriers in addressing supply chain carbon emissions”.
http://tiny.cc/fTpBg
http://www.weforum.org/pdf/ip/SupplyChainDecarbonization.pdf
BATTERIES, WIRES: SO OLD PARADIGM
Gunter Pauli is disturbed by the very sight of electronic devices that need batteries or electric wires in order to function. So the gadget-filled venue of the LIFT conference for technology developers, in Marseille, must have been a challenge. But the founder of the Zero Emissions Research Initiative was not to be deterred, as the video of his talk shows:
http://tiny.cc/pjxbe
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2009/07/post_47.php
] SOCIAL INNOVATION
FROM PHILANTHROCAPITALISM, TO SOCIAL VENTURING
A new book about “philanthrocapitalism” chronicles a new generation of social investors who deploy big-business-style strategies and expect results and accountability to match. They include Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, George Soros, Angelina Jolie, and Bono, among others. Their proposition is that there’s a "missing middle" in emerging countries can be filled by new capital to fuel growth. This msojunds very much the economy that we have now; can’t we do better? A contrasting vision is contained a new publication from The Young Foundation, Social venturing, that describes a different kind of economy – a social economy – that is more socially and informationally intensive than capital intensive. Read more at: http://tiny.cc/n9DZi http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2009/07/from_philanthro.php
APOLLO PROGRAM FOR SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media researchers in the US have called for the creation of a National Initiative for Social Participation. Ben Shneiderman is using social media to organize the effort through a Facebook group called iParticipate. “I see this as an agency like NASA is for space”, he says.
http://tiny.cc/ptCAj
http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2009/05/06/national-initiative-for-social-participation/
SOCIAL MEDIA: FROM ME-WARE TO WE-WARE
David Barrie produces popular documentaries and programmes for television. In recent times he’s used these media techniques in community and urban development. In David’s new project, in Wales, ‘Unofficial Mayors’ and community groups are using social media to develop an action plan for physical, social and cultural initiatives. The idea, says David, is
“to network communities and local life in a collective way – in the spirit of garden allotments on common ground rather than the fenced-off private gardens you find in social media now”. http://tiny.cc/OHvfy
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/digitalbutetown
OPEN SOURCE SEWING
Among the many inspiring social innovation projects listed in NEW York 100, I especially like the sound of Hot Bread Kitchen, a social-purpose bakery that employs local immigrant women to bake traditional recipes. There’s also a feral-sounding group of recyclers, called Scrapkins, and Burda Style, an “open source sewing” venture. All Day Buffet are organising a conference for these and other start-ups on 1 October.
http://tiny.cc/DbPM5
http://www.alldaybuffet.org/newyork100/
LET THEM EAT ECO BREAD
City Eco Lab veterans Exyzt and Bethany Koby have created a combined windmill and public oven in London. They’ve been baking a local currency out of bread, called the Dalston Slice, that can be used at local stores. http://tiny.cc/TbAB7
http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=9311
] ALSO NOTED
ECOLOGICAL LITERACY TEACH-IN
A design education teach-in to help students, faculty and staff re-frame design I the context of resource depletion, loss of biodiversity, and climate change. The idea is to embed ecological literacy in design education by 2012. Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 12 October. http://www.teach-in.co.uk
ALL OUR FUTURES (UK)
Education for sustainability is also the focus of this conference in Plymouth. Speakers include Martin Charter, Director of The Centre for Sustainable Design; writer and design activist Alastair Fuad-Luke; and Sara Parkin of Forum for the Future. 15-17 September, Centre for Sustainable Futures,?University of Plymouth.
http://tiny.cc/gdVfB http://csf.plymouth.ac.uk/allourfutures/
RE-DEFINING “ENVIRONMENT”
Is it time to re-frame what we mean by the word “environment” - and thus, how we perceive, design, and inhabit the world? The Institute for Advanced Studies is Glasgow is hosting a four month Scottish-Danish research project to explore these questions. It aims to re-locate the concept of environment “in a more more encompassing ecosystemic context”. http://tiny.cc/qt1jq
http://www.instituteforadvancedstudies.org.uk/Programmes/DesigningEnvironments.aspx
EDUCATION THAT PAYS FOR ITSELF (ECUADOR)
The Third International Conference on Sustainable Education is for innovators tackling key challenges in education across the developing world: How to provide high quality education without high fees; How to teach young people to succeed as entrepreneurs ; How to empower future generations to break out of the poverty trap. 8-10 December 2009 Yachana Lodge, Ecuador.
http://tiny.cc/dVmOL
http://www.teachamantofish.org.uk/conference/
02 GLOBAL NETWORK – NOW ON LINKED-IN
The O2 Global Network informs, inspires and connects people interested in sustainable design. An enterprising Joel Mulligan (who also needs a job) has established the group on LinkedIn.
http://tiny.cc/AQQy3
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?homeNewMember=&gid=2162795&trk=
CLASSROOM OF TOMORROW
Finalists in Architecture for Humanity’s classroom challenge range from an outdoor classroom in inner-city Chicago, to learning spaces for the children of salt pan workers in India. In September, a selected partner school will receive up to US$50,000 to realize its design.
http://tiny.cc/jIPVE
http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org/
SMART CITIES
For ten years, Carol Coletta has hosted a nationally-syndicated (in the US) public radio show called "Smart City." So she wasn't sure how to react when IBM launched its Smarter Cities campaign, and when Fortune magazine launched a tech conference of that name, too. Neither credited Carol. There’s nothing much to be done about these schoolyard bullies – except grant credit where credit is due.
http://www.smartcityradio.com/
AND SMART STREETS
If anyone at IBM or Fortune is feeling guilty, they could assuage it by donating funds to Smart Streets, the always useful (and always under-resourced) blog about new mobility. This week Sue Zielinski writes about New Mobility Hubs; these would help you access a whole range of transport options including buses, trains, streetcars, clean fuel taxis, auto rickshaws and car share or bike share vehicles, day care, satellite offices, cafes, shops and entertainment.
http://tiny.cc/OltTQ
http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/2009/07/new-mobility-hubs-connecting-dots.html
] BOOKS OF THE MONTH
Design is the problem: The future of design must be sustainable, by Nathan Shedroff. Design has a tremendous impact on the produced world in terms of usability, resources, understanding, and priorities. Shedroff does a fantastic job explaining how to feed the leading frameworks and perspectives on sustainability into the development process of products, services, and events. http://tiny.cc/kv0zX
http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/sustainable-design/
Design Meets Disability, by Graham Pullen. If eyeglasses can evolve from medical necessity to fashion accessory, why not hearing aids, prosthetic limbs, and communication aids? Graham Pullin shows us how design and disability can inspire each other. MIT Press, 2009
http://tiny.cc/UnP1v
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11673
Design Activism: Beautiful Strangeness for a Sustainable World, by Alastair Fuad-Luke. How design activists are catalysing positive impacts to address sustainability: their leader describes approaches, processes, methods, tools and inspirational examples. Earthscan, 2009
http://tiny.cc/FcC6x
http://www.earthscan.co.uk/?tabid=49386
] GIFT ECONOMY: TWO QUID PRO QUO OPPORTUNITIES
1. HELP GROW OUR RELATIONAL CAPITAL
This newsletter is free, but it creates value through cross-fertilisation. Please share it with your friends, colleagues, clients and collaborators.
http://tiny.cc/rCArh http://www.doorsofperception.com/mailinglist/archives.php
2. IS YOUR FIRM EMBARKING ON TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE?
John Thackara, who wrote this newsletter, gives talks, and runs project clinics, that help organisations embark on transformational change. He also organises regional-scale events that help real-world sustainability projects cross-fertilise, and grow. http://www.thackara.com
TRANSITIONING
Fui So means "ability to rejuvenate" in Mandarin. I learned this from Wong Lai-yin, a Chinese participant in last week's Transition Towns event in London. Transition initiatives and groups are multiplying at extraordinary speed: 170 communities have been officially designated Transition Towns (or cities, districts, villages - and even a forest); and a further 600 communities are "mulling it over" as they consider the possibility of kicking off their own Transition Initiative. The Transition Towns WIKI opens with the statement, "Here's how it all appears to be evolving...". That statement helps explain why the movement is growing so fast: it's been designed to be scalable.
Read more at: http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2009/06/transition_town.php
TOOLS FOR FACE-2-FACE (TRANSITION WEB STRATEGY)
How best should communities share knowledge when and where it is most needed? Wikipedia is a hard act to beat in terms of formal and recordable knowledge. But what about lived, embodied, situated knowledge? How do we share that? A few weeks before the London event, the Transition Towns web team asked for feedback on the "great diversity of web tools and processes currently in use and under development" and asked for input on "which of these will be resilient and adaptable enough to support the changing needs of transition groups around the world." That's a demanding brief: deploy common tools, processes and protocols to help rapidly-evolving and heterogeneous groups do their work. Ed Mitchell, one of the web team, told us in London that face face is overwhelmingly the most important mode of communication for Transitioners. Among key web development principles for the next period the most important is that "we don't want to force people to behave in a particular way." Mitchell presented a map of inter-connected functions and channels that will include guided search - with human beings to help never far away. "There is no such thing as a single Transition website, he explained, and tools will be selected that cause Transitioners to "spend as little time in front of computer screens as possible". As a description of how to use the web to facilitate change, this was the most insighful that I've heard in 15 years.
MONUMENTO (EXCHANGING ACORNS, NOT TREES, WITH SAO PAULO)
We moved the Doors conference from cosy Amsterdam to India, in 2002, because it seemed right to go to a new context and re-frame questions of sustainability there. The trouble is that long-haul flights produce 110 grams of carbon dioxide per passenger kilometer; each of us flying to Doors 9 in Delhi therefore produced the best part of two tonnes of CO2 emissions. Our excuse, then, was that it was too late (when we learned about those numbers) to cancel the event. But that excuse will no longer wash. Doors' legacy business - bringing together hundreds of people from different parts of the world - has to change, and radically.
So let's change it together. From 10 October to 11 November we will participate in a project in in Sao Paulo called Monumento. It combines the words monument, and moment. A 22-story abandoned office building (among litreally thousands in that city) is being turned into an "auto-construction laboratory" by two ex-architecture groups, Coloco and Exyzt. They are working with mixed local communities in an area of the city that's an office district by day, and home to multiple urban tribes by night. The hard aspects of the project involve re-purposing the building using local skills, and rescued materials and equipment, to create living and production spaces. The soft programme is described by Coloco's Pablo Georgieff as "a fusion of culture and social production". During the six-week season different aspects of what he calls "the art of meeting" will include food, theatre, storytelling, and live presentations of projects that explore new ways to organise daily life.
Monumento coincides with an international symposium on sustainable design in the city on 5 and 6 November. We are also in touch with DESIS-Brazil, a network on design for social innovation that connects universities in Brazil and connected with DESIS groups in China and with Ezio Manzini's group at Politecnico di Milano. We are also talking to the Sao Paulo designer Paula Dib who is developing a programme at another university there, FAAP.
So here's the challenge: how to introduce service innovation projects to the mix in Sao Paulo, and exchange experiences with the Monumento participants, without organising an international convention. Send your thoughts to: john at doorsofperception dot com. We'll flesh out the idea in next month's newsletter.
http://www.momentomonumento.org/en/
http://portal.anhembi.br/sbds/speakers.html
http://www.sustainable-everyday.net/desis09_brazil/
POROUS PARIS (REPORT)
Transition Towns is not exclusively bottom-up; its groups are encouraged to engage with local government entities where possible. But a magisterially top-down project in France accentuates the difference. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, asked 10 uber-architects to project 20 years into the future and dream up "the world's most sustainable post-Kyoto metropolis". An illustrated report in English has just been published. As flagged last month, I especially like the metaphor of "Paris as a sponge" proposed by Bernardo Secchi and Paola Vigano. They state: "Porosity: relation of the empty to the full, of the unbuilt to the built, of vegetable to mineral, of accessible space to uncoupled space...porosity through a remodelling of the landscape, porosity through a multiplied transportation system, porosity to create a habitat revised and corrected for “sustainability”. And so on. These words accompany a rather horrible picture - which only goes to show that some architects can write better than they can....design?
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/actualites/communiq/albanel/dp_grand_paris_en.pdf
NORWEGIAN ARCHITECTURE POLICY (BYLUFTSLOV)
Meanwhile in Norway 13 different government ministries (surely a world record) are working together on a new architecture policy. For Nina Berre, director at Norsk Form, who is helping to organise the process, Norwegian architects "excel at building harmonic structures in difficult terrain – and the end result is often poetic. Cottages grow out of rocky surfaces, as do roadside rest areas or public buildings, scattered across the landscape as if placed by an act of God". Norway is the same size as Germany but has fewer than five million inhabitants (to Germany's 80m); the country is not exactly short of water; and it has also stashed a huge pot of money from its (now declining) oil producing heyday. Confronted by this rather luxurious starting point, I suggested, in my talk, that Norway lead the world and base its architecture policy on a land ethic. Kjetil Thorsen, Norway's leading architect, then talked about a word he has coined,"byluftslov" that describes a Nordic model built around the concept of joint ownership, togetherness and shared responsibility for public space. My Norwegian is a bit rusty so I've asked Kjetil if his intriguing piece could be translated.
http://www.norskform.no/default.asp?V_ITEM_ID=4516
FOODPRINTING THE CITY (SYMPOSIUM, THE HAGUE)
In March 2007 we organised Doors 9 in Delhi to explore the design agenda for food systems. Since then, interest in the subject has exploded and architects the world over are now photoshopping gardens onto every proposal. The next priority now is to get serious on strategy and implementation - to put food and water systems at the heart of city planning and design. A seminar in The Hague this month will launch Foodprint, a two year project to explore the possibilities of food production in the Dutch capital city. Speakers include Carolyn Steel (author 'Hungry City'); Wally Satzewich (Spinfarming); Rob Baan (Kopper Cress Micro Vegetables); Debra Solomon (Culiblog), Will Allen from Growingpower. I'll talk too. Friday June 26, 2009, The Hague.
http://www.het-portaal.net/foodprint/STR+Food+programma+07.pdf
http://www.het-portaal.net/foodprint/Sprekers.pdf
A CONFESSION
Although I'm quoted as an expert on edible cities in this month's Icon magazine, I need to make confession now before someone else shops me: I have not yet tended one plant that has survived long enough to be eaten. I've planted lots of seeds; and have clocked many dirt-filled hours tending our allotment; but my fingers remain resolutely ink-stained rather than green. In self-defence (of my status as an expert) I do have first-hand experience that that growing food is harder than it looks on the pages of archjitecture magazines. And in the absence of permission to use Agent Orange on our alllotment, I recently learned how to build an eco-hump:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2009/05/getting_the_eco.php
WATER STRESS (JOURNAL)
In Europe we extract 286 cubic kilometres of water every year; that's 5300 cubic metres per person. Where does it all go? Well, up to 1500 litres of water are needed to grow enough biofuels to move one car ten kilometres. 2000 litres are needed a day to feed each one of us. It takes And it takes 140 litres of water to grow enough beans for a single cup of coffee. It sounds, and is, unsustainable: Over-exploitation impacts heavily on the quality and quantity of remaining water, and on the ecosystems that depend on it. And it's not just a problem for southern Europe; water stress is also increasing in parts of the north. I could go on, but for more insight get hold of the International Water Association's excellent journal, Water21. The June issue contains a fascinating survey on the interconnectedness of water and energy.
http://www.iwaponline.com/
http://www.iwapublishing.com/register
IS DIGITAL LIFE LONELY? (LIFT CONFERENCE, MARSEILLE)
"We have come to an era where society breaths technology. Screens are familiar to us, however we do not know the consequences that tie with their domination". So begins the LIFT conference blurb. My own take, which I'll talk about, is that new technology connects us to each other more, but leaves us *less* connected to the biosphere of which we are a co-dependent part. We need to use digital infra in ways that reverse this ecocidal divide. Keynote speakers include Euan Semple, Gunther Pauli, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet (the French Digital Economy Minister), Usman Haque, Bruce Sterling, et moi. The event takes place in the Palais du Pharo, a gift to Napoleon perched on the cliff tops at the entrance of the Vieux Port. Marseille, 18-20 June 2009
http://liftconference.com/lift-france-09
AALTO UNIVERSITY: FOR LIFE, OR UNDECIDED? (TEXT OF TALK)
A major new university is to be named after the Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto. Aalto University, which opens in 2010, is the result of a merger between the Helsinki School of Economics (Finland's top business school, with 4,000 students); the University of Art and Design (one of Europe's top design and art schools, with 2,000 students); and Helsinki University of Technology (the main technical university, including the country's principal architecture school, with 15,000 students). Four hundred people are already busy preparing the new university, but I was asked to speak at symposium in Helsinki called "Beyond Tomorrow" about what the new university should do, and be. The University has stated that it will will "make a positive contribution to Finnish society, technology, economy, art, art and design, and support the welfare of both humans and the environment". I proposed that Aalto University should stand for something more precise than this: an unconditional respect for life, and for the conditions that support life. Read more at: http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2009/05/post_43.php
HOLISTIC GREEN IN PALESTINE (TEXT)
Wael Al-Saad is making plans to return to his Palestinian homeland after 17 years of secure living, studying, and working in Germany. He is convinced that there is enough land with high capacity (for instance for dryland permaculture) for innovative production methods in which they can invest resources, and become more productive. Read more at "What Does a New Start Look Like in Palestine? Returning Home to Create a Holistic Green Economy".
http://globalpalestine.blogspot.com/
ARTS AND ECOLOGY (SURVEY, UK)
Respond! started as a simple idea. "What if we find out how many arts events in the UK in a single month are responding to the ever-increasing threats to the environment?" The Royal Society of Arts is taking a snapshot of activity all around the UK to build on the agenda of World Environment Day on 5 June. The RSA's excellent Arts & Ecology has the details.
http://www.rsaartsandecology.org.uk/projects/respond
FISHING SYSTEMS (VISUALISATION, UK)
Justin Buckley has launched a website called EyeOverFishing that makes visible the UK fisheries system. It shows how the fishing industry, EU and UK policy-makers, and consumers, damage the ocean ecosystem - and how each group can participate in its restoration. "It's not really a campaign, it's more of an educational resource that collects the various problems with the UK fisheries in one place, to make it easier for people to find ways of solving them" Justin tells me.
http://www.eyeoverfishing.org
BLEEP! SAID SID (SONIC DESIGN, PORTO)
An alarm clock that you cannot hear, but still wakes you up. A shower curtain that sings along with you. Chewing gum that allows you to catch sounds that surround you and chew them into a new remixed soundscape. Sonic Interaction Design (SID) explores "ways in which sound can be used to convey information, meaning, and aesthetic and emotional qualities in interactive contexts". Karmen Franinovic is listening out for inspring examples for a sound and computing conference in Porto. 23-25 July, Porto, Portugal
http://smc2009.smcnetwork.org/programme/special-sessions/sid.html
HISSI FIT (SPOILED BRAT RANT)
Why is it that "design hotels" are such a total nightmare? At the K in Helsinki I had to press the remote eleven times to turn on CNN and throw 15 cushions onto the floor before I could get into bed. My tooothbrush fell in the loo twice because there was nowhere to put it. I would walk endlessly around the room pressing sliders, buttons and knobs trying, without success, to illuminate the room. No flat surfaces were available to put my laptop on. The control panel on the lift ("hissi" in Finnish) was so confusing that I had time to make new friends with fellow lost souls in its cabin as we went up and down. I prefer yurts.
i-BORG
A new sign on Manhattan Bridge as you enter New York warns, “No Idling: $2,000 fine”. Fat chance. The city would make more money if it fined people for using iPhones whilst walking along. It’s as if everyone has been Assimilated; iBorg, disguised as cellphones, cling limpet-like onto everyone’s hands.
DOCTORS OF TOMORROW
But I have to hand it to the iBorg: they’re good at social innovation. Take the example of family doctoring. Tamara Giltsoff, a service designer, introduced me to a wondrous new outfit called Hello Health. Their website is so well-written that I have to quote it direct: “Once upon a time, going to your doctor was simple. You knew his first name, or perhaps just called him ‘Doc’. He lived just down the street and made house calls. And if you were sick, you would see him that day, because, well, you were sick. Then things started to change. Although medicine has made some amazing advances in keeping us healthy, we now have to contend with dietitians, insurance premiums, running shoes, deductibles, HMOs, OTC drugs, specialists, fat-free salad dressing, and therapists. Daunting, isn't it? But don't worry, we've made going to the doctor easy again”. Hello Health combines the virtues of the old-fashioned neighbourhood doctor, with new tech platforms. “We love technology, the Internet, and especially our iPhones”, say Hello Health; “You can talk to us like you're talking to a friend: through emails, texts, phone calls, instant messages, or face-to-face conversations. Also, everything's online, from making appointments to accessing your records. It also helps we're close by, living and working in your neighborhood”. Anyway, the whole thing is quite brilliant - and to cap it all, hello health’s principal communication platform is a video on YouTube: http://tiny.cc/7C1UX http://tiny.cc/y4nEK
ALL DAY BUFFET
Even iBorg have to eat. Indeed, insofar as they have a destination as they wander the city, it’s usually to their next watering hole. An intriguing alternative to traditional venture funds is actually called All Day Buffet. One of its founders, Mike Karnjanaprakorn, told me (over breakfast, of course) that their idea is to “invest in creative misfits and entrepreneurs”. I ask him how this is different from existing social venture capital funds. “We’re like a record label - minus the evil”, Mike tells me; “we find super-smart people and give them the resources, connections and collaborative structure they need to launch their purpose-driven ventures and turn their ideas into successes”. Their method revolves around internal collaboration.”Our secret sauce (there’s the food thing again) lies in a cross-disciplinary culture that cultivates rampant idea generation, productivity, and happiness”. If you want to taste this recipe for yourself, Mike is organising a social innovation conference called The Feast on 1 October. http://tiny.cc/Fja08
HUNGRY NEW YORK
Phemonena like All Day Buffet won’t last long if food runs out. Claire Hartten, recently returned to New York from the UK (via the Doors 9 event we did on food systems,in New Delhi) has launched a group called Hungry New York to foster synergies between sustainable food projects, and buildings. Claire’s idea is to to bring together specialists from the green-building world (engineers, architects, developers, educators, etc.) with those, like cheese-seller Anne Saxelby, and restaurateur Carlos Suarez, who are finding entrepreneurial ways to grow more sustainable food systems. A first event, organised with the New York Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council, features Carolyn Steele, author of Hungry City. http://tiny.cc/oEAMu
HIGH LINE
I was taken on a sneak preview visit to The High Line. It’s an elevated public park on a 1.5 mile elevated railway that runs along the West Side of Manhattan. Everyone is rightly proud that this historic rail structure has been saved from being razed by developers. 150 million dollars have been found to to create a “one-of-a-kind recreational amenity…a linear public place where you will see and be seen”. It’s a spectacular site, and the work is being beautifully done – but the project feels strangely out-of-date before it even opens. The High Line website features “before” images of the site before restoration, with masses of weeds and greenery. The “after” site, that I visited, features concrete walkways, high-design benches, and artful planting. What I missed, amidst the designerly order, was a sense of productivity and abundance.The good news is that Phases 2 and 3 of the project venture into vast unused railway yards – perfect sites for city farms.
http://tiny.cc/uNPzA
GROWING AND GREENING, PREENING AND TWEAKING
An interesting exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, curated by Maura Lout, echoed my feeling that too much of New York’s surface is paved and impermeable. “Growing and Greening New York” seemed to be a friendly critique of the Obama reconstruction budget with its emphasis on bridges, roads, tunnels - and restored railway lines. Infrastructure can be renovated, the show implies, by softer means - “tweaking much of what exists” to create a healthier, more sustainable place to live. In New York, of all cities, it will take time for this soft notion of infrastructure to take hold - but once it does, the potential for digging up paved surfaces and retrofitting productive gardens, with so much water all around, is stupendous. http://tiny.cc/plgdT
DESIGN WRITING BOOM (COURSES IN NEW YORK, LONDON)
One warmly welcomes the imminent arrival of 30 highly-trained competitors into the buoyant market for design writing. (Can one write through gritted teeth?). Not one but two new masters programmes in design writing have started. At the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, “fifteen stellar students and an all-star faculty” are learning how to “research, analyze and evaluate design and its social and environmental implications”. In the UK, part-time students on the London College of Communication MA are switching into my market from careers in design and architecture, teaching, social networking, and trend forecasting.
http://tiny.cc/bSyS7 http://tiny.cc/IhNLA
DESIGN ACROSS BOUNDARIES (DESIGN COURSE, NEW YORK)
But why be a sheep? Instead of becoming a design writer, I have a better idea for you: Liz Danzico, its co-founder,, told me that a couple of places are still open on her new Interaction Design course at SVA. Danzico promises “a range of experiences that cross visual, conceptual, and technical boundaries”. http://tiny.cc/JJz2E
EUROPE
SOCIAL MASHUPPING (CAMP, GLASGOW)
Europe’s social innovators are more outdoors-inclined than New York’s iBorg: they all seem to be keen campers. The organisers of Social Innovation Camp, “an experiment in creating social innovations for the digital age”, are looking for the best ideas for web-based tools that can change stuff that matters. A camping weekend in Glasgow brings together some of the best of the UK’s software developers and designers with those at the sharp end of social problems. Their mission is to turn six back-of-the-envelope ideas that could change the world into social start-ups - complete with working software. And all in under 48 hours. http://tiny.cc/VN1KC
UNGOV CAMP (UNCONFERENCE, BIRMINGHAM)
LocalGovCamp, for its part, is an ‘unconference’; this means is that no agenda is prepared and distributed in advance. Instead, sessions at the event are decided upon and scheduled during the first part of the day. http://tiny.cc/V7whp
AN EDAP IS BORN (ENERGY DESCENT ACTION PLAN)
Two years after the group was formed, Transition Forest Row has just published its first version of an Energy Descent Action Plan, or EDAP. Subtitled ‘a community work in progress’ it is a combination of storytelling, cartoons, drawings and practical steps to an oil-free 2030.
http://tiny.cc/zIMfM
URBAN FOODPRINTS (ACTION RESEARCH, THE HAGUE)
The arts centre Stroom, in The Hague, has launched a two year project called Foodprint: food for the city. A range of activities will explore the influence food can have on the culture, shape and functioning of the city, using The Hague as a case study. Artists and designers are invited to develop project proposals that will connect entrepreneurs, farmers, food experts and the general public. One of the kick-off events is a symposium on 26 June featuring inter alia Carolyn Steel, author of ‘Hungry City', and me. http://tiny.cc/fB8c1
DESIGN IN A CRISIS (CONFERENCE, LINZ)
What’s the best way to use design during the crisis? This year’s Design-Organisation-Media conference (DOM) in Linz will explore different ways companies are using design to deal with complex business problems. Speakers from Nike, Shell, Siemens, Arup, and Ideo will be joined by researchers, professors, et moi. My chosen topic is: “Inwieweit sind die Methoden aus dem Kreativbereich für die Wirtschaft relevant und wie können diese erfolgreich im Bereich der Strategieplanung und Innovationsentwicklung eingesetzt werden?”. May 14 - 16, 2009, Linz/Mondsee http://tiny.cc/P3VcB
EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES (EVENT, HELSINKI)
Juha Huuskonen and Tuuli Sotamma invite you “Emperor's New Clothes" in Helsinki on 16 May. “People no longer want to be passive consumers, instead they want to have an active role in searching for better solutions. How can designers open up their work process and allow access for others to participate?” The event starts with a presentation, by Professor Heikki Hyötyniemi, about “the search for balance in complex systems”. http://tiny.cc/OvpcM
MY PLAN TO SAVE THE CITY OF NICE $250 MILLION (MONEY SAVING TIP)
The demise of architectural trophyism coincides with an interesting debate about the use of existing, but abandoned, industrial buildings. Until the bust, most large empty buildings would have been jumped on by developers and turned into egregious lofts. These days, the pressure is off and cities are considering more interesting uses. The question of grand architectural statements is raised by the transformation of the Var Valley, near Nice, into an Eco Valley This vast project, which will last 30 years, spans 25,000 acres from the Mediterranean coast to the Alpine foothills. The project's leader, Thierry Bahougne, wondered, in our discussion in Nice, whether the commission of a signifcant architectural...something...would attract potential stakeholders and give coherence to the enterprise through time. I'd be in favour of involving architects in Eco Valley - but not to make grand architectural statements. Rather than splash out $250 million on a signature building, a more exciting design challenge would be would be communicate the success of Eco Valley as a narrative about the restoration and nurture of its existing watersheds and biodiversity. The great national parks don't have signature buildings in them, so why Eco Valley? Read more at: http://tiny.cc/5tOEl
ECOSONIC (EVENT, MANCHESTER) )
Scientists from Britain’s Natural History Musem, and the Meteorological Office, are helping to develop two unique "citizen science" ways to record an urban microclimate. A centrepiece of the Futuresonic Festival is Climate Bubbles: People across the city of Manchester will test air flow circulation by mapping the path of bubbles blown around the city, and share the results online. The game enables the Met Office to get a snapshot the Urban Heat Island phenomenon. And in Biotagging Manchester, people will traverse a range of microclimates including cooler and warmer areas of the city; they will use “micro-tagging" to record animal and plant life in Manchester's Philips Park. The idea is to discover and map Manchester's urban wildlife in new ways. Futuresonic’s director, Drew Hemment, tells me that “both of these science-based artworks revolve around a three-way interaction between technology, environmentalism and society”.
http://tiny.cc/1iEJh
FESTIVAL OF DESIGN ACTIVISM (EVENT, LEEDS)
I’m not sure what design in-activism would entail, but design activism “encompasses a wide range of real-life, socially and environmentally-engaged actions”. A practitoners’ conference will facilitate the sharing of knowledge and understanding of practical engagement in design activism. A concluding Gala Event includes?cabaret, music, an awards ceremony, board games and “making new friends”. Aaah. 2-4 July 2009, Leeds, UK. http://tiny.cc/gQlE5
WOULDN'T IT BE GREAT IF.... (MANUAL)
The Manual of Dott 07 is now available to download, and it’s free. We didn’t want to call it a book, which is frozen; and it’s not a Catalogue, which is backward-looking. So we called it a Manual. http://tiny.cc/VYNTb
CALL FROM SYSTEM: CHILL ! (INNOVATION GONE MAD)
Two Intel researchers, Margaret Morris and Farzin Guilak, are developing “mobile therapy” – a system of just-in-time personal coaching, by the system, that is triggered by physiological indicators of stress. Mobile Heart Health, as it’s called, uses body sensors to help people “tune in to early signs of stress, and modulate reactivity that could potentially damage their relationships”. Breathing visualizations and “cognitive reappraisal cues” appear on your cell phone when a wireless ECG detects deviations from your baseline heart rate. The only flaw I can see in this project is that my heart will literally explode the first time that a cellphone tells me to calm down.
http://tiny.cc/H7vuC
CONTROL THE CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION
The market for design writing is about to be flooded by milleniallist newcomers, so I need to grab a monopoly hold on key communication channels before it’s too late. So, please pass this newsletter on to everyone you know - and tell them to subscribe. http://tiny.cc/GNWM4
MAKE SENSE, NOT STUFF: DESIGN AND THE GREEN ECONOMY (TEXT)
What would designers design, if they did not design products, or posters? My question is not a rhetorical one. On the contrary, I believe design schools in particular in danger of being marginalised by the speed with which the world is changing. I develop this theme in a text called Make sense, not stuff: A three step plan to connect design schools with the green economy. It’s for Cumulus, the international network of design schools, whose next conference is in London 27-30 May. You can read the whole text here:
http://tiny.cc/kfzbw
NINE MEALS FROM ANARCHY (LONDON EXHIBITION)
The head of the UK Countryside Agency warned recently that Britain was ‘nine meals away from anarchy.’ Britain's food supply is so totally dependent on oil - 95 per cent of the food eaten there is oil-dependent - that if the oil supply were suddenly to be cut off it would take just three full days before law and order broke down. An exhibition in London looks at different ways that cities might be transformed from consumers to generators of food.
http://tiny.cc/L73Dm
METRICS OF THERMO-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY (FLORENCE EVENT)
“These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others”. Groucho Marx could also have been talking about environmental standards. Our world is awash in eco information, but starved of meaning. Hundreds of organisations churn out a flood of reports, graphs, studies, punditry – and lists. So I jumped at the chance to write a text about the issue for an event called Green Platform which opens at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence later this month. Green Platform takes a complex critical view of the "crisis in our thermo-industrial society". A preview of the full text is here:
http://tiny.cc/SDsEC
LOOK AT THE BIG NUMBERS, NOT AT THE SMALL NUMBERS (BOOK)
On the subject of eco information, I'm reading a fantastically useful new book: Sustainable energy - without the hot air. Its author, David McKay, Professor of Natural Philosophy at Cambridge University, has responded to an urgent global challenge: how to make sense of the conflicting claims and information bandied about on all matters eco. The book is filled with insights like this one: "Leaving mobile phone chargers plugged in is often held up as an example of a behavioural eco-crime. The truth is that the amount of energy saved by switching off a phone charger is exactly the same as the energy used by driving an average car for one second". Prof McKay desevres a Nobel Prize for Usefulness. I boughbt the hardcopy, but you can download the book free:
http://www.withouthotair.com/
WHAT TOOLS FOR TRANSITION TOWNS? (SURVEY)
I received an interesting email from Transition Towns. "We recognise that out in transition land there's a great diversity of web tools and processes currently in use and under development" the mail begins; "some of these will be resilient and adaptable enough to support the changing needs of transition groups around the world". I am then asked to I fill in an online survey to help the Transition web team to "map out this sometimes alien terrain for community groups, and introduce common tools, processes and protocols to make it easier for us all to do our work"
http://tiny.cc/OuCFh http://tiny.cc/XvkXV
TOOLS FOR SOCIAL INNOVATION. (NEW YORK LECTURE)
Bruce Nussbaum has invited me to give a lecture at Parsons, The New School, in New York. I’ll talk about an important lesson we learned in Dott 07, and City Eco Lab: knowing about the availability of tools that enabble people to share resources, for example, and figuring out how to use them well, are two different things. Design can help on both fronts, as I shall explain. Contact: Rebecca Mielczarek, mielr147@newschool.edu +1 (212) 229-5391 x 4213 http://tiny.cc/d1nxr
COLLABORATIVE SERVICES: SOCIAL INNOVATION AND DESIGN FOR SUSTAINABILITY (BOOK)
"What is a sustainable lifestyle? What will our daily lives become if we agree to change some of our routines? How do we reduce our environmental impact without lowering our living standards?" A new book, edited by Francois Jegou and Ezio Manzini (with a chapter by me in it) attempts to answer some of these questions. Collaborative Services suggests a variety of scenarios: Car-sharing on demand, micro-leasing system for tools between neighbours, shared sewing studio, home restaurant, delivery service between users who exchange goods – and many more. http://tiny.cc/fEAO3
PARIS AS A SPONGE? (PARIS LECTURE)
Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, asked 10 architects to project 20 years into the future and dream up "the world's most sustainable post-Kyoto metropolis". The Italian architects Bernardo Secchi and Paola Vigano proposed to enlarge the city and laying it out as a "porous sponge" in which waterways are given pride of place. As a metaphor, "sponge" strikes me as a good metaphor to start from – but what about the social organisation of a future Paris? My lecture at ENSAD (École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs) will explore social innovation as a key feature of a sustainable city. 1830h- 2000h, Thursday 30 April. Ensad, 31, rue d'Ulm?75240 PARIS. Contact: Nathalie Foucher-Battais, nathalie.battais@ensad.fr,
+33 1 42 34 97 31 http://tiny.cc/DItSc http://tiny.cc/RCbvJ
THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES (HELSINKI EVENT)
Many designers, when they decide to take the limited carrying capacity of the biosphere seriously, first choose to design a poster about sustainability, or a thought-provoking “eco bag”. But the transiton to sustainability is no longer about messages; it's about activity. But what kinds of activity? Juha Huuskonen and me are leading an all-day review of thesis projects that deal with the designer’s changing role in society. Saturday 16 May, Helsinki. Contact Tulii Sotamaa: tuuli.sotamaa@taik.fi
BRAZIL INTERVIEW (BOOK IN BRAZIL)
For readers in Brazil, and of Portuguese, the website Planeta Sustenavel has published an interview and review to mark the publication of In The Bubble (renamed, for Brazil,Plano B).
http://tiny.cc/Tpwo2 http://tiny.cc/CKV8Y
ALEX’S IMPORTANT LETTER (APPEAL)
The founder and editor of Worldchanging, Alex Steffen, describes as “the most important letter I’ve ever written” his appeal, this month, for support. Worldchanging has been challenged to raise $10,000 in recurring reader pledges; if they manage that, their challenger will support Worldchanging with a $100,000 grant. We warmly endorse the Worldchaging appeal; they’re an essential part of an evolving ecosystem in which we learn from each other how to thrive in the 21st century. If you still have a job, you can probably afford to contribute – so please do so.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009583.html
ART AND DESIGN RESIDENCY (NEW DELHI)
The Khoj International Art and Design Residency, in New Delhi, is for practitioners, working at the intersection of art, design and media, who seek to “push artistic practice beyond convention”. Five places are available on the six week programme during November-December 2009. http://.www.khojworkshop.org
PROFESSOR OF SERVICE DESIGN (JOB)
Lucerne School of Art and Design is looking for a Professor of Service Design. Deadline for submissions: 30th April 2009.
http://tiny.cc/EOcLi
CONFUSED? ANXIOUS? NEED A PLACE TO THINK? (VACATION)
Some close friends of Doors have just completed 20 months’ work doing up Café de Tannay. It's an authentic sixteenth century town house two-and-a-bit hours south of Paris, 20 kilometers from UNESCO World-heritage site Vézelay on its ‘eternal hill’ dominating the Morvan National Park. We warmly recommend a sojourn in this beautful place.
http://tiny.cc/lcvCF
YOUR LAST CHANCE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE GIFT ECONOMY
I’ve been publishing this newsletter monthly since March 2002. As you may have noticed, it always arrives absolutely free. One of the indirect ways one is compensated is by being paid to speak at conferences and workshops. If you would like to support this newsletter, but do not feel like giving us a huge sum of money, then please send my speaker brochure to someone in your company (or who you know elsewhere) who organises events that include paid-for talks. Merci! http://tiny.cc/YNSzN
Everyone tweeted madly during my talk at the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) conference in Vancouver. The Twitter-enabled crowd seemed split as to whether my dire warnings about peak protein and peak indium were the proper concern of interaction design. I remain split on whether or not this new communication medium addles the brain.
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23ixd09
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshdamon/3271654415/
IxDA chair Greg Petroff tells me that in his neighbourhood, in San Francisco, near-strangers have started to meet for a socially-bonding beer every Friday. They assemble, twit-free, at the house whose owner has stuck a plastic flamingo in the lawn.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/interaction09/
During my visit to Bainbridge Graduate Institute (BGI), students taking the Sustainable Business MBA tell me what they look for in an employer: “generous, empowering, optimistic, creative, trusting, respectful, transparent, restorative, purpose-driven, meaningful, compassionate, humble, healthy, diverse.” I have to explain that Doors has no vacancies - probably because we exemplify just those qualities.
http://www.bgiedu.org/content/view/9/40/
BGI students spend four days each month together at IslandWood, a 225 acre “school in the woods” on an island off Seattle. The rest of the time the facility’s fabulous food, and LEED gold-rated buildings, are enjoyed by high school students who go there for outdoor classes in environmental stewardship. The subject is compulsory in all the state’s schools.
http://www.islandwood.org/
When not on their island, BGI students work remotely from home. They seem remarkably happy with the online tools they use. I’m hopeful that Sharepoint, Illuminate and The Channel can work for DoorsOfPerceptionU, too.
http://illuminatelearning.com/
Social media are not just used by interaction designers with the attention span of gnats. I learn from Chris Allen, its architect, that Johnson and Johnson has a ”social media strategy”, too.
http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/
In Palo Alto, I learn from Tim Brown that Ideo undertook more than 20 substantial “social impact” projects in 2008 - and demand is increasing. Back in London, I meet local government officials who are enthusiastic about their experience on iTeam, a joint venture between Ideo and Forum for the Future: iTeam trains public sector managers in the use of design innovation to tackle climate change.
http://www.forumforthefuture.org/the-i-team
Reflecting on the iTeam experience, a local govenment officer states that “small is the new big”. Despite the hugeness of the climate change challenge, it’s usually best to begin with modest-scale projects. Smallness, however, is a challenge for the design industry: business model is based on a cost structure, and therefore day rates, that are not small.
A lively debate ensues in Palo Alto when I ask whether designers should hesitate before they deliver pre-cooked solutions to the developing world. I am told, robustly, that Ideo practises “empathic research”, and that empowering local knowledge is a priority in its social impact projects.
http://www.designobserver.com/archives/entry.html?id=38773
The words “social” and “sustainable” cover most of life on earth. How is one to choose which design projects to do? Banny Banerjee, new Director of Stanford’s Design For Change programme, tells me that the three criteria by which their projects are selected are: beneficial impact, scalablility, and urgency.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/dschool/people/team_banny_banerjee.html
The joint workshop I run with Banny, on water issues, easily meets the urgency test: Obama’s new energy secretary, Steven Chu, has just stated that “we're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California”. Immediately following our workshop, a state-wide water state of emergency is declared.
http://www.vimeo.com/3195518
http://www.flickr.com/gp/92494461@N00/6161Hi
Chu’s warning about “no more federal water” contains an irony: The Central Valley Irrigation Project, which enabled Caifornia’s agriculture to flourish, was authorised in 1935 as an infrastrucure project to beat the Great Depression. Eighty five years later, the state’s dependence on long-distance irrigation is a structural impediment to sustainable water and agriculture. Now Obama promises to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure – to beat the depression.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-warming4-2009feb04,0,7454963.story
Our Stanford workshop focuses on entrepreneurs developing tools to help citizens manage water sustainably. Sally Dominguez, whose Rainwater Hog has won lots of prizes, wanted our advice on the best way to translate celebrity into sales. Our design experts conclude that people will pay better money to save their house, than to save the planet., and advise Sally to re-brand the system as an on-site emergency water supply.
http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/article.cfm/2008/11/24/BuildingGreen-Announces-2008-Top-10-Green-Products/
Seven per cent of all US energy use is to process waste – thereby causing 30m million of tons of emissions. Charles Zhou mesmerises us with his story about the use of smart micro-organisms to optimize sludge digestion, and of microbial fuel cells to recover clean energy from wastewater. Ninety-nine percent of current wastewater treatment facilities do not recover any energy from wastewater. Zhou seems set to become the Bill Gates of sewage.
http://www.ccleanenergy.com/
Southwards again, to Orange County. The Planning Center has asked me to run a workshop around the question “What would life in a sustainable world be like?” Participants from grassroots organizations present case studies in which they use existing resources in a creative, original way.
http://urbanhomestead.org/journal/2009/02/16/the-planning-center/
Jules Dervaes is a pioneer in urban edible gardens; he calls these “urban homesteads”,. Jules has launched a social networking site to help disseminate what they have learned, and to multiply the groups involved. His practical concern is that planners might make it illegal to keep chickens in urban areas.
http://www.freedomgardens.org/
http://urbanhomestead.org/journal/2009/02/16/the-planning-center/
California is spending more than $20bn on “green” school buildings. The state spends $65,000 per classroom seat for the building - versus $1 per child per year for garden upkeep and support. Mud Baron, who se job is to help L.A. schools develop gardens and nature projects, wanted our help to persuade planners and architects that "contact with nature" - not just buildings – is a crucual ingredient of "green" schools. We propose re-labeling school gardens as “outside classrooms” and thereby solve Mud’s resource problem at a stroke.
http://tiny.cc/3Wohf
Another one of our case studies, Proyecto Jardin, is an inspiring example of a bario-based economy. Irene Pena tells us that this community garden for food and medicinal herbs must daily confront issues of land-use, group self-organisation, food coo-ps, seed storage, and green jobs – to name just a few.
http://www.healthycity.org
Thanks to Claudia Hernández, I also know more than I did before about Hispanic Herbalism.
http://nccam.nih.gov/
http://www.hispanicherbs.com/
http://www.pitt.edu/~cbw/altm.html
Project Hope provides scholing to some of Orange County’s 16,000 homeless children. The project began in 1989 when a teacher began educating local homeless children from the back of her car. A huge issue is mobility: the foundation spends $8,000/month moving students around. We ask whether churches, hospitals and universities, with their often under-used spatial and human resources, could be added to the empty strip mall spaces, and half-abandoned motels, that are on offer now.
http://www.projecthopeschool.com/
Brian Biery explained the concept of “place-based philanthropy”, which is new to me. The Flintridge Foundation, of which he is programme director,, closed its Conservation, Theatre and Visual Arts programmes in order to focus all its efforts on the community where Flintridge's endowment was created, and where it is headquartered—Northwest Pasadena and Altadena.
http://www.flintridgefoundation.org/home/home.html
Speaking of the need to change business models, one of my Planning Center hosts concedes in passing that “planners don’t want to live in planned communities”
http://www.planningcenter.com
I visit the Silver Lake den of Stephanie Smith, founder of the decade’s most timely website: wannastartacommune? “With the right tools you can start a commune and share resources, wherever you are. Connect more deeply, save time and money, and do right by the earth. What's not to like? Start a commune today”.
http://wannastartacommune.com/
I’m invited to a meeting at LA’s new cathedral. An organisation called Progressive Christians Uniting has invited faith-based, community, and environmental organisations to discuss “building America’s green future.” Leaders of Inland Empire Concerned African-American Churches, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference sit down next to non faith-based groups such as L.A. Bioneers, South Central Farmers - and Doors of Perception.
http://greendig.net/progressive-christians-van-jones-2/
I am there to meet Van Jones, author of The Green Collar Economy and leader of a nationwide platform called Green For All. Jones has worked with Obama for 18 months on the development of the multi-billion dollar Economic Recovery Package that the new president just signed. Jones talks about the creation of “green pathways out of poverty, and greatly expanding the coalition to fight global warming” – but we are all keen to find out what the plan means in practice.
GreenForAll has launched a Clean Energy Corps. Five cities have joined together in a Green Collar Cities programme. And a Green For All Academy trains community organisers to be effective advocates for green collar jobs: Participants receive advanced media and messaging skills, economic and climate science training, and high level political tools and analysis
http://www.greenforall.org/
On the campaign trail, Obama promised to create five million green collar jobs. The US press interprets this to mean wind farms creating jobs for sheet metal workers, machinists, and truck drivers; or the roofers, insulators, and building inspectors needed to increase the energy efficiency of buildings through retrofitting; or the civil engineers, electricians, and dispatchers needed to expand mass transit systems.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/09/pdf/green_recovery.pdf
Several people round the table with Van Jones caution against interpreting “green jobs” only in terms of tech-based projects. Health care, social solidarity, and grassroot project coordination, should also be thought of green work, they sat, because these are affordable activities that will keep life bearable.
Throughout my trip I ask people what a “smart grid” is; everyone I meet tells me something different. At the Van Jones meeting, I suggest that a smart grid is best thought of as a social grid. Later, someone sends me this statement by Dr. Martin Luther King: “We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society”. He said that in April 1967.
On Venice Beach, I meet a big group of special needs students. They are filling plastic bags with trash picked up from the sand. Their teacher tells me that they come at least one a month, and are volunteers in a fast-growing movement called Heal The Bay.
http://www.healthebay.org/volunteer/
Yes, things could be better. Climate change, resource depletion, peak debt, peak protein, and peak energy are all stakes being driven into the body of business-as-usual. But this is a bottle-half-full kind of newsletter: the first half is about the positive actions Doors of Perception is starting this year; the second half is about the fun things some of our friends are also up to.
IN THE BUBBLE: DESIGN FOR SUSTAINABILITY
In The Bubble (the book of this newsletter) has just been published in French, Italian and Portuguese (in Brazil). Please help the book in two ways: buy-and-send copies to all your French, Italian and Portuguese-speaking friends; and tell everyone you know, who speaks those languages, that these editions are now available. Pix of the covers and all the details are here:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/12/post_35.php
EXPERIENCING SUSTAINABILITY (VANCOUVER)
What contribution can interaction designers make in the transition to sustainability? New products and services need to be developed according to tough new principles: low-carbon, zero waste, resource-efficient. What will using these new solutions be like? How do we scale up promising new ideas? The title of my talk at IxDA in Vancouver on 6 February is “Experiencing Sustainability”. http://interaction09.crowdvine.com/talks/show/2579
OFF-GRID WATER (STANFORD UNIVERSITY)
On Tuesday 10 February, Banny Banerjee and myself are running a project clinic about the design of sustainable water systems. It’s at Stanford University’s Design for Change Center. Featured projects include Agilewaves’ Resource Monitor, a web-based system that monitors electric, gas and water usage in real-time, while automatically calculating carbon footprint; Rainwater Hog, the celebrated modular water tank system; and a project called Cascade that revamps the wastewater treatment process without needing revolutionary changes to the current infrastructure. There may be a couple of places fee: contact Jean Hsu, Executive Coordinator, Stanford Design for Change Center. Jshsu at stanford dot edu
SUSTAINABLE EVERYDAY PROJECTS (SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA)
Two days later we’re doing another projects clinic. It explores practical examples of small-scale innovation that can be models for broader systemic, sustainable solutions to diverse community challenges. The idea is to find out how design might help existing grassroots projects improve and scale up. Jules Dervaes, a pioneer in urban edible gardens, seeks our input on ways to enhance his new social networking site, freedomgardens.org. Mud Baron, who develops gardens and nature projects with schools all over the region, needs our help to persuade planners and architects to design active contact with nature - not just LEED-compliant structures - into "green" schools. Also presenting are Proyecto Jardin, a community garden for food and medicinal herbs; MIKA Community Development Corporation; and Project Hope, a group that provides elementary education for homeless and transient students; they are looking for help to reduce the heavy costs of moving students to and from its school. Thursday 14 February, Newport Beach, Los Angeles. Presented by The Planning Center, with Kati Rubinyi. You need to request an invitation. http://www.planningcenter.com/
CITY ECO LAB RE-VISITED
The above two workshops in California are small-scale versions of the model we developed for Dott 07 in the UK, and for City Eco Lab in St Etienne last November. Of the 85,000 visitors at the French event, a majority were from the Rhone Alps region of France. For us, this was the perfect result: it meant that the event engaged mainly with people who were likely to adopt and improve some of the projects on show. These projects involved: productive urban gardens; low energy food storage; communal composting solutions; re-discovery of hidden rivers; neighbourhood energy dashboards;
de-motorised courier services; and a wide variety of software tools to help people share resources. http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/12/city_eco_lab_pr_1.php
DOTT NEXT
The UK’s Design Council is talking to potential partners about a new Designs of the time (Dott) event …somewhere in the UK. Doors of Perception, you may recall, led on programme content for Dott 07, a year of community projects and events, in North East England, that explored what life in a sustainable region could be like – and how design could help us get there. An announcement on a next Dott is expected in the Spring. http://www.dott07.com/
Our friends have been busy, too:
ART AND ECOLOGY
The Royal Society of Arts has launched a timely and well-written Arts and Ecology blog. Early posts have covered “How literature tackles climate change”; “Doomsday art: is it bad for you?”; “Tantalum Memorial: an analogue response to Congo's coltan war”; and a look back at The Whole Earth Catalogue “35 years before Google came along”. Michaela Crimmin, head of the RSA Arts and Ecology Centre, explains that "artists have always had a powerful relationship with the natural environment. Equally, artists continually question and re-examine society's notions of progress. We need their unique perspective on the enormous challenges ahead - on the relationship between environmental issues, and not least climate change, and people."
http://mtblog.typepad.com/arts_ecology/#Arts%20and%20ecology%20blog
TRANSITION NETWORK
Climate change is upon us and the oil is running out. Is mankind’s darkest hour really approaching? If so, a growing army of local heroes is determined to turn it into our finest. ‘Transition initiatives,’ begun in Britain, aim to empower people to tackle effects of climate change and decline of oil.
http://transitionnetworknews.wordpress.com/december-08-newsletter/
FREEDOM TO CONNECT (D.C.)
President Obama has made wired and wireless broadband a major element in his infastructure programme. A conference called Freedom To Connect (F2C) will identify areas where cities and regions can use Wi-Fi networks - not just to deliver public Internet access, but to improve municipal and county services. F2C “is shaped by universal connectivity and the plunging capital requirements of information production, which, in turn, are changing many of our fundamental economic and social assumptions”. March 30-31, 2009 Washington, DC http://freedom-to-connect.net.
AFRICA GATHERING (LONDON)
A day for thinkers, supporters, sponsors, doers, geeks, dreamers - and everybody else to come and share, promote, highlight, progress and evolve issues related to ICT, social networking and technology in Africa.Organised by Mark Simkins (GeeKyoto) and Edward Scotcher.
http://www.africagathering.org.uk
WHERE DID THE FUTURE GO? (GENEVA)
We were told the future would be about mechanization, computerization, 1984-like nightmares or robots. What did and did not happen? What can we learn from the predictions that never materialized to better look at the future? The Lift conference gathers international entrepreneurs, artists, managers, researchers, investors, CEOs, designers and ethnologists. 25-27 February, Geneva. http://liftconference.com/
ANTI-CYCLICAL MONEY
Margrit Kennedy writes with news that she has launched a website called Money Network Alliance. It describes the contribution of complementary currencies to regional development, particularly in overcoming economic problems, social polarities, unemployment and environmental degradation.
http://www.monneta.org
HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD… IN 10 DAYS (GHENT)
The end is near, but don’t despair: at Vooruit’s the game is up! festival, artists and experts from different disciplines will launch proposals to save the world and put the threat in perspective. Expect well-aimed happenings, bold statements, bizarre turns, sophisticated utopias and biodegradable references. 4 - 14 March, Ghent, Belgium. http://www.vooruit.be/en/
NEW ACADEMY (SPLIT)
nova_akademija, on the campus of the University of Split, uses renewable resources that are widely available in Croatia but which so far have not been widely exploited. With its photovoltaic systems, thermal solar systems and wind generators, the new academy will produce its own electricity; any ensuing surplus will be sent into the grid. http://www.umas.hr/nova_akademija/info_eng.htm
PACHUBE
Usman Haque has launched a terrific project called Pachube. It’s a service for sharing and monitoring real time sensor data between remote buildings, devices, and environments, both physical and virtual. The idea is to facilitate remote interaction, open source home automation, sensor logging, environmental data visualisation etc. http://www.pachube.com/
PROCESSING
Casey Reas, Ben Fry and a global networkof collaborators have released the 1.0 version of Processing. Seven years in the making, Processing is a programming language that enables software literacy within the visual arts. It’s used by everyone from children in their first exploraton of computer programming, to professional artists, designers, architects, engineers, and scientists. R.E.M., Radiohead, and Modest Mouse have used Processing in their music videos; Nature, the New York Times, Seed, and Communications have commissioned information graphics using Processing; the artist group HeHe used Processing to produce their award-winning Nuage Vert installation; and the University of Washington used Processing to create a visualization of a coastal marine ecosystem http://processing.org/
SPIN-GARDENING
SPIN-Gardening: How to Grow Productively on Under an Acre is the first in an online learning series that shows how to fit food production into everyday life, part-time or full-time; working alone or with family and friends,“We can’t all go back to the land, and most of us don’t want to,” says co-author Roxanne Christensen; “but many of us share a sense that food production should once again take a prominent place in family and civic life. the SPIN-Gardening website is a self-serve, self-directed online learning series for self-farmers.” http://www.spingardening.com/
NEW MEDIA IN THE HIMALAYA
In Ladakh, a remote region of the Himalayas, Kitchen Budapest, a next-generation media lab based in Budapest, have created a high-tech installation based on prayer-wheels in the Csoma sanctuary. Csoma’s wheel is the first “new media treasure” of the Himalayas. http://www.kitchenbudapest.hu/en/csomaswheel
SOUGHT: WIND CATCHER EXPERT
A friend in Colombia has sent us a picture of the model of their proposed new house. She asks our advice on its wind-catching performance, how wide these have to be...etc. Is this you?
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2009/01/post_36.php
CITY ECO LAB BOOK LIST
What do Hungry City, The Long Descent, The Transition Handbook, Resource Conflicts and Global Security, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Depletion and Abundance, Re-inventing Collapse, Living in the Cracks, and Liquid Gold have in common? They all feature in the “must read” list we gave visitors to City Eco Lab. The full list is here:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/12/city_eco_lab_bo.php
AND DON’T FORGET…
to tell everyone you know, who speaks those languages, that French, Portuguese and Italian editions of In The Bubble are now available. http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/12/post_35.php
VELO WALAS
Avinash Kumar on the story behind velowala.org, a media installation made by a team in Delhi that brings the bike-based commerce of the streets of India alive – in St Etienne. (Saturday 15/11)
ECOSOFT; WORLDCHANGING?
New economic models, complementary currencies, local economy trading schemes, alternative trade networks, community supported agriculture: Bethany Koby & Ellie Thornhill talk about their eco-soft shop. They are followed later that day by special guest Alex Steffen, editor of Worldchanging. (Sunday 16/11)
DESIGN IMPERATIVES; ENERGY?
Allan Chochinov, editor in chief of Core77.com, gives a keynote on “design imperatives”. Later, a worskhop on design and energy will discuss: can design help us choose among the growing number of green energy offers ? (Tuesday 18/11)
COMPOSTING; DE-MOTORISATION; MANZINI?
Clare Brass + Flora Bowden from SEED Foundation talk about their neighbourhood composting service. Later there’s a design clinic : Design for mobility, or for de-motorisation? There follows a special keynote by Ezio Manzini on "design strategies for the small, local, open and connected". Oh yes, and the French edition of In The Bubble is launched at 18h. (Wednesday 19/11)??
OPEN SYSTEMS AND INFORMAL TECHNOLOGY ?
A sustainable world will be densely networked – but not by closed, proprietary networks. Juha Huuskonen (Pixelache, Piksel, Pixelvärk, Afropixel, Pikslaverk, PixelAzo) and Jean-Noël Montagné (CrasLabs, Paris) discuss how self organisation and technological autarchy will be crucial in the coming years. (Thursday 20/11)
EDIBLE GARDENS ON LYON BROWNFIELD SITES; KIMCHI AND THE CITY?
Emanual Louisgrand talks about l’Ilot d’Amaranthes - his gardens on brownfield sites in Lyon. Later, a design clinic on Food and the City features Matthieu Benoît-Gonin (Jardinethic); Debra Solomon (culiblog.org); and François Jégou (solutioning.net). (Friday 21/11)
DESIGNING SUSTAINABILITY EVENTS?
A Doors of Perception lunchtime discussion. If you are serious about hoping to do an event City Eco Lab (or Dott 07) in your own region, Doors cannot fund it - but we can help with the strategy and process. (Saturday 22/11)
RE-LOCALISATION AND SMALL BUSINESSES?
Design clinic for and with local companies. (Monday 24/11)
NURTURING A REGION’S HARD AND SOFT RESOURCES?
How to find and document eco-materials - and human savoir faire (Tuesday 25/11)
WATER AND THE CITY; SUDS?
Re-connecting a city with its natural systems: projects for St Etienne’s River Furan. Plus a design clinic on sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS). (Wednesday 26/11)
MAPS OF THE FUTURE ?
Pirjo Haikola from the Why Factory (NL) a research institute on the future city founded by Winy Maas and MVRDV, shows how maps are used in rethinking, researching, reshaping and enhancing images of future urban life. (Thursday 27/11)
SO WHAT EXACTLY IS AN ECO NEIGHBOURHOOD? ?
Citizens and designers involved in one of St Etienne's "eco quartiers" (eco neighbourhoods) discuss what functions make a place eco - or not - and how to measure their performance. (Thursday 27/11)
LESSONS OF CANTEEN 80KM?
The City Eco Lab restaurant, Cantine80km, serves food sourced within a 80km radius - the maximum distance food may travel in France without being refrigerated (Friday 28/11).
The design clinics will be in French, with English translation available; international speakers will do so in English, with vice versa.
OTHER NEWS
TRANSITION CITIES CONFERENCE
Transition Towns groups are growing like wildfilre. The transition model “emboldens communities to look peak oil and climate change squarely in the eye and unleash the collective genius of their own people to find the answers to a big question: for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how are we going to rebuild resilience (in response to peak oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (in response to climate change)?” The Transition Cities conference will share ideas and insights, tools and techniques, and explore what works and what doesn’t. November 27-28 Nottingham.
http://transitionnetworknews.wordpress.com/2008/10/22/cities-conference-08/
ECONOMIC ASHES TO ASHES
The policy think-tank Demos is launching a new book in London called After the Apocalypse. The report asks, “what we do when the (financial crisis) dust begins to settle?” When, or if? The speakers listed are heavyweight inside-the-tenters – but I wish Demos could also have invited Ilargi from Automatic Earth. 6pm, Wednesday 5 November at Demos, London.
http://www.eventbrite.com/contact-organizer?eid=202381328
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/
ONE PLANET, ONE DAY
A sustainability event hosted by BioRegional in London will focus on real life developments and businesses: One Brighton urban living; Sonoma Mountain Village mixed-use community; B&Q One Planet Living retail (sic); Masdar City zero carbon city; One Planet 2012 London Olympics; Mata de Sesimbra eco-tourism and conservation development, Portugal. Is building eco cities like Masdar from scratch in the middle of a desert appropriate, or even viable? The debate could be lively. 3 December, London. http://www.oneplanetoneday.co.uk
WEB-BASED TOOLS FOR SOCIAL CHANGE.
Social Innovation Camp is looking for the best ideas for web-based tools to create social change. From 5-7 December the camp will connect software developers and designers with front-line practitioners to develop six web tools to change the world. Idea submissions are required by Friday 7 November. http://www.sicamp.org
MASTER OF ADVANCED STUDIES IN DESIGN CULTURE
A new masters at the interface of science and society has been launched at the Institute for Design Research in Zurich. http://designculture.zhdk.ch/
NORWEGIAN JOURNAL FOR DESIGN RESEARCH
invites articles in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and English.
http://www.formakademisk.org
SERVICE DESIGN CONFERENCE
Speakers include Shelley Evensen (Carnegie Mellon University) Rory Hamilton and Sean Miller (Live|work), Jamin Hegeman (Nokia), Oliver King (Engine), Craig LaRosa (Continuum) and Denis Weil (McDonalds). 24-26 November, Amsterdam.
http://shop.service-design-network.org/
450 FILMS ABOUT ARCHITECTURE
I’m not sure whether this counts as a threat, or a promise, but the new website of Rotterdam’s Architecture Film Festival lists a staggering 450 movies. The next festival (it’s biennial) begins 29 October 2009. http://www.affr.nl/
THE INTERNET OF THINGS
Rob van Kranenberg (with Sean Dodson) has published a a timely book about “ambient technology” and the all-seeing network of Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFID). Anyone living in a city is exposed daily to dozens of closed-circuit television and camera-phones - but in a few years’ time even more pervasive and technologies will take their place as consumer goods are assigned IP addresses, just as web pages are today. Are designers, architects, policy makers equipped to deal with these fundamental issues ? They will be better prepared if they read this book. It’s downloadable for free. http://www.networkcultures.org/_uploads/notebook2_theinternetofthings.pdf
CURRY STONE DESIGN PRIZE
A South African architectural firm whose ingenious, yet simple design re-envisions low-income housing for a Cape Town shantytown, was named the winner. Luyanda Mpahlwa, 49, and Mphethi Morojele, 45, received the $100,000 prize, administered by the University of Kentucky College of Design. The prize is given annually to breakthrough design solutions with the power and potential to improve our lives and the world we live in. http://currystonedesignprize.com/?page_id=208
NUBIAN VAULTS
In the Sahel, desertification is a major threat to the local people and their environment. The traditional use of raw timber as a construction material, particularly for roofing, is no longer feasible. Population growth, deforestation, and desertification have contributed to a shift in rural areas to importing building materials, including sheet metal, to be used for roofing. To address this problem, the Nubian Vault Association (AVN) has adapted an age-old construction technique that has been used in other parts of Africa and throughout the world. To date, AVN has trained 110 builders, is currently training 100 more, and has built 550 vaults in Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, and Togo. AVN needs money to establish new partnerships and bring its "Earth Roofs" program to other countries in the Sahel. We know the people - which is why we urge you support AVN if you can.
http://www.lavoutenubienne.org/?lang=en
CYNICAL ABOUT SYNTONY
The Royal Society of Arts asked me to fill in a survey: “Can Cynicism be good for Society and Democracy?” The survey was so repetitive that I gave up half-way through. I should have known better - and stopped earlier - when I saw the word "syntony." A significant cause of the cynical society is surely the creation of synthetic buzzwords. But one thousand of my fellow Fellows, being made of stronger stuff , completed the survey – and cynicism is indeed infecting the very fabric of our society. Top of the list was politics (51 per cent) compared with 31 per cent for “general cynicism of life” and 30 per cent for business. What a surprise! http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/10/post_31.php
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TRIBAL CURRENCIES
Reading blogs about the financial crisis feels like watching one of those reality car chase programmes in which you wait, guiltily, for the felon - or in this case, the global financial system - to crash. It’s hard not to be mesmerised by reports that even the failed $700 billion plan did not address the true scale of the global problem. One insider blogger - Illargi, at Automatic Earth - reckons that "the global shadow banking system, the source of perhaps $800 trillion in outstanding derivatives is shaking on its foundations, and will inevitably tumble." Part of me hopes the crash is real because a meltdown would deflate an economy which will otherwise eat the biosphere alive. But a crash would also cause enormous hardship, including to one’s own nearest and dearest. Besides, rooting for collapse puts you on the same side as the loony-tune end-days crowd - and that’s not a club I want to join. It’s all very complicated.
A healthier response, I’m sure, is to get out of the house and look for positive things to do. As often mentioned here, there's an awful lot of regenerative activity out there – only most of it is below the radar. A lot of people are busy designing and deploying complementary currencies, for example. If this week’s news is not persuasive enough, the need for complementary currencies is well-explained by the Open Money Manifesto. (And whilst you're at it, do re-read Margrit Kennedy's paper at Doors of Perception 8. That one lecture - in Delhi in Spring 2005 - was when I, for one, first realised that the mainstream money money system was going to run off the rails in the major way that's happening now). For my part, I plan to become an active user of complementary currencies starting on 7 October: I'm giving a talk that day at the University of Brighton - and I’m hoping to be paid in Lewes Pounds. http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/09/open_money.php
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/
CITY ECO LAB
Speaking of positive things to do, City Eco Lab opens in 45 days from now. To recap: this two-week-long market of sustainability projects in St Etienne, France, is the pilot of a scalable, reproducable event, at the level of a city-region, that will materially accelerate its transition to sustainability. As with Dott07 which we programmed in England last year, citizen co-design of projects are at the core of City Eco Lab. In that spirit, Francois Jegou is working with AMAP to finalise scenarios of ways to improve community supported agriculture systems. Avinish Kumar is collecting sounds and images of bicycle-based merchants in Delhi for an installation on the delights of de-motorised transportation. Mathieu-Benoit-Gonin is working on a composting event, and Clare Brass from SEED, in the UK, is putting together a presentation of neighbourhood-level composting services. Magalie Restallo is designing a prototype vital flows dashboard for an eco-quartier in St Etienne. Five schools from the region are measuring their ecological footprint (using an adapted version of the Dott 07 calculator); they will begin designing solutions during City Eco Lab itself. Hugo Bont and Olivier Peyricot are building their urban fish farming demo. Emanuel Louisgrand is designing an urban garden toolkit. Bethany Koby and Ellie Thornhill are devising novel ways to select and exchange software and organisationals tools Ezio Manzini, and Allan Chochinov, the editor of Core77, are preparing their keynote talks for 19 November. So if all this money stuff gets just too much for you, come and say hello.
http://www.doorsofperception.com/mailinglist/archives/2008/09/city_eco_lab_70.php
LONDON BURNING – AND FLOODING, AND DRYING
Fifteen per cent of London is at high risk from flooding due to global warming - an area that includes 1.25 million people, almost half a million properties, more than 400 schools, 75 underground and railway stations, 10 hospitals, and an airport (London City ). According to the draft of the London climate change adaptation strategy, an estimated £160bn worth of assets is at stake. That doesn’t sound so much after the last few days. This dry but gripping document does not deal with the causes of climate change - it focuses on effects, arguing that "even if all global greenhouse gas emissions could be stopped today, the immense inertia in Earth’s climate systems means that changes to our climate for the rest of this century are unavoidable”. Preparing for these inevitable changes is not an alternative to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, it says, but a “parallel and complementary action." An immense amount of innovation will be needed to retrofit buildings and infrastructure with equipment to enable greater water and energy efficiency. Even more important than these hard actions will be soft ones - the design of services to help Londoners meet daily life needs in new ways, http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/09/london_burninga.php
LOW ENTROPY URBANISM
"What would architects design, if they did not design buildings?” My question is not a rhetorical one. The inputs and outputs of industrial society are wildy out of balance - and that includes its buildings and infrastructure. We have reached the end of a brief era in which we could burn cheap fossil fuel, and despoil ecosystems, mindless of the consequences. We need to re-imagine the built world not as a landscape of frozen objects, but as a complex of interacting ecologies: energy, water, mobility, food. Our life-sustaining ecologies, especially, need to be nurtured, not swept away, built over, or diverted. The need for new buildings will be rare. Sometimes the design choice will be to do nothing”.
Do you find this abstract to be tendentious piffle? I’m developing this talk at three events this Autumn, and would welcome your critical participation. University of Brighton, 7 October; Arc en Reve in Bordeaux, 9 October; Megacities conference in Amsterdam, 28 October.
OTHER EVENTS
SOLUTIONS INSPIRED BY NATURE
The annual Bioneers conference helps identify breakthrough solutions to the global ecological and social collapse imperiling our world. In their own words, bioneers are “social and scientific innovators from all walks of life and disciplines who have peered deep into the heart of living systems to understand how nature operates, and to mimic nature's operating instructions to serve human ends without harming the web of life”. The programme of this year’s meeting in California is indeed amazing. There will be sessions on Green Cities; Using Fungi to Help Save the World; Politics and Environment; Seed Saving and Biodiversity Gardening; Resilience Thinking; Re-Naturing Education; National Green Plans; Pachakuti Mesa Shamanism; Large-Scale Climate Initiatives; People and Stuff; Digital Media and Distribution Innovations; Knowing Our Foodsheds; Herb Walks; Biomimicry and Traditional Indigenous Knowledge; Watershed Guardians; Latin American Agroecology; Sustainable MBA Programs; Slow Money; Local Living Economies; the Greening of Medicine. And that’s just the formal programme. Candidly, it looks like too much to digest – but I’m still sorry not to be going. Maybe the event is best thought of as a kind of Woodstock of one planet living, not as a conference. 16-19 October, San Rafael, California. http://www.bioneers.org/node/2617
RETHINKING SCHOOL LUNCH
One way to handle the excessive richness of the Bioneers meal would be to have just one course. The first day includes a workshop by the Center for Ecoliteracy which developed the award-winning Rethinking School Lunch program. They’re now launching a nationwide eco schools campaign to make K–12 education relevant to the environmental and social challenges of the next several decades. The day kicks off with keynotes by internationally recognized educators Fritjof Capra and David Orr. (If the Center for Ecoliteracy is reading this, we they will touch base with the Dott 07 schools programme in the UK, France and Australia). Thursday, October 16, 2008
http://www.bioneers.org/program
http://www.dott07.com/go/school/eco-design-challenge/
OIL-FREE SWEDEN
I don’t understand the concept of “sustainable technologies”: There are ways to inhabit the biosphere sustainably - or not - and both ways can be enabled (or not) by technology. No technology, on its own, can be “sustainable”. Even six months ago, such pedantry would not have deterred enthusiasts for a eco-tech market projected to be worth $800 billion by 2015 – not counting renewable materials and alternative energy retrofitted to existing infrastructures. I do not argue that wind, solar, biomaterials, bio-energies, green buildings, sustainable mobility, smart grids, water filtration, and energy monitoring products and technologies are all useful – it’s just they are tools – and tools that will be hard to pay for in the times ahead. (The machine tool industry is in free fall in the markets right now). Speakers at Sustainable Innovation 08, who seem mostly to be research and policy types – not red-blooded tech entrepreneurs – may choose to disagree. Besides, the conference is in Sweden, which is a good place to find out about all this…stuff. The country plans to be world's first oil-free economy within 15 years, and is making good progress: Renewable energy consumption now surpasses the 40 per cent mark. 27 - 28 October 2008? Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden ? http://www.cfsd.org.uk/events/tspd13/index.html
INDIAN DESIGN EDGE
Can India assume leadership in the world of design? A new book, Indian Design Edge, by Dr Darlie Koshy, takes a ‘hands on, minds on’ approach to this question.There are design case studies, historical milestones, policy perspectives, industry insights, and scenarios. A foreword by Ratan Tata, one India’s industry titans, is added evidence that mainstream design is now taken seriously by mainstream industry.
I hear that Dr Koshy is about to leave his job as Director of the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. We wish him well: he has been a generous host of several Doors of Perception meetings in India over recent years – a series which began at NID in 2000. In all our India encounters, the design edge that most inspired us was the sheer variety of “less stuff, more people” services – a quality that the rest of the world needs now to re-discover. It will be fascinating to see what direction NID takes next. http://rolibooks.com/lotus/lotus-collection/-/indian-design-edge/
TELL ALL TO NOON
Noon Mongolnavin London to sing its stories on buses and let commuters enjoy more about their dead time on a bus and re-sense stories on the city’s streets. At the moment, Noon is collecting material from people who travel on buses and people who have been living in specific areas to “tell me some hidden stories that might never have been told”. Are you ready to tell all? You need to do so before an an exhibition on 28 November - 3 December at Shoreditch Town Hall.
http://www.BusSoundtrack.com
BARELY LIVING TEXTILES
One of the autumn’s more pretentious announcement has arrived from the Textile Futures Research Group. Asserting that ”textile designers are uniquely placed to inhabit other design fields and cohabit with the world of science,” they go on to promise that “unimaginable (sic) materials are being developed…for applications such as spray on clothing and biocouture.” For my money, textiles’ future belongs to people who can make decent felt hats and slippers. 23 and 24 October, ICA, London. http://www.tfrg.org.uk/magazine/current
THINK PUBLIC
Warm congratulations to thinkpublic, the social innovation design agency in London: They’ve won the British Council's Young Design Entrepreneur Award. Thinkpublic, formed in 2004 by Debora Szebeko, were one of our partners in Dott 07, when they led the Alzheimer 100 project. http://www.dott07.com/go/alzheimer100
21st CENTURY IMAGE SCIENCE
Second Life, Micromovies, Flickr, Virtual Reality, YouTube, Visual Music, Scientific
Visualisation, Google Earth: The range of ways we can produce, project and distribute visual material is expanding – but how to manage them? A conference on Image Science, in Goettweig, is about the the inventory, classification and historiography all these images concerning art, popular culture and science. A list of heavyweight speakers includes Felice Frankel, Barbara Stafford, and Peter Weibel. The exploding carbon footprint of the server farms needed to store all these images is not mentioned on the agenda – but you can always raise the issue during Q+A.. October 16 -18 , Goettweig.
http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/dis/goettweig2008
OPEN EVERYTHING
At the closing debate of Doors 8 in Delhi a questionaer asked Joi Ito, “is nothing sacred anymore”. Joi’s answer – “open-ness” – has stuck with me ever since. Another global conversation about the art, science and spirit of 'open' has been moving round the world this past year; it involves “people using openness to create and improve software, education, media, philanthropy, neighbourhoods, workplaces and the society we live in”. The next opportunity to talk about thinking, doing and being open is at the Young Foundation in London on 8 November. A Berlin event has also been proposed for early December.
http://www.openeverything.net
LONG LIVE THE CITY
Designer Michael Young, architect Jeffrey Inaba, designer Ilse Crawford, architect and urban planner Jaime Lerner, horticulturalist Lisa White, architect Bjarke Ingels, architect Gert Wingårdh, consumer insight director Shari Swan, zen buddhist teacher Sante Poromaa, sustainability designer John Manoochehri, and economist/politician and writer Antoni Vives, and Malmo director of cityplanning Christer Larsson, are among the speaers at this year’s Design Boost event. 16 October Malmö University, Sweden. http://www.designboost.se/
DESIGN FOR SOCIAL IMPACT
I was critical, at the time it was announced, of a plan by the Rockerfeller Foundation to convene a meeting about Design for Development. Their starting point was “to bring together the world’s best designers with people and organizations that work on the world’s most important and complex problems” – an objective that struck me as being too designer-centric, and too uncritical of the notion of “development”. A report of the meeting at the Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy, in June. has now been published - and I have to say that my misgivings persist..The project has acquired a macho new title - “Design for Social Impact” - and there are repeated references to “the social sector” as if society, in all its complexity, is best understood as a market for design services. The language reminds me of time I heard a senior person from Cisco talk about “the sustainability space”. It is also assumed, throughout the report, that ‘the social sector’ contains only NGOs – whereas, for a lot of critics, NGOs are as much a part of the problem as the solution. Most uncompofortable of all, for me, is that nowhere in the report can I find one single mention of the lessons design might learn from other cultures. http://www.dcontinuum.com/upload/Design4SocialImpact-tabloid.pdf
http://www.designobserver.com/archives/entry.html?id=38773
CITY ECO LAB PREVIEW
This two-week-long market of sustainability projects opens in 70 days from now in St Etienne, France. We have set out to design a scalable, reproducable event, at the level of a city-region, that will materially accelerate its transition to sustainability. As with Dott07 in North East England, citizen co-design of projects are at the core of the City Eco Lab experiment.
In the food zone, projects to do with production, distribution, storage, and composting will surround the biennial’s best restaurant, Cantine 80km. (It’s called that because 80km is the limit beyond which transported food has to be refrigerated). The Cantine will feature Green Maps to help visitors identify and contact suppliers directly. Nearby, Debra Solomon will present the Lucky Mi snack wagon from the Netherlands, including its high-performance sprout-growing module. Also in the food zone, visitors will be able to pickle vegetables using locally-sourced pots, and babies will make bread. Francois Jegou will present scenarios for enhancing AMAP, the French network of of community-supported agriculture systems; and we’ll see how AMAPs compare with the new spin-farming idea from the USA – and alternative trade networks for coffee.
Casino, a big supermarket chain, will present its state-of-the-art green labeling scheme. St Etienne’s architecture school will launch Soupe de Ville which is based on ingredients grown within city limits (some by the architects themselves). Visitors will also be able to compare small, medium and large-scale composting solutions: these include the beautiful pots of the Daily Dump system from Bangalore; London’s SEED foundation proposal for a neighbourhood green waste service in which the celebrated Rocket composter accelerator is used by a new social enterprise; and a high-tech, industrial-scale system in Clermont Ferrand.
City Eco Lab’s mobility zone will be mainly about bicycles, and especially their potential use to de-motorise the distribution of 7,000 items of freight about the city each day. Prototypes of new bike-based services will be presented by Les Cousiers Verts and by La Poste. Plans for a city-wide car share system conceived for poorer people, will be shown - and compared with Dott07’s Move Me project presented by David Townson.
The central area of City Eco Lab will ask: what exactly is an “eco quartier” (neighbourhood)? Live projects on show will deal with energy, water and mobility. A team led by Justine Ultsch at St Etienne’s city hall will explore ways to re-open Le Furan, the city’s built-over river. Tools to capture and clean rainwater will be on show, next to a description of Melbourne’s extraordinary plan to turn that whole city into a water catchment, and Rotterdam’s vision of itself as a water city. A unique array of dry toilets will be on show, together with proposals from an Australian designer, Dena Fam, of ways designers can make them physically and culturally more attractive. A community-wide energy dashboard will be demonstrated by Magalie Restalo. Half way through the event a town hall meeting, convened by the Maison du Quartier,wil discuss what to do, and how, with the ideas and scenarios emerging from the City Eco Lab marketplace.
Continuing the water theme, plans to remove 60 dams from the Rhone will be presented by the World Wildlife Fund’s Martin Arnoud. Designers Hugo Bont and Olivier Peyricot will demonstrate their proposal for large scale urban fish farming. The artist gardener Emanuel Louisgrand will recreate elements of his stunning l’îlot d’Amaranthes gardens from Lyon.
Next to the Eco-Quartier zone will be the “Germoir” (Nursery) co-designed by the rural design collective Pomme_Z. Here, school students from the region will work on live projects to reduce their schools’ environmental footprint. Five schools are involved in this Defi Eco Design, which is based on Dott07’s Eco Design Challenge for schools in the UK. Defi Eco Design is the trial for a larger programme that it’s hoped will be launched in 2009.
In addition to these daily-life zones of City Eco Lab, a large Cabane a Outils (Tool Shed) will contain some of the resources citizens will need to start their own projects. The Tool Shed will feature books and films 9in English and French); a database of environmentally high-performance materials; a selection of software platforms; templates for new economic models; a map of skills available within a 100km radius of the event; and a range of environmental monitoring instruments and off-grid media tools.
City Eco Lab will also feature a Club des Explorateurs (Explorers Club) in which a wide varietry of groups will meet to discuss practical ways to enhance or scale up their projects. Companies, community groups and grassroots projects from across the Rhone-Alps region will participate – often together with international visitors. The Explorers Club will be located next to to a Salle des Cartes in which a wide variety of resource maps will be presented by a team from The Why Factory led by Winy Maas and colleagues from TU Delft in The Netherlands. 15-30 November, St Etienne, France.
http://biennalesaint-etienne.citedudesign.com/?#/home
GREEN NOISE: EXPERT MEETING
The biggest challenge we face in City Eco Lab is the explosion of public events, media channels, reports, platforms, trade shows, and government initiatives, at all levels, to do with sustainability. Paul Hawken's WiserEarth web portal, alone, alone lists over 100,000 non-profit projects and organisations. In the UK, the Transition Towns movement is growing virally. Across Europe, thousands of other initiatives are bubbling away beneath the radar of mainstream media and education. This explosion of energy and diversity is great, but does beg the question: are any more new initiatives needed? if so, what kind? and who will pay for them? Doors of Perception will host a discussion among city managers, policy makers and design producers during the design biennial in St Etienne. If you think might want to join this meeting, plan to be there for Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 November.
IN THE BUBBLE - BOOK LAUNCH IN VENICE
The Italian edition of In The Bubble will be launched at the Architecture Biennale in Venice on Saturday 13 September. The Biennale, which is directed this year by Aaron Betsky, will feature site-specific installations, manifestos, landscapes and “scenes of an architecture beyond building”. The book moment on Saturday follows my lecture at the Dutch Pavilion in the Gardini. http://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/exhibition/en/62183.1.html
ARCHITECTURE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
“Sustainable development will necessarily bring profound changes to how we design our cities and their architecture. How does this apply to architecture and urban design?” I’ve been asked to address this modest topic in my opening talk at The European Forum for Architectural Policies at in at arc-en-rêve in Bordeaux on 9 October. It’s open to professionals from across Europe, but you do have to register. http://tinyurl.com/6r2kqd
Other news
THE LONG DESCENT
John Michael Greer’s new book The Long Descent is a welcome antidote to the armageddonism that often accompanies peak oil discussions. “The decline of a civilization is rarely anything like so sudden for those who live through it” writes Greer, encouragingly; it’s “a much slower and more complex transformation than the sudden catastrophes imagined by many social critics today.” Greer finds it helpful to look at Russia’s recent journey - from superpower status through collapse, contraction, stabilization, and recovery – as one example of where the rest of us may be headed. “Despite economic collapse, urban populations did not turn into starving mobs roving the landscape. Instead, as existing supply chains broke down, local entrepreneurs jerry-rigged new ones, and the backyard gardens of the Soviet era went into overdrive to keep most Russians fed”. The changes that will follow the decline of world petroleum production are likely to be sweeping and global, Greer concludes, but from the perspective of those who live through them these changes are much more likely to take gradual and local forms. “This will make them harder to notice, but paradoxically easier to meet”.
http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/4014
DE-GROWTH
The French have a nice word, “decroissance”, or de-growth, to describe a growing movement to right-size global and national economies. The movement defines degrowth as “a voluntary transition towards a just, participatory, and ecologically sustainable society”. The movement’s Declaration is light, to put it mildly, on how de-growth will be implemented – but it’s an interesting manifesto. http://tinyurl.com/5js3jk
FOOD DECLARATION
Another Declaration has been published in the US - this one about food. Leading US voices in the movement for sustainable agriculture systems have published "Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture." A 12-point set of principles reorients American food away from corporate farms and long-haul delivery to local producers and land stewardship. The declaration is a draft: its organizers are soliciting public input for 90 days and will then deliver a final document to US policymakers in time to shape debate over the next farm bill. http://fooddeclaration.org/
BRANCHLESS BANKING
In Brazil, customers open bank accounts, make deposits, and pay bills at lottery houses and small retail outlets. In the Philippines, urban migrants send money to their families in rural areas using mobile phones. Both of these activities are described as “branchless banking” in a new report; it describes the use of technology, such as payment cards or mobile phones, that enable transactions remotely. The report’s publisher, CGAP, describes itself as “the leading independent resource for objective information and innovative solutions for microfinance” – but I could not help noticing that CGAP is housed at the World Bank.
http://www.cgap.org/p/site/c/template.rc/1.9.2640
TAKE TO THE BOATS!
Dmitry Orlov, a writer about life after oil, has sold his beachfront house, bought a boat, and is sailing up and down the east coast of the US. “It’s a lifestyle choice, plus a way to minimize costs and maximize available options” he says. If you, too, fancy a "just in case" boat, an online guide by Ian Swan includes suggestions to suit every pocket. Me, I’m probably best-suited to inflatables: “they are very stable and great load carriers – their one downside is that they are harder to row, especially upwind, because of their high windage”. http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46452
IN THE BUBBLE IN ITALIAN
In The Bubble, my book about design and sustainability, is about to be published in Italian (by Allemandi). The Italian version has evolved substantially from the English language one: it's shorter (154 pages) but also contains three new chapters - on Alimentazione (Food), Presenza (Presence) and Development (Sviluppo). I have 25 advance copies to send to influential journalists or bloggers, so please send me the name and postal address of anyone you think fits that profile.
CLIMATE ACTION BRICO-ARMADA
An “inspiring day of mass action” to shut Kingsnorth power station in the UK includes a brico-armada next weekend of hand-made boats and rafts. Climate Camp is saying no to proposals to build a new generation of coal power stations, and yes to sustainable living. “This is probably the best opportunity we have to really kick-start a huge social movement in this country capable of avoiding catastrophic climate change. It may also be the most amazing and inspirational week of your life. We need you there!” Kingsnorth, Kent, 3-11 August http://www.climatecamp.org.uk
EATING SPIN
The British government is in talks with supermarkets about emergency food reserves "in case the infrastructure of the country breaks down”. The exercise is being spun as a response to possible strikes by fuel tanker drivers, but the more likely explanation is that the precarious state of food systems as a whole has finally registered in mud-free Whitehall. Persuading supermarkets to stock 60 days supply of staple foods is better than the three days supply available in today's just-in-time systems - but sheds full of baked beans are not exactly a long-term solution. A more nutritious form of spin in the US is called SPIN_farming - a franchise-ready sustainable farming system for urban locations that can be deployed quickly and on a wide scale. Read more at: http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/07/post_23.php
SEND NIC YOUR TRASH PIX
Whilst traveling, do you look obsessively at the ways other people sort and manage their trash? Good. For City Eco Lab, in November, we are collecting pictures of the many ways people deal with their trash in different parts of the world – at home, on the street, in the neighbourhood, or at larger scales. Image quality is not an issue. Please send your pix to nicolas.roesch at citedudesign dot com
DESIGN FOR RESILIANCE
As previously reported here, the core activity of a Transition Town is Energy Descent Action Planning (EDAP). Rob Hopkins, who developed the process, describes the capacity of a community to embark on an EDAP as?"resilience" - a set of capabilities to which designers can certainly?contribute. Just how is the topic of my talk in October at the School of Architecture & Design at the University of Brighton, UK. 7 October, Sallis Benney Lecture Theatre, Grande Parade, Brighton. http://artsresearch.brighton.ac.uk/about-us
http://transitionculture.org/
WHAT IS AN ECO-QUARTIER?
What does ‘building sustainably' actually mean? What, to be specific, are the defining qualities of an “eco quartier”? The European Forum for Architectural Policies is holding a conference at Arc-en-Rêve in Bordeaux, at which I will talk about these questions. The event is open to professionals from across Europe, but you have to register. Bordeaux, 9 and 10 October 2008. http://tiny.cc/0XvHg
TRANSPORT AND LAND USE
We will never achieve “sustainable transport” unless the economics and regulation of land-use are also changed. A new Journal of Transport and Land Use brings multiple disciplines together for the first time: engineering, planning, modeling, behavior, economics, geography, regional science, sociology, architecture and design, network science, and complex systems. This first issue includes papers on Sprawl and Accessibility, and Cities as Organisms.
http://www.jtlu.org
CHANGING THE CHANGE
What should be the design research agenda for sustainability? The proceedings of last month’s conference in Torino are now online:
http://emma.polimi.it/emma/showEvent.do?idEvent=23
REGEN-TV
David Barrie, who led the world's first televised regeneration project, writes to tell me that that the project’s centrepiece, a new bridge, is now open for business. This six million euro structure is one in a series of newly designed public spaces in Castleford, the former coal-mining town in West Yorkshire. A television series produced by Barrrie for Channel 4 is credited with leveraging over 250 million euros of new investment into the town. The series is due to be broadcast imminently.
http://www.channel4.com/life/microsites/0-9/4homes/castleford/
WE ARE ALL EMERGING ECONOMIES NOW
As designers, can we not do more good in our own backyards than in foreign parts? It is, in principle, great that many colleagues donate their time and expertise to projects such as $100 laptops, emergency shelter, and mobile hospitals. But I can't get it out of my mind that I personally, along with most other US or European citizens, emit as much CO2 in one day as someone in Tanzania does in seven months. And if I go as a tourist, even an eco one, I'll use as much water in 24 hours as a villager who lives there, uses in 100 days. Who needs whose help here? Read more (including Cameron Sinclair’s reply) at:
http://www.designobserver.com/archives/entry.html?id=38773
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Is this the next-generation telephony solution I've been looking for as an alternative to physical travel? The creators of Telemegaphone, Magnus Torstensson and Erik Sandelin of Unsworn Industries, have created a sublime piece of communications landscape art - or something along those lines. Telemegaphone Dale is a a seven-metres tall loudspeaker sculpture on top of the Bergskletten mountain overlooking the idyllic Dalsfjord in Western Norway. Dial the Telemegaphone’s phone number and your voice will be projected out across the fjord, the valley and the village of Dale. Hint: my birthday is on 6 August.... http://www.unsworn.org/telemegaphone/