Future Ecology Designed

Following are some quotes from recently read books. They represent snippets of ideas that I hope to adopt and expand on.

The Architecture of Happiness – Alain de Botton

On the value of buildings: “We value certain buildings for their ability to rebalance our misshapen natures and encourage emotions which our predominantly commitments force us to sacrifice... Architecture can arrest transient and timid inclinations, amplify and solidify them, and thereby grant us more permanent access to a range of emotional textures which we might otherwise have experienced only accidentally and occasionally.”

On creating beautiful environments: “...beauty lies between the extremities of order and complexity. Just as we cannot appreciate the attractions of safety without a background impression of danger, so, too, it is only in a building which flirts with confusion that we can apprehend the scale of our debt to our ordering capacities.”

On City layout: “A city laid out on apparently rational grounds, where different specialised facilities are separated from one another across a vast terrain connected by motorways, deprives its inhabitants of the pleasures of incidental discoveries... The addition of shops and offices adds a degree of excitement to the otherwise inert, dormitory areas. Contact ... with commercial enterprises gives us a transfusion of an energy we are not always capable of producing ourselves.”

Cradel to Cradle – William McDonough & Michael Braungart

On environmental impact: “Individually we are much larger than ants, but collectively their biomass exceeds ours. ...They are a good example of a population whose density and productiveness are not a problem for the rest of the world, because everything they make and use returns to the cradle-to-cradle cycles of nature.”

On being less bad: “The "be less bad” environmental approaches to industry have been crucial in sending important messages of environmental concern... At the same time, they forward conclusions that are less useful. Instead of presenting and inspiring and exciting vision of change, conventional environmental approaches focus in what not to do. Such proscriptions can be seen as a kind of guilt management for our collective sins, a familiar placebo in Western culture.”

On connecting to natural energy flows: “[People] could override nature to accomplish their goals as never before. But in the process, a massive disconnection has taken place. ...It is easy to forget, in the gas-powered glare of a postindustrial age, that not only local materials and customs but energy flows have provenance. ...Connecting to natural flows allow us to rething everything under the sun: the very concept of power plants, of energy, habitation & transportation. It means merging ancient and new technologies for the most intelligent designs we have yet seen.”

“Ultimately, we want to be designing processes and products that not only return the biological and technical nutrients they use, but pay back with interest the energy they consume.”