GREENwichFORUM

01-11-09

Future Cities

We are the first species to become a geophysical force, single-handedly altering Earth’s atmosphere and climate. We have initiated the 6th great extinction spasm of geological history by the massive destruction of ecosystems and the loss of plant and animal species.

The consequences of inaction would be catastrophic, however the essential collective programme of action offers a fantastic opportunity to understand, embrace and enhance our complex natural world.

The Agricultural Revolution began 10,000 years ago and the Industrial Revolution 300 years ago. Both required centuries to fully develop. By contrast, the revolution we now need, the Environmental Revolution, must be compressed into decades at the most. Planning designing and building this environmental revolution will entail reshaping our economies, politics, lifestyles and values.

Whilst existing cities in the developed world need to take massive steps to curb emissions of CO2, introduce renewable energy supplies, build back the densities in the centres, introduce live / work policies, improve the public transport systems, and encourage urban farming initiatives, this will be a long, complex, difficult task to build within and over the centuries of growth and antiquated infrastructure. The existing cities of the world are struggling to cope with the constant growth. Urban sprawl into vast suburbs cannot be allowed to continue. So we now need new sustainable cities with new infrastructures sited strategically to benefit from renewable energy sources, fresh water supplies, and fertile land. These cities promise a new beginning, a chance to correct our mistakes, utilise our ingenuity and creativity to plan the agrarian renaissance, the Environmental Revolution.

01-02-09

What is the Pattern that Connects

Matter and Pattern – or the questions ‘What are things made of?’, and ‘How are they organised?’, have tended to be treated as separate questions within the traditions of western thought. There have been notable exceptions – Aristotle’s concept of entelechy, Goethe’s romantic science, or more recently the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx, and the organismic and cybernetic systems thinking of Deep Ecology philosophy – in particular the work of Gregory Bateson, David Bohm, Fritjof Capra and Rupert Sheldrake. For all of these thinkers, our minds are dispersed and active across fields of matter – our environments – in ways that we are only beginning to understand (or remember?)
A living conception of matter and pattern – to which architectural knowledge might have a particularly significant contribution to make – is, I think, key to the formulation of a modern political theory of ecology and mind.

The concepts ‘matter’ and ‘pattern’ are more fundamentally connected than it might at first appear. ‘Pattern’ has its roots in the Middle English word patron – in the sense of something serving as a model. The idea of a ‘pattern book’ of designs, of a template which can be copied uses the word in exactly this original sense. The wordpatron comes to us via Old French from the Latin pater, meaning ‘father’. The word ‘matter’ also has its roots in Middle English, and also comes via Old French from the Latin materia meaning ‘timber, substance,’ also ‘subject of discourse,’ and ultimately derives from the Latin mater, meaning ‘mother.’

This text and image were recently exhibited at the Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwich, as part of the recent ‘Green Forum 2009′ event. I presented material from my soon to be submitted PhD - Eco-Cybernetics: The Architecture of the Extended Mind