The starting point

The representation of green architecture in magazines is quite often problematic: beautiful houses built with green materials and the latest sustainable technologies… in the middle of an almost pristine natural environment! Maybe it's time to reconsider tower blocks with their much smaller “footprint”.

Basic questions

How do we imagine a green harmonious future? How are green harmonious futures represented in our culture? What are the politics of green futurist thinking? How to develop a critical attitude towards these representations?

What we discussed

Participants were invited to bring up aspects of the green harmonious future they personally envisioned.

What came up

• Use less and share more
• Use more nature (e.g. natural cooling in Kyoto)
• No growth (e.g. island with glass factories in Murano)
• Control population growth
• Biodiversity: also in food production, no more global gargantuan monocultures
• Re-empower nature: allow nature to take over parks to create “natural” parks, and not manicured, artificial ones
• Give human rights to animal rights
• New consciousness about the cycle of life and death: realizing the deeper meaning of death, impermanence and your body returning to soil/fire/air may instigate a enriched connection to nature
• Connect to nature: lake = soup and soup = lake (in contrast with the lake of milk and the mountain of butter), NEWater
• Renewed relationship to time: slowdown, back to seasonality
• New relationship to technology: transcend the schism nature-technology, coexistence
• Improved information: data (cradle to cradle) and education (e.g. lead-free solder and tin whiskers, http://www.sigcon.com/Pubs/news/10_01.htm)