In the realm of outlandish architectural fantasies, a building made out of mist surely has to rank near the top. But this bizarre-sounding concept, dubbed the Blur Building, is no fantasy at all. It’s under construction in Switzerland, and is one of five architectural projects featured in “Architecture + Water,” a new exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Heinz Architectural Center. The vision of Diller + Scofidio, the only architects ever to win a MacArthur “genius” award, the Blur Building is the most fanciful of the five, but each has a unique way of tackling a tricky equation: how to effectively merge function and form when water is a major structural factor. (04/10/02)
more…

The environmental crises brought on by our microscopic ancestors nearly destroyed them – but they found a way out, and we can, too. What sort of governance makes sense in a complex global society? To consider that, we go back into deep time, before humans, before dinosaurs or insects, to a time when our microbial ancestors faced a global environmental crises of their own making. Elisabet Sahtouris writes: Their crisis came about when food supplies were exhausted and relatively hi-tech respiring bacteria (“breathers” with electric motor drives) invaded larger more passive fermenting bacteria (“bubblers”) to eat their insides out – a process I have called bacterial colonialism or imperialism. The invaders multiplied within these colonies until their resources were exhausted and all parties died. No doubt this happened countless times before they learned cooperation. (04/10/02)
more…

Wendell Berry writes: As late as World War II, our farms were predominantly solar powered. That is, the work was accomplished principally by human beings and horses and mules. These creatures were empowered by solar energy, which was collected, for the most part, on the farms where they worked and so was pretty cheaply available to the farmer. However, American farms had not become as selfsufficient in fertility as they should have been-or many of them had not. They were still drawing, without sufficient repayment, against an account of natural fertility accumulated over thousands of years beneath the native forest trees and prairie grasses. … Now that the issue of sustainability has arisen so urgently, and in fact so transformingly, we can see that the correct agricultural agenda following World War II would have been to continue and refine the already established connection between our farms and the sun and to correct, where necessary, the fertility deficit. There can be no question, now, that that is what we should have done.  (04/10/02)
more…