sustainability?

Marta Karpińska

w autoportrecie:

autoportret. pismo o dobrej przestrzeni
issn 1730-3613, kwartalnik, nakład: 1000 egz.

muzea 1 (2002)

‘To talk to me about sustainability is like talking to me about giving
birth. Am I against giving birth? No. But would I like to spend my time
doing it? Not really. I‘d rather go to a baseball game’. These words by Peter
Eisenman quoted by Dalibor Hlaváček in this issue of ‘Autoportret’ are to
illustrate how architects typically approach ecology. Many representatives
of the world of architecture will no doubt be welcomed in hell but this is
no consolation. Cynical carelessness is not only a problem of the architects’
community but also a characteristic feature of the present-day model of
culture. In their book The End of the World as we once Knew it: The Climate, the Future, and the Prospects for Democracy, Claus Leggewie and Harald Welzer analyse
this psychosocial attitude. The global village can no longer use the natural
resources of the external world to supply fuel to our economic system. The
only thing left to us is the future of the next generations, of which we are
currently robbing them. ‘In this way,’ the authors write, ‘one of the myths
of western culture is being undermined: a hybrid image that in a world of
virtually uninterrupted growth we have overcome the inconvenient dimension of finiteness. The dramatically propagating crisis of the global system
shows that our luxury existence is still related to this dimension. And
because this conclusion is equally alien and fear-inspiring to our system as
the realisation of one’s own mortality is to an individual, it evokes a strong
motivation to ignore crises or postpone dealing with them till indefinite
«later»’1.

biblioteki 2 (1/2003)

Ruthlessly exploited, the concept of ‘sustainable development’ is an empty
platitude in view of growing global instability. It is manifested not only
in unfair distribution of goods and resources or the fact that the developing South is bearing the cost of the functioning of the developed North
but also in our dependence on (technological or market) systems whose
mechanisms we do not fully comprehend. Will the recession, lasting from
2008, being the most vivid symptom of the multi-dimensional global crisis,
cause reevaluation of attitudes? Can all pro-ecological ideas and attempts to
implement them, which we present in this issue of ‘Autoportret’ focused on
sustainability, be significantly effective against rigid dogmas of the model
of development based on the calls for progress and growth? Leggewie and
Welzer compare it interestingly to replacing a faulty tap in a first-class
cabin aboard the Titanic after its encounter with an iceberg. ‘There is this
one inviolable principle on board: we are unsinkable’.

przestrzenie kolonialne 29 (4/2009)

wydawca:

dworce 3 (2/2003)
rewitalizacja 4 (3/2003)
przestrzenie dźwięku 5 (4/2003)
ulice i place 6 (1/2004)
ogrody 7 (2/2004)
społeczności lokalne 8 (3/2004)
przestrzenie dziecięce 9 (4/2004)
przestrzenie komunikatu 10 (1/2005)
wokół funkcjonalizmu 11 (2/2005)
przestrzenie sakralne 12 (3/2005)
blokowiska 13 (4/2005)
przestrzenie starości 14 (1/2006)
przestrzenie handlu 15 (2/2006)
architektura organiczna 16 (3/2006)
przestrzenie książki 17 (4/2006)
przestrzenie pustki 18 (1/2007)
przestrzenie sceny 19 (2/2007)
przestrzenie zdrowia 20 (3/2007)
przestrzenie prywatne 21 (4/2007)
przestrzenie władzy 22 (1/2008)
przestrzenie niczyje 23 (2/2008)
śmierć w Europie Środkowej 24 (3/2008)
przestrzenie światła – światło w przestrzeni
25–26 (4/2008–1/2009)
przestrzenie wirtualne 27 (2/2009)
bezkres 28 (3/2009)
nowoczesności 30 (1/2010)
dom w Polsce 31 (2/2010)
wyobrażanie narodów 32 (3/2010)
język i przestrzeń 33 (1/2011)
utopie 34 (2/2011)
zmysły/percepcja 35 (3/2011)
tożsamość po '89 36 (1/2012)
partycypacja i partycypacja 37 (2/2012)
postciało 38 (3/2012)

rada programowa: Adam Budak, Andrzej Bulanda,
Wojciech Burszta, David Crowley, Ewa Kuryłowicz,
Maciej Miłobędzki, Agostino de Rosa, Ewa Rewers,
Tadeusz Sławek, Łukasz Stanek, Magdalena Staniszkis,
Dariusz Śmiechowski, Štefan Šlachta
redaktorka naczelna: Dorota Leśniak-Rychlak
projekt: Anna Zabdyrska
zastępca redaktorki naczelnej: Emiliano Ranocchi
sekretarz redakcji: Marta Karpińska
redakcja: Magdalena Petryna, Aleksandra Wojda
korekta: Ewa Ślusarczyk, Agnieszka Stęplewska
prenumerata: Kamila Kosmalska
stale współpracują: Michał Choptiany, Paweł
Jaworski, Dorota Jędruch, Piotr Winskowski, Michał
Wiśniewski
OKŁADKA:
s. 1: proj. Anna Zabdyrska
s. 88: Josif Brodski, Mowa na stadionie, [w:] Pochwała nudy,
przeł. A. Kołyszko, M. Kłobukowski, Kraków: Znak, 1996,
s. 123–124
przygotowanie do druku: Andrzej Karlik
druk: Drukarnia Pasaż
Redakcja zastrzega sobie prawo do nadawania tytułów
i redagowania nadesłanych tekstów.
Kwartalnik dostępny w sprzedaży internetowej
(www.mik.krakow.pl), salonach empiku oraz
w prenumeracie. Najprościej zamówić prenumeratę
w e-sklepie Małopolskiego Instytutu Kultury:
http://e-sklep.mik.krakow.pl/autoportret-prenumerata/
Cena prenumeraty czterech kolejnych numerów „Autoportretu” wynosi 50 zł (koszty wysyłki pokrywa wydawca).
Wpłaty prosimy kierować na konto Małopolskiego
Instytutu Kultury:
Bank BPH 31 1060 0076 0000 3310 0016 4770.
W tytule wpłaty prosimy wpisać „Autoportret
– prenumerata” oraz podać adres do wysyłki
i dane kontaktowe (telefon lub e-mail).
Dofinansowano ze środków Ministra Kultury
i Dziedzictwa Narodowego

wieś 39 (4/2012)
przemysłowe poprzemysłowe 40 (1/2013)
przestrzeń jako taka 41 (2/2013)
zrównoważony rozwój? 42 (3/2013)
ograniczenie 43 (4/2013)
przestrzenie wiedzy 44 (1/2014)
...

Wsparcie finansowe numeru „Zrównoważony rozwój?”:
International Visegrad Fund
www.visegradfund.org

Translated by Anna Mirosławska-Olszewska
Całość numeru zostanie przetłumaczona na język angielski
i od października 2013 roku będzie dostępna na
www.autoportret.pl.

C. Leggewie, H. Welzer, Koniec świata, jaki znaliśmy. Klimat, przyszłość i szanse demokracji, przeł.
P. Buras, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej, 2012, p.20 (back translation into English by Anna Mirosławska-Olszewska).

1

www.autoportret.pl

Table of Contents

Centre, Decentralisation, Recentralisation Marc Augé

4

nature and sustainability in the ecological utopian tradition3
Marius de Geus

8

Towards Thermodynamic Urban Planning Philippe Rahm

16

Democracy, Nature, and Utopia Lucy Sargisson

24

SOCRATES AND ENTHUSIASM FOR STRAW Marcin Mateusz Kołakowski

27

Neutralne węglowo miasta? Ida Kiss

33

ˇ
NATURAL MATERIALS: HISTORY OR HOPE? Dalibor Hlavácek

36

Right-about Modernism? Dawid Krysiński

44

The Recycled City Levente Polyák

50

Green Architecture Jana Tichá

56

House under the Apple Tree in Marianka Ivan Jarina

62

Unsustainable Undevelopment Damas Gruska

64

Agricultural Methods and Farmers’ Little Manias Devis Bonanni 70
The Future of the Message Mateusz Curyło

76

End.less Rossano Baronciani

83

autoportret 3 [42] 2013 | 3

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Marc Augé
Illustrations: Anna Zabdyrska

Centre,
Decentralisation,
Recentralisation

W

e are currently going through
a transformation whose
consequences we have not
yet learnt to control. Space is
increasingly becoming a sensual expression
of our contradictions and paradoxes.

Everyday language keeps on surprising us. We
often use the prefix ‘without’ (sans). We speak
of those ‘without homes’, of people sans papier1,
and since we know for certain that their situation is problematic, we are led on to believe,
as if it were obvious, that having a permanent
place of residence and valid documents is a
sufficient condition for happiness.
Other examples might easily prove the
opposite. The richest people in the world
acquire more and more residences. They own
temporary homes on different continents,
they sail their own yachts and enjoy themLiterally, ‘without papers’; in French, a popular way
to refer to people of non-French origin who reside
in France without the necessary legal documents to
validate their stay (footnote by A.W.).

1

selves in luxury hotels all over the world.
They have documents, to be sure, and yet
they are so self-confident and so confident in
their identity that they hardly realise they
are actually showing those documents when
a need arises. They might be said to accumulate benefits: places of permanent residence,
identity cards and credit cards.
Having said that, I would claim that the fact
that the most affluent collect residences and
exude self-confidence proves that the ideal
of individual life is not necessarily that of
getting stuck in one place like a mollusc to
a rock, or having the means to prove your
identity when asked to show your papers;
quite the opposite: it is a genuine freedom
of movement while remaining relatively
anonymous. The magnetic force of the 19th
century cities on runaway villagers, and of
great cities in the North on migrants from
the South, was born out of the very same
need. Undoubtedly, it is essentially illusory,
and yet it must be considered by all who ask
themselves the question about the ideal city
life of our time.

The city is expanding ceaselessly. The majority of the world’s population lives in the city
and the trend is irreversible. Global urban
drift is transforming the city. What kind of
city do migrants flock to these days?
The phenomenon of global urban drift
corresponds more or less to what we call globalisation, to denote free market, economic
and financial interrelations, development
of means of transport and advances in
e-communication. From this point of view,
the world may be called one giant city. The
‘world-city’, as I proposed to refer to it2, is
characterised by mobility and uniformity. On
the other hand, big metropolises are sprawling and abound in all types of diversity (ethnic, religious, social or economic), including
divisions inherently present in them. We
can therefore contrast the ‘city-world’, with
its divisions, nodes and disparities with the
‘world-city’, which provides the former with
a global context and places its aesthetic and
functional identification marks emphatically
in several key points in the urban landscape,
such as towers, airports, shopping centres or
amusement parks.
The more a big city sprawls, the more ‘decentralised’ it becomes. Visited by tourists
coming from other places, historical centres
become museums and areas of all kinds of
consumption. Prices are high here, and city
centres are inhabited, more often than not,
by the wealthy, who frequently happen to be
foreigners. Production and sometimes also
cultural activities move extra muros. Means of
transport are the focal problem of an urban
agglomeration. Distances between places of
residence and places of work are often considerable. Urban tissue stretches along roads,
Cf. the book Pour une anthropologie de la mobilité,
Paris: Payot & Rivages, 2009, p. 34 (footnote by A.W.).

2



13-10-30 14:38

rivers and coasts. In Europe suburbs are getting closer, are merging and mixing; it may
seem that with the spread of ‘urbanity’ we
are losing the ‘city’ itself. Decentralisation of
cities whose elan vitale is moving beyond administrative borders; habitats whose private
interiors are linked with the outside world
through television and the internet; finally,
individuals themselves who are constantly
teleported outside themselves by electronics
- all these factors favour conquest of space,
which, paradoxically, is often related to
dispossession.
How to recover the lost city?
In the global world an answer may be expressed in spatial terms: we must re-think
localness. Contrary to illusions disseminated
via communications technologies, from
television to the internet, we live where we
live. Ubiquity and immediacy still remain
metaphors. It is important to perceive means
of communication as they really are: means
to facilitate life, not to substitute for it.
From this perspective, the task we should
accomplish is enormous. It is to avoid situations when information and image overload
will cause new forms of isolation. Solutions
to halt this trend, which is already perceivable, will have to be spatial, local and,
openly speaking, political, in the broad sense
of the word. How to reconcile the sense of
place and the freedom of non-place in urban
space? Is it possible to rethink the concept
of the city in its entirety, and of housing in
particular?
The city is not an archipelago. Le Corbusier’s
illusion of the city, whose centre was supposed to be a habitat and a unit of cohabitation, brought in the barriers of new suburbs
from which trade and services, originally
intended to turn them into ideal spaces for

living, soon emigrated. What was neglected
was the need for social relations and contact
with the outside world; this is what ‘young
suburbans’ express in their own way, for
example in Paris where they move regularly
from their bleak housing estates towards the
districts of Champs Elysées or Châtelet-Les
Halles, which lie in the heart of the historic city and are also symbols of consumer
society.
Perhaps one day our planet will look like one
complete urban complex. We are starting to
look at it that way, since we celebrate works
by several eminent architects, whic are wellknown all over the world, or follow advances
in e-communication technologies of Paul
Virilio’s ‘virtual meta-city’. It is to be hoped
that by that time we will have found a way to
supply this giant world-city with energy that
is necessary for it to function harmoniously.
It should also be said that the measure of the
success or failure of the project, whether it
be a utopia realised or a programmed end of
the world, will be human relations management; in other words, our ability to reverse
the current process of the growing gap
between the rich and the poor, between the
educated and the uneducated. The energy
necessary to carry out this major project –
the only true effort worth making if each
individual is necessarily assigned the idea of
cognition characteristic of the human species – is essentially mental energy and refers
to the human being’s fundamental qualities:
intelligence, will and imagination.

cultural’ world whose emergence they are
witnessing daily. The hypothesis we would
like to propose here is that an anthropologist can usefully contribute to the reflection
on the necessity to recentre human activity
– not in order to negate new opportunities
ahead of the humanity but so as to confront
them without nostalgy, since they have
always been among questions raised more or
less directly by various cultures and by several philosophical precursors. It is high time
to embrace what is happening on ‘our’ planet
and to refocus on what is vital – on cognition
– when faced with hitherto unknown threats
of the present time.
Current efforts to protect the world by designating ‘human heritage’ sites and establishing ‘natural parks’ are, in a sense, all aimed
at that. However, if they are not accompanied
by a major educational effort, they may be
lost in our world of images, as one out of
many existing forms of consumption. Hence,
the change of scale, which is reflected in
newly emerging landscapes (including the
landscape of the planet as such) – landscapes
that in a sense recapitulate the history of
humanity – may be perceived as a source of
mixed up questions, anxieties and dreams.
Polish translation by Aleksandra Wojda
English translation by
Anna Mirosławska-Olszewska

To many people, culture remains a close, intimate bond which has been in existence and
is still perceivable in microscale in a given
community, its works and its landscape. The
existence of such communities is becoming
increasingly difficult and they can hardly
envisage their place in that planetary ‘post-



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Marius de geus
illustrations: anna zabdyrska

natURe
and sUstainability
in tHe eCoLoGiCaL
UtoPian
tRadition

13-10-30 14:38

I

n our era of large scale environmental
degradation and increasing climate problems, there is a need for counter images
of an alternative ecologically sustainable
society, one that protects and respects nature.
Often it is forgotten that in the ecological
utopian tradition one may find instructive
visions, as well as highly evocative images of
a sustainable society. It appears that society is letting an opportunity pass by, by not
fully recognizing the true value that lies in
the ‘ecotopian’ tradition. I shall investigate
whether ecological utopias are capable of providing a meaningful contribution to the quest
for an environmentally sustainable society.
More particularly: what is the significance
of various ‘ecological utopias’ for interpretations of mankind’s attitudes towards nature,
and the modern social debate about the
meaning of ecological sustainability?
huMans as partiCipants
in nature
In the work of American political philosopher Murray Bookchin (1921-2006) one can
observe the view of humans as ‘participants’ in their relation towards the natural
environment. In The Ecology of Freedom (1991)
Bookchin argues that the fundamental roots
of the present ecological crisis must be found
‘in the underlying institutional, moral and
spiritual changes in human society that produced hierarchy and domination – not only
in bourgeois, feudal and ancient society, but
at the very dawn of civilization’1. His central
thesis is that the idea that humanity must
dominate and explore nature, historically
stems from the domination and exploitation
of humans by humans.
M. Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom. The Emergence and
Dissolution of Hierarchy, Montreal: Black rose Books, 1991,
p. 44

Historically, this conception can be traced
back to a period when men began to dominate women:
‘From that point onward, human beings
were regarded as mere resources, as objects
instead of subjects. The hierarchies, classes,
propertied forms, and statist institutions
that emerged with social domination were
carried over conceptually into humanity’s
relationship with nature. Nature too became
increasingly regarded as a mere resource,
an object, a raw material to be exploited as a
mere resource as slaves on a latifundium.’2
In reaction to this development, Bookchin
argues for a more ‘holistic’ analysis of
relationships in nature and society. In his
view, natural evolution does not develop in
the direction of a simplification of forms of
life, but in the direction of growing complexity and variety. Hence, respect for nature is
paramount: ecosystems are much too variegated to be left to humans and their claim
to sovereignty and complete domination over
nature.
In essence, natural ecosystems resemble
food webs rather than stratified pyramids.
Ecosystems are organized non-hierarchically
and rely heavily on forms of participation.
What makes Bookchin’s ‘social ecology’of
the utmost importance is ‘that it offers no
case whatsoever for hierarchy in nature and
society; it decisively challenges the function
of hierarchy as a stabilizing or ordering principle in both realms. The association of order
as such with hierarchy is ruptured’3
Bookchin argues in favor of making these
principles the basic premises of a new bal-

1

ance between humanity and nature: mankind must strive for the maintenance of
ecological spontaneity and non-hierarchical
organization of the political, social and
ecological systems. It also means that in the
future agricultural and industrial practices,
urbanization and the use of technology will
have to be carefully tailored to the natural requirements of local and regional ecosystems.4
In his analysis, up to now human kind as
well as nature have been the victims of a hierarchically structured society. The individuals are unfree because of the institutions and
values of hierarchical society: citizens lack
both power and opportunity to control their
destinies and lives. These hierarchical social
relations have a direct impact on humanity’s
attitudes and behavior towards nature.
An ecologically responsible society can only
be accomplished when all the spheres of life
that are contaminated by domination are
‘decontaminated’, for instance the relations
between men and women, politicians and
citizens, as well as the relationship between
humanity and nature itself. In Bookchin’s
view the introduction of an ‘anarchist society’ is vital in ending the dominant attitude
of humans towards nature and in realizing
an equilibrium between humanity and its
environment.5
huMans as partners
with nature
English designer, writer, architect and
craftsman William Morris (1834-1896) was one
of the first utopians who gave an aesthetic
portrayal of an ecologically balanced society.
Ibidem, s.41
M. Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, Montreal: Black
rose Books, 1990, p.19-32

4
2
3

Ibidem
Ibidem, p.37

5



13-10-30 14:38

In his News from Nowhere (1891) Morris first
provides a critical analysis of 19th century
English capitalist society and the natural
environment in his days which, as he put
it, have grown ‘ugly’. He then sketches an
extremely detailed alternative, where society
and the natural environment are relieved of
their ugliness and the world is once again
‘beautiful and harmonious’.
In his work, Morris provides an even more
nature friendly and far going view
on the relationships between human kind
and nature than Bookchin. William Morris
had an extremely sharp eye for ‘modern’
problems such as large scale industrialization, environmental degradation, waste of
natural resources, ongoing urbanization, and
the destruction of valuable, traditional landscapes. According to him, the capitalist industrial system had deeply affected people’s
attitudes towards nature. He describes how
in general people led lives in which humans
and nature were separated from each other,
and nature was even treated as a slave:
‘…a life which was always looking upon
everything, except mankind, animate and
inanimate – “nature”, as people used to call
it – as one thing, and mankind as another. It
was natural to people thinking this way, that
they should try to make “nature” their slave,
since they thought “nature” was something
outside them.’6
In his interpretation, the industrialized 19th
century society lacked a sense of nature and
the Earth as a comprehensive whole. The
natural surroundings were viewed by the
inhabitants ‘ as an ugly characterless waste,
6
W. Morris, News from Nowhere, London: Kegan Paul,
1983, p. 154

with no delicate beauty to be guarded’. 7In
reaction to this, Morris describes the need for
a social, political and ecological revolution.
The country would be divided in small scale
decentralized unit (a commune, a ward, a parish), which would be self-governing. Private
property of the means of production would no
longer exist: large-scale factories, heavily polluting the natural surroundings and wasting
energy and materials, would be replaced by
environmentally friendly cottage industries
and small scale workshops where products are
made under safe working conditions.8
Morris accentuates that parallel to these
drastic political and economic changes, an
ecological revolution has to take place to
ensure the people’s complete happiness. The
perfect starting point of this ecological revolution was a completely different attitude of
humans towards nature. Morris indicates in
News from Nowhere that the inhabitants of this
new society felt a deep ‘affection’ for their
natural surroundings, for the landscape
where they lived, and for everything that
grows and blooms.
In his utopian society many people would
move from the cities to the countryside.
There would be a dispersion of people and
gradually city and country would flow seamlessly into one another. The result would
be an exemplary and crucial ‘partnership’
between human kind and nature. In this
ecotopian society people lived in a carefully
managed garden landscape, where nothing
was neglected or wasted, as the following
passage indicates:

and wastes, with a few towns interspersed,
which were fortresses for the feudal army,
markets for the folk, gathering places for
craftsmen. It then became a country of huge
and foul workshops and fouler gambling
dens, surrounded by an ill kept, poverty
stricken farm, pillaged by the masters of the
workshops. It is now a garden, where nothing is wasted and nothing is spoilt, with the
necessary dwellings, sheds and workshops
scattered up and down the country, all trim
and neat and pretty.’ For indeed, we should
be too much ashamed of ourselves if we allowed the making of goods, even on a large
scale, to carry with it the appearance, even,
of desolation and misery’. 9
Morris most vividly describes how the
people would live in simple yet solid homes
with well-kept gardens and allotments, in
harmony with their natural surroundings.
Moreover, there would be abundant space for
untouched landscapes and exist large pieces
of wild nature. In his vision, when people assume an attitude of ‘partnership’, friendship
and closeness with regard to nature, they
consider humans and nature as ‘partners’
in the sense that the needs, interests and
preferences of both sides must be taken into
account and be weighed harmoniously.10
In this vision nature is observed as an alliance of different life forms, in which human
and other life forms are not adversaries but
are working together in order to achieve
common purposes.11This requires a respectful
Ibidem, p. 61
Ibidem, p.63
11
See also: P. Kockelkoren, Ethical Aspects of
Plant Biotechnology In Plants – Report to the
Dutch Government Commission on Ethical Aspects
Biotechnology in Plants, Appendix I, [in:] Agriculture
and Spirituality – Essays from the Crossroads
Conference at Wageningen Agricultural University,
Utrecht: International Books, 1995, part.5
9

10

‘This is how we stand. England was once
a country of clearings amongst the forests
7
8

Ibidem, p.162
Ibidem, p. 83

autoportret 3 [42] 2013 | 10


13-10-30 14:38

relationship with nature and an emphasis
on various forms of cooperation and balanced relations between life forms on earth.
Overall, humankind is allowed to make use
of natural resources, but without having the
right to dominate or exploit nature. 12
As ‘partners’ humans will tend to draw more
radical consequences than as participants.
Being a partner implies an increased consciousness of being a part of nature and of
feeling closely associated with the natural
surroundings. In general, an intimate, close
and friendly partner will set more stringent
restrictions on man’s interventions in nature
than a participant. Moreover, partners will
systematically act in ways which stimulate
nature to develop and realize itself, as in a
flourishing and healthy human partnership.
huMans eXperienCing a fundaMental ‘union’ with nature
The most radical interpretation of the
relationship between human kind and nature can be found in the ideas of American
political philosopher Henry David Thoreau
(1817-1862). Thoreau has become well-known
as author of Walden, or a Life in the Woods (1854).
In this most wonderful and still widely read
book he meticulously recounts the greatest
experiment of his life.
As a matter of fact, he lived alone in the
woods from July 1845 until September 1847, in
a self- constructed cabin on the shore of Walden Pond, near Concord Massachusetts, his
birthplace. In his writings Thoreau presents
his general view of a radical simplification
of life and develops an alternative vision on
the relationship between human kind and
nature.
12

Ibidem

Strikingly, in Walden Thoreau continuously
writes ‘Nature’ with a capital letter. He also
consistently describes nature as a female
figure, as can be seen, for example, in the
following: ‘But there was dawning Nature,
in whom all creatures live, looking in at my
broad windows with serene and satisfied
face, and no question on her lips’. 13
In his view, nature is the mother of humanity, a creator of life and beauty. Like the
native Indians, who in his time had already
largely been driven onto reservations, he saw
the Earth as ‘a living being’, and approached
nature as a ‘living entity’, of which humans
only make up a small part.14
To a larger extent than Bookchin and also
Morris, Thoreau emphasizes the greatness,
grandeur and benevolence of nature. He
consistently writes with deeply felt reference and great awe about the ‘dignity’ of
nature and the vital importance of preserving nature’s equilibrium. In his view nature
was not created to be a possession of man,
but has ‘ intrinsic value’: it exists in and of
itself, and deserves to be treated with love
and affection. Actually, he considers it his
moral responsibility to protect the wild and
preserve the forests.15
Thoreau shows how profoundly he enjoys
the landscape, and talks with the deepest affection about pine, birch and oak trees, with
which he appears to carry on entire conversations. His Walden is like a hymn to the
nature around his simple forest hut. When
Thoreau meditates he repeatedly experiences himself as being part of nature, and
H.D. Thoreau, Walden, czyli życie w lesie, przeł. H.
Cieplińska, Poznań, Rebis, 1999, s. 293
14
Idem, The Annotated Walden, edition by P. van Doren
Stern, New York: Bramhall House 1970, p. 186-207
15
Idem, Walden…
13

perceives the essential connection between it
and humans. He experiences a salutary sense
of ‘union’ and ‘kinship’ with nature, and is
surprised that he never really feels alone in
the vast forests where he roams.16
He expresses total admiration for nature’s
sublime beauty, which he treats with utmost
care and deep respect, rejecting each human
encroachment on nature. Accordingly, his
priority is not to bring land under cultivation in order to make it productive, but
rather to ‘maintain’ the wilderness and to live
as the original Indian tribes: in an unspoiled
land, in complete harmony with nature,
without significantly changing the earth.17
iMpliCations for theory and
praCtiCe
This short survey of three different views on
the relationship between human kind and nature found in ecological utopianism, leads to a
number of relevant insights and noteworthy
consequences for both theory and practice. In
the analysis of Bookchin, Morris and Thoreau,
an ecologically sustainable society assumes a
set of completely different attitudes towards
nature. A shared insight of these ecological utopians is that until now humans have
shown an excessive tendency wanting to rule
over nature. For many centuries humans have
attempted to dominate nature and approach
it as a means, an instrument completely at
their service. However, this authoritarian and
hierarchical way of thinking is absent from
the principles of the three ecological utopians
which were explored.
As they note, in an ecologically sound society
nature will need to occupy a key position,
16
17

Idem, The Annotated…, p. 88-93
Ibidem, p. 209-210

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and people will need to treat the natural
environment with dignity and respect.
Despite the specific differences between the
views of ‘humans as participants in nature’,
‘humans as partners with nature’, and
‘humans experiencing a fundamental union
with nature’, their arguments are pointing in the same direction. These ecotopian
thinkers accentuate that, until humans have
developed an attitude of respect, equality
and deep concern for nature, an ecologically sustainable society will remain a very
distant prospect. Admittedly, there are some
quite serious problems with their visions.
For instance, despite my ongoing sympathy
for Thoreau’s reflections, his approach of
achieving a union, unity and identification
with nature is highly individualistic and
remains too subjective. On the whole, it does
not seem a ‘necessary condition’ that every
individual citizen must be able to identify
with for example trees, bushes, landscapes
and so on, in the way Thoreau is proposing
to effectively protect and maintain mother
Earth. It seems not everyone will be capable
of (or interested in) experiencing this highly
personal and subjective kind of ‘spiritual and
sublime’ unity with the natural elements.
Additionally, such a revolutionary sociocultural change cannot be expected in the
foreseeable future and in fact does not seem
feasible. In my view, it is more important
that citizens gain sufficient understanding of existing ecological relationships. For
instance, people should become fully aware
of the high complexity of our climatic and
atmospheric systems, and understand the
risks of possibly irreversible forms of damage
to nature, as in the modern case of global
warming and climate change.
Besides, there is the logical problem which is
inherent to the approaches of participation

and partnership. In a literal way it is impossible to be a participant in relation to nature
or a partner with nature, since nature is not
able to speak or communicate in any reasonable and sensible way with us, nor can it act
as a rationally thinking ‘moral agent’. Only
figuratively speaking, humans may possibly
attain to a role of being a participant, or for
example a partner in relation towards nature.
The critical remarks made above lead to
the question how to choose for one of the
three approaches mentioned. Why would
one prefer either the attitude of participation in nature, opt for a partnership relation
with regards to nature, or favor the idea of
experiencing a fundamental union or unity
with nature? Obviously, this is not the main
theme of this paper, but let me provide a
short commentary here.
What could be the main criteria for making this kind of decision? For instance, one
could look at the degree of realism and the
level of practical feasibility. In that context,
it seems the attitude of participation comes
first, followed by the one of partnership,
and lastly the attitude of realizing union or
unity with nature.
However, it can be defended that it is more
rational and appropriate to evaluate the
three ecotopian attitudes towards nature on
basis of a different criterion: the degree to
which they can inspire people to environmentally responsible behavior, individually
and collectively, or to policies that effectively
contribute to solving the current ecological
crisis, global warming and climate change
included. 18

W. Achterberg, Samenleving, natur en duurzaamheid,
Assen: Van Gorcum, 1994, p. 161-164

18

Another controversial issue is whether a
change of human attitudes towards nature
will in any way be sufficient to achieve an
ecologically responsible society. The obvious
answer is negative. A change in attitudes and
dispositions among citizens will not directly
and automatically translate in different
environmental government policies. Nor will
changes in attitudes of citizens mean that
they will actually change their daily environmental behavior in terms of transportation choices, food habits, housing habits and
all other acquired pattern of behavior. As a
matter of fact, these are exactly the deeply
engrained routines and actions that tend
to produce a larger individual Ecological
Footprint.
In earlier work, I have noted that changes
in political, economic, financial and cultural institutions will be needed in order to
achieve an ecologically sustainable society. 19
Changing human attitudes versus nature will
indeed have to be constitutive element of a
new green society, but will most definitely
not be a sufficient condition.
The role played by our contemporary attitudes towards nature is no doubt detrimental
to our planet, but so are for example continuous economic growth, ongoing population
increase, reliance on centralized and large
scale energy production primarily based on
fossil fuels, general food habits and consumption pattern in the rich countries, and
so on. Another decisive issue concerns the
ways people think about the broad and often
elusive concept of ecological sustainability, to
which I shall now turn.
19
M de Geus, The End of Over-consumption, Utrecht:
International Books, 2003; M. de Geus, Utopian
Sustainability: Ecological Utopianism, [w:] The Transition to
Sustainable Living and Practice, ed. L. Leonard, J. Barry,
Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing, 2009, p. 77-101

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pragMatiC versus utopian ConCepts of eCologiCal sustainability
In the decades following the publication of
the UN report Our Common Future (Brundtland
report 1987), the great majority of governments in the world have (at least in words
and statements) accepted the concept of
‘sustainability’ as a general guideline for
economic and environmental policy. In practice, however, the specific meaning given to
the concept by the countries involved, varies
considerably according to the importance
which is attached to facts, uncertainties and
risks in relation to environment and society.
At least three interpretations of ecological
sustainability have come to the forefront in
western politics, which differ with regard to
the robustness of the definition of sustainability (‘strong versus weak’), the general
perception of existing and future environmental risks (high versus low), the expectations regarding the development of technological solutions for environmental problems
(highly probable, versus not probable at all),
and the answer to the question whether a
‘general consumer austerity’ is inevitable or
preferable in order to achieve an ecologically
healthy and responsible society.
In the first line of thought, ecological sustainability is equated with the Brundtland
approach of ‘sustainable development’ and
‘ecological modernization’. The general starting point of this essentially ‘liberal’ concept is
that ecological sustainability can actually be
‘combined’ with economic growth, a strengthening of economic competitiveness, better
management of urban planning, nature and
biodiversity, and a decrease in absolute terms
of environmentally hazardous emissions.
In this line of reasoning again and again a

general argument is made for so-called ‘creative and intelligent growth’ of the economy,
provided that the overall pressure on the environment diminishes. Environmental policy
is basically seen as a necessary, welcome
impulse for change, for technical, economic or
cultural renewal. The challenge of sustainable
development and ecological modernization’ is
considered as a decisive cause of innovation
and improvement of the economic structure. 20
In this pragmatic ‘liberal’ political vision the
environmental risks of continuous economic
development are estimated to be relatively
low. It is assumed that a prolonged exploitation of the earth will reveal new stocks of
natural resources and that, if needed, the
exploitation of alternative raw natural resources is possible. In addition, the expectations with regard to the contribution of new
technologies to the improvement of energy
efficiency and realization of environmental
goals are very high. In this pragmatic view it
is expected that the ‘integration’ of environment and economy will be accomplished by
future technological revolutions and innovations. In line with this, an overall decrease
of the level of production and consumption
is not considered necessary. The main goal
is to induce citizens to develop inherently
friendly environmental behavior, without
the need for austerity or of radical changes
in lifestyles. Hence, the general aim is
‘greener’ or ‘sustainable’ consumption, not
‘reducing’ consumption.
In the second view – which is often (but not always) associated with Christian religious ideas
– ecological sustainability is looked at from the
general perspective of ‘stewardship’. Here the
basic point of departure is that human kind
20
A. Giddens, The Politics of Climate Change,
Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009, p. 70

is morally obliged to cultivate and conserve
the natural environment as a responsible and
effective steward of the natural environment.
Accepting responsibility in order to maintain
the natural environment for future generations is a characteristic idea: humanity is held
accountable for its share in the conservation of
the ‘wholeness of the Creation’.21
In western democracies this Christiandemocratic idea of stewardship has remained
influential in politics. Most Western-European Christian-democratic parties who are
defending this position, do not perceive the
environmental risks of economic growth as
insurmountable and show an overall optimism about the future availability of natural
resources. Their presumption is that, in the
end, technological solutions for most current environmental problems will be found.
In general, in this vision a need for more
austere consumption patterns or lifestyles
is rarely expressed. The emphasis is not on
a radicalization of environmental goals and
objectives, but on achieving the goals of
already existing environmental policies.
A third interpretation of ecological sustainability can be linked to radically green political
parties in Western liberal democracies. The
foundation of this idea can be traced back to
utopian ecological thinkers such as William
Morris, Bernard Skinner, Aldous Huxley, and
Ernest Callenbach. In this ‘green-tainted’
interpretation, ecological sustainability is
considered to be closely related to the idea of
a ‘steady state economy’.22
P. Kockelkoren, op.cit, part 5
See, H.E.Daly, The Steady State Economy: toward a Political
Economy of Biophysical Equilibrium and Moral Growth, [w:]
Toward a Steady State Economy, San Francisco: W.H.
Freeman and Company, 1973; T. Jackson, Prosperity without
Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet, London: Earthscan,
2009

21

22

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Their ‘ideal utopian society’ incorporates
both an economic and an ecological state of
equilibrium. The just mentioned utopians do
not think in terms of growth, increase, and
expansion, but in terms of equilibrium, stability, and balance. They argue that a large
share of environmental pollution and damage to nature is caused by society’s unlimited
tendencies towards growth in production
and consumption.
They emphasize that society should break
away from these growth tendencies, and advocate a society that is not based on the ideal
of continuous economic development. Their
focus on a so-called ‘steady state’ reflects
itself in their principles, in particular the
proposition of a so-called ‘stationary state’,
as well as in their views on policy, where the
‘stable state concept’ is the decisive criterion
upon which social decision-making needs to
be systematically based.
It is fair to say that up to now in western
liberal democracies this specific ecological vision of green political parties has not gained
much attention and support. Only the green
political parties in for example Belgium,
Germany, France, the Netherlands and
the United Kingdom have (at least to some
extent) indeed been inspired by these radical
utopian ideas. As a matter of fact, their preference for (some version of) a ‘steady state
economy’ is demonstrative of the fact that
they estimate the risks of ongoing economic
development as very high. In the same vein,
they tend to be pessimistic about the future
availability of natural resources.
Generally, the green parties are opting for
risk evasive strategies and are reticent about
the possibilities of the so-called ‘technological fix’: technological strategies to solve
large scale environmental problems. In their

perspective today’s high material standard
of living will have to be replaced by a ‘high
quality of life’, involving a decrease of general production and consumption levels.
ConseQuenCes of the struCtural rejeCtion of the steady state
notion
In this final section the following question
will be raised: What are the main consequences of the fact that in modern western
liberal democracies governments are still
relying on two - above mentioned - basically
pragmatic interpretations of ecological
sustainability, and are systematically rejecting the third and principled ‘steady state’
notion?
By primarily relying on and referring to the
two pragmatic visions of ecological sustainability, the key concept has been deprived
of its foundational character. Ecological
utopian thinkers as William Morris, Bernard Skinner, Aldous Huxley and Ernest
Callenbach have underlined that ecological
sustainability is intended as a foundational
notion that aims at both an economically
and ecologically stable situation. From their
point of view, it is a ‘principled and normative’ concept in the sense that in this line of
reasoning the aim of nature conservation,
the preservation of scarce natural resources
and intra- and intergenerational justice are
quintessential, and must systematically be
given priority over growth of production and
consumption.
In line with the arguments given above, the
rejection of the value and relevance of the
third perspective on ecological sustainability
has led to a de facto acceptance and legitimization of the assumption that humans have
the right to rule over nature.

Ultimately, both within mainstream political
liberalism with its preference for sustainable
development and ecological modernization,
and Christian religious political visions
which are building on the idea of stewardship, human kind is still having the right to
dominate over nature and approach it as a
means. This is not surprising, as John Locke,
the religiously inspired founding father of
political liberalism, wrote the following
words in his Second Treatise:
‘God, when he gave the World in common to
all mankind, commanded Man also to labor,
and the penury of his Condition required
it of him. God and his Reason commanded
him to subdue the earth, i.e. improve it
for the benefit of Life, and therein lay out
something upon it was his own, his labor. He
that in Obedience to this Command of God,
subdued, tilled and sowed any part of it,
thereby annexed to it something that was his
Property, which another had no Title by, nor
could without injury take from him.’23
Arguably, the right to property is a pivotal
element in Locke’s theory, and nature is
explicitly to be ‘subdued’’ and made productive. 24 This creates a clear contrast to
utopian ecological thinkers as William
Morris, Bernard Skinner, Aldous Huxley
and Ernest Callenbach, who argue that in an
environmentally sustainable society, nature
will occupy a central position, and people
will need to treat their natural surroundings
respectfully and responsibly.
A last consequence of the fact that modern
western liberal democracies are primarily
J. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1965, p.
24
R. Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory: Toward
an Ecocentric Approach, New York: State University of New
York Press, 1992, s.23
23

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relying on the first and second interpretation of ecological sustainability, is that still
no empirical, physical side-constraints or
limits to the carrying capacity of the earth
are accepted. Both from the perspective
of liberal political and Christian political
considerations, it is predominantly assumed
that nature can be compared to a ‘spring’
that flows abundantly. Both in the Bible and
in the work of John Locke it is noted that the
Earth provides the rich material humankind may make use of. In his Two Treatises of
Government Locke speaks of ‘the Plenty God
had given to him’. 25 In his theory nature is
a perpetually productive generator of foods,
natural resources and so on. Locke views
the commons as an unlimited and incessant
source of riches, goods and services. The
underlying assumption is that the earth will
present us with new harvests and catches,
new trees and plants in endless variations.
There will always be enough food and
natural resources to fulfill the incessantly
growing human needs. This optimistic idea is
systematically reflected in the two pragmatic
visions on ecological sustainability analyzed,
but is evidently at odds with the growing
scientific insight that sustainability unavoidably implies the setting of specific physical
limits to the growth of our economy and
presupposes the acceptance of well-defined
ecological boundaries.

could be established. In various ways ecological utopias are capable of providing a valuable contribution to our ongoing quest for an
environmentally sustainable and ecologically
responsible society.
As a consequence, a legitimization and acceptance of the assumption that humans
have the full right to rule over nature has occurred. Apart from that, in the debates there
has been no room to discuss the far broader
and more integrated ecotopian visions on
ecological sustainability. Moreover, the existence of physical boundaries or limits to the
ecological carrying capacity of the earth has
not yet been recognized in modern politics.
All in all, there are still very good reasons to
continue studying ecological utopianism and
to critically reflect on the many worthwhile
lessons which can be learned from this tradition about the vital role of attitudes towards
nature and the deeper meaning of ecological
sustainability.

This paper has explored the value of ‘ecological utopianism’ for interpretations of
mankind’s attitudes towards nature, and the
modern social debate about the meaning of
the much debated and influential concept
of ecological sustainability. By developing
this analysis, an increased understanding of
the significance of ecological utopias for our
modern environmental problems and debates
25

J. Locke, ibidem, p.

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Philippe Rahm

Towards
Thermodynamic
Urban Planning

T

he history of urban design and
spatial planning over the past forty
years was largely reviewed from a
macroscopic and aesthetic viewpoint rather than from a microscopic and
physiological one. Re-analysing it from the
microscopic perspective, we can discover the
factors that did influence the formation of
cities. A new evaluation proposed here will
make it possible to create an alternative to
the actual development of urban planning
that is currently based on the principle of
economic globalisation which is unsustainable and unfair to people. It is an ambition of
our studio to contribute to the development
of planetary urban planning to make it more
acceptable, human, honest and fair to all.
Popularisation of the macroscopic and
aesthetic urban analysis must undoubtedly be attributed to Italian architect Aldo
Rossi who, in his book L’architettura della città

(‘Architecture of the City’) of 1966, deprecates
‘naïve functionalism’ that reduces the history
of the city and its design to the physiological
and organic. From the very first page of the
introduction he recognises the physiological
cause as the origin of architecture. The starting point is the biological need that drives
man to ‘construct an artificial climate’, more
favourable for his existence. Evading this
point, Rossi immediately claims that, first and
foremost, man built his environment following
aesthetic and civilisational intents. He studies
those macrostructural intents, deriding all
infrastructural approaches, which he considers naïve. With all due appreciation for Aldo
Rossi’s achievements in the field of theory, and
in a non-polemic spirit, we choose to side with
the naive and to partly contest that macroscopic take, opting to reverse the angle of the
analysis so that it starts from the microscopic
level. If Aldo Rossi seemed so radical in 1970,
it stemmed from the fact that since the 1950s
antibiotics came into wide use in the West, a

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13-10-30 14:38

‘One of the main requirements of good health conditions in a big city such as Paris is to foster free circulation of the air we breathe, through gradual removal of
all obstacles which might prevent it [...] and by distancing cities from all centres of impurity and corruption’.
J. de Horne, Mémoire sur quelques objets qui intéressent plus
particulièrement la salubrité de la ville de Paris, Paris, 1788,
[quoted after:] R. Etlin, L’air dans l’urbanisme des Lumières,
‘Dix-huitième siècle’ 1977, No. 9, pp. 123–134 (unless otherwise indicated, all quotations transl. by A.M.O.).
2
A. Corbin writes, ‘Soufflot created a chamber with a
vault whose chaotic form makes it possible to eliminate
stagnant places and to create rising air currents’. A.
Corbin, Le miasme et la jonquille, Paris: Flammarion, 1986.
1

ics, taken twice daily for one week? It should
be pointed out, by the way, that modernist
sunshine and fresh air were not particularly
successful treatments.
What Aldo Rossi considered to be the first
cause in the history of urban planning may
have been in fact merely a consequence of
the use of antibiotics: functionalism preceded
aesthetics, physiology allowed symbolism,
microscopic factors implied the macroscopic
aspects. The reversal of the cause-and-effect
chain, which we will propose to explain the
history of the city and urban planning as
resulting from the macroscopic and physiological considerations, is crucial to design
the future. Partial success of Rossi’s postmodernism of 1970–1980 stems from the fact that it
led to a construction of forms without causes,
leaving merely effects of urban facts. It may
be exemplified by a multitude of new squares
with rich symbolism but without the physiological sense of the previous ones, when it had
been necessary to fetch drinking water before
social bonds were formed. We propose to study
this particular reversal of the cause-and-effect
relationships in urban planning and spatial
design, and as a starting point we choose the
achievements of new schools of thinking of
history, geography and economy.
In his texts Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates
of Human Societies of 1997 and Collapse of
2005, Jared Diamond described the above
mentioned reversal of the cause-and-effect
relationships, pointing out the importance
of environmental factors: climate, geology or

autoportret 3 [42] 2013 | 17


viruses in human history3. It was Spaniards
who conquered South America, while Aztecs
did not conquer Spain because the viruses
carried by a bunch of conquistadors multiplied more easily and were more lethal than
the viruses carried by millions of Aztecs4. The
history of America presented by Diamond
appears to be much more a consequence of
viral toxicity than a political or religious
programme written in its course. In a
similar way, the American scholar explains
the rise and fall of the Viking civilisation or
of the civilisation on Easter Island, justifying their development by climatic changes
and soil erosion. Following the logic of this
new school of thinking, some scholars have
recently pointed out that the times of social
change in the history of China correspond
to periods of drought in the climate5, while
periods of great cold in the European Middle
Ages are related to an increase in the importance of religion6. We might presume that,
with advances of modernisation, the history
of civilisation should become increasingly
independent of the influence of the climate.
However, in Climate Wars Harald Welzer de-

‘History has proceeded very differently for different
peoples not because of biological differences but due to
differences in environments’. J. Diamond, Guns, Germs,
and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, New York: W.W.
Norton, 1997, p.9.
4
‘Far more Native Americans and other non-Eurasian
peoples were killed by Eurasian germs than by Eurasian
guns or steel weapons. Conversely, few or no distinctive
lethal germs awaited would-be European conquerors in
the New World’. Ibid., p. 29.
5
‘This is how the collapse of some Chinese dynasties is
related to periods of abnormal droughts’. Hai Cheng, R.
Lawrance Edwards, Les variations de la mousson et la société
chinoise depuis 1800 ans [in:] Des climats et des hommes, ed.
J.F. Berger, Paris: La Découverte, 2012.
6
‘In 1315 (the year of famine during the little ice age
from 1300 to 1350) there were few upheavals but many
prayers. Later there will be less bigotry and more
upheavals’. E. Le Roy Ladurie, D. Rousseau, Fluctuation
du climat en France du Nord et du Centre au temps du Petit Âge
glacière [in:] Des climats et des hommes, op. cit.
3

All illustrations: ©philippe rahm architectes

change which brutally invalidated the whole
hygiene programme of architectural modernism and its physiological language. Critical of
narrow streets and opting for zoning, in the
Athens Charter Le Corbusier deals with bacteria hot spots, thus following the first 18th and
19th century hygienic regulations introduced
by Rambuteau and de Horne1, Maret and
Soufflot2: he is against stale air in dark narrow streets and badly ventilated rooms. The
formal language of the modernist architecture of the 1920s – wide windows and glazed
bays, balconies and solariums for the purpose
of air and solar treatments, as well as white
disinfectant lime slurry – are vivid declinations of the design patterns of Alpine sanatoriums, invented in the 19th century to combat
tuberculosis and other bacterial diseases. This
medicinal language loses legitimacy with the
discovery of penicillin. What is the point of
demolishing small, narrow and dark lanes
or moving flats to spacious parks if it is now
possible to eradicate disease with antibiot-

13-10-30 14:38

scribes the opposite tendency. He shows that
natural disasters are behind the wars fought
in the 20th and 21st centuries: to him, climate
change is an underestimated social threat
and it seems we are failing to accept the idea
that this phenomenon, even if described
scientifically, may generate such calamities
as the implosion of social systems, civil wars
or genocide7.
Economist Daniel Cohen believes the same,
offering surprising reinterpretations of what
seemed to be the cause while in fact was the
effect8. He explains the disappearance of
social diversification in the modernist city
not by the Athens Charter, which proposed
to separate the working zones and housing
districts, but by the invention of the lift,
and then RER, the regional express transit
system connecting suburbs to Paris. It was
only yesterday that in a typically formed city
the rich lived on the second floor, and the
poor on the last one. The rich and the poor
met on the stairs and even if they did not
speak to each other, their children sometimes attended the same schools. Since lifts
came into widespread use, buildings started
to be inhabited by the rich or the poor but
never by both because they lived in different districts. The district is decreasingly a
place of social diversity’. As to RER, Cohen
explains that it is not so much a means of
transport that brings people from different
social strata closer as an element contributing to their separation. ‘What is worse, with
RER in use, suburbs tend to be increasingly
isolated from luxury districts. In the past
working class suburbs were not situated so
far from city centres because workers had
to walk to work on foot. With the opening
H. Welzer, Climate Wars, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012.
D. Cohen, Trois leçons sur la société post-industrielle, Paris:
Seuil, 2006.

7

8

of RER, the distance could grow. However
demography develops, Paris will never border with Sarcelles. Suburbians go to the city
centre on Saturday nights to feast their eyes
on pictures but then return home’.
Endocrinological Land Development in the 19th Century
Rethinking the history of urbanisation from
the microscopic perspective – endocrinological in the 19th century, and bacteriological
in the 20th century – leads to unexpected
re-evaluation of the process of city and cityscape making. Medicinal properties of iodine
were recognized in the first half of the 19th
century, and were popularised by English
doctors who started to send their patients to
the seaside or to thermal spas where iodine
was administered either in the liquid form:
soda or sea breeze, or in the solid one: fish
or algae9. It resulted in the construction of a
railway network and urban development of
the sea coast. New spa towns were founded,
such as Biarritz, Brighton, Spa, Ostend,
9
‘Making it possible to discover iodine in a great
number of mineral waters where its presence had not
even been suspected before, chemical analyses provided
an explanation of their long-known qualities used in
the treatment of cases where iodine is nowadays successfully prescribed. It was Dr Goindet of Geneva that
had the privilege to introduce iodine, and then its compounds, into medicine. Searching for a method in Cadet
de Gassicourt, he noticed that Russel counselled burnt
rockweed for thyroid. Suspecting that the sponge which
was then used in the treatment of thyroid and rockweed
might owe their properties to iodine, whose presence in
rockweed brine had been proven by Courtois, he tried it
out in the treatment of thyroid hyperplasia and, luckily,
succeeded. Not a year had elapsed since he started his
experiments that he communicated his discovery to
the Helvetian Society of Natural Sciences gathered in
Geneva on 25 July 1820. Two other memoirs by Coindet,
published soon afterwards, proved that iodine was
indeed an efficient medicine for thyroid and was a remedy for scrofulous tumours and certain diseases of the
lymphatic system’. A.A. Boinet, Iodothérapie, Paris: Victor
Masson et Fils, 1865.

Vichy, Arcachon or Évian-les-Bains. At the
local level, urbanisation of Europe in the 19th
century and the invention of tourism are the
formal, planned consequences of the discovery of iodine and its medical applications.
It was also instrumental in the formation
of the image of European cities which since
then turned towards beaches and waterfronts, sprawled and opened towards seas
or lakes, those ‘veritable sanatoriums in the
open air where the lucky sick come to enjoy
the iodine-rich ocean air and pine fluids’10.
For instance, in the 19th century the morphology of Swiss towns was totally reversed for
that reason. Until the turn of the century
buildings faced away from waterfronts and
lake shores into which sewage was poured.
Houses turned their backs at lakes and faced
mountains. It was a total transformation.
Ever since water becomes valuable because
of iodine, new buildings – like those big
residences in Montreux – turn towards lakes.
The high street, which was once situated
away from water, gets doubled with the
construction of new boulevards designed for
strolling along the waterfront. This is how
European lake and sea shores, rehabilitated
owing to iodine, become steadily urban.
Some time later, around 1860, Louis Pasteur
discovers that the air we breathe is not empty but contains bacteria, which are slightly
less numerous in the mountains11. This
medical knowledge, combined with what
might be called the germicidal power of solar

10
Guide Touristique d’Arcachon 2012, http://www.arcachon.
com/upload/GP_Touristique_Arcachon_BD_

K(3).pdf (access: 8 August 2013).
‘Above all, are there any germs in the air? Nobody
claims otherwise because we realise that it cannot be
otherwise’. L. Pasteur, Œuvres, vol. 2, Paris: Masson et
cie, 1922.

O

11

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radiation in the treatment of tuberculosis12,
entails impressive urban development of the
Alps: Leysin, Davos and Gstaad are established. Written at the end of the 18th century,
the diaries of Timoléon Guy François de Maugiron or Voyages dans les Alpes (‘Voyages in the
Alps’) by Horace-Bénédict de Saussure imply
that mountain areas were generally avoided
as places of extreme poverty, inhabited by
degenerate people13. The discovery of iodine,
followed by the popularisation of solar treatments, sun bathing or heliotherapy14, recommended in Switzerland by Dr Bernhard or
Dr Rollier, turn these places into favourite
holiday destinations. Just like the theses
proposed by Rossi in L’architettura della città
stem from the discovery of penicillin, the
theses put forward by Le Corbusier in Towards
an Architecture or in the Athens Charter result
from the discovery of iodine, the germicidal
power of sunshine and the observation that
the numbers of microbes decrease in less
polluted air.
Thermodynamic Urban Planning in the 21st Century
Understanding the causal mechanisms is
crucial, and a microscopic mechanism often
enables to reverse their order: what seems to

‘We shall live in the dark, like before. The sun will not
penetrate into residential buildings more than before to
displace the exterminator microbe. To sum up, there is a
lack of airing or light in residential buildings, and particularly – a lack of sunshine. In short, we can summarise the findings of this research with a statement that
tuberculosis is first and foremost a disease of the dark’.
Congrès international de la tuberculose: Rapports présentés au
congrès, Paris: Masson et cie, 1905, vol. 25.
13
‘We attribute the name of cretins to idiots and
imbeciles living usually on mountain passes. Is it not
endemic in more or less swampy mountain passes,
exposed to damp air?’ J.-E. Esquirol, Des maladies mentales,
vol. 2, Bruxelles: J. B. Tircher, 1838.
14
J. Malgat, Cure solaire de la tuberculose pulmonaire chronique [in:] Congrès international…, op. cit.
12

be the cause at the macroscopic level turns
out to be a consequence in the microscopic
perspective. If we want to define urban
planning and territorial strategy towards the
future, we need to analyse the real causes
underlying land transformations. From the
architectural and urban planning points
of view, climatic and energetic parameters
are closely related and seem to be the main
factors that influence and will continue to
influence urban renewal in a given area. The
concept of ‘thermodynamic urban planning’,
which I shall define presently, may encompass a whole set of criteria activated in the
process of urban renewal on our planet.
The microscopic reason which will certainly
underlie all major architectural and urban
planning decisions in the 21st century is
carbon dioxide (CO2). It is expected to play
the key role; for two decades we have been
trying to embrace the negative consequences
of the growth of CO2 concentration in the
atmosphere caused by non-renewable energy
consumption, such as oil or gas. Fuel combustion releases CO2 into the atmosphere, which
forms a sort of cover that makes it impossible for surplus energy accumulated over
the earth to escape into the outer space. It
results in global warming, disturbing the
climate balance, on which urbanisation of
the planet has been based for centuries, and
causing disasters and migrations. Energy
consumed by buildings (heating, ventilation, air conditioning or hot water production) is responsible for emitting about 50%
greenhouse gases. Hence, architecture and
urban planning are directly involved in an
ecological and civic mission for the reduction of energy consumption. The discovery
of the role of CO2 in global warming and
the dissemination of that knowledge by the
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change) since 1988 certainly determines

the end of postmodernism and invalidates
reading and designing purely aesthetic and
symbolic architecture. The necessity to deal
with climate warming imposes new duties on
architecture and urban planning, and confronting them is a matter of no less import
that the confrontation with bacterial diseases was for modernism in the 19th century.
Following the Fukushima disaster (2011), a
nuclear disaster was added to the climate crisis, forcing a process of steady abandonment
of this kind of energy. Deprived of unlimited
access to fossil fuels or nuclear energy, and
unable to immediately replace them with
renewable energy sources, such as the sun
or wind, at the beginning of the 21st century
we are urged to immediately reduce energy
consumption. In this context, with view to
the necessity to save it and use natural local
energy sources, it is time to define the concept of thermodynamic urban planning; just
as we are beginning to practise architecture
called green, solar, ecological or meteorological.
Thermodynamic urban planning may prove
to be a new way to come to terms with
globalisation, through reorganization of
industrial production at the planetary level
based on energetic and climatic, rather than
economic, criteria. We are currently at the
peak of the postindustrial society crisis,
which was based on global distribution of
labour divided between the North, with
highly qualified personnel developing ideas,
programmes, design and marketing, and the
South, with unskilled workforce manufacturing objects, computers or clothes. Until 1960
the South exported only raw materials for
use in the North. Since the 1960s industrialisation of the South has entailed de-industrialisation of the North; since then the South
has been exporting ready-made products,

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leaving the North to develop product concepts, design and marketing. This situation
is risky because the technological advantage
of the North over the South is decreasing
on a yearly basis and it is predictable that
production of ideas, design and concepts will
soon reach the same level in the South as in
the North, which will automatically reduce
employment and increase unemployment, especially in Europe. How is Europe and France
to be seen in this regard? What can France
do, with its limited industry and extensive
technological expertise (nuclear energy,
TGV) which will soon become obsolete, in
view of technologies developed in the United
States, including Google and Facebook, if it
neither develops nor manufactures its own
products? There remains the production of
luxury goods, cultural and culinary tourism
so well described by Michel Houellebecq15
as the future of industrial France huddled
around the ‘territorial magic’ of its countryside. Cheeses, cold meats, woodpigeons and
snails, the Massif Central and a network of
routes ‘Lodging and Castles’. Indeed, cynicism aside, some products belong to a given
territory, which is inextricably related to a
certain climate, quality of mineral soil that
gives produce unique taste, just like lime soil
and sunshine to the great wines of Bordeaux.
It is not about skills or cultural traditions
which globalisation will certainly copy, hybridise and delocalise but certain geographical, geological and climatic conditions that
are unique and characteristic for a place: as
Houellebecq has it, it is a regional category
rather than a state one. Although it is impossible to transfer wine production from
Bordeaux to China or Bangladesh, it will not
hinder the establishment of new territories
like Napa Valley in California or Ningxia in
M. Houellebecq, The Map and the Territory, trans. Gavin
Bowd. New York: Knopf, 2012.

15

China whose wines were classified as the best
in the world in 2011.
To explain the concept of thermodynamic
urban planning, we can start from three
examples illustrating a characteristic mode
of exploitation of unique energy resources
typical for a given geographic location. The
first example is the transferring of Facebook
servers from California to Lulea in Sweden.
Computers storing a gigantic amount of
information overheat, and cooling them
requires a tremendous amount of energy.
The average annual temperature in Lulea is 2
degrees Celsius, and it is easy to understand
what savings (in tens of billions of dollars)
the American company can make by moving
the servers from the Mediterranean climate
of California, where the average annual temperature is 19.5 degrees Celsius.

These three examples point at new, unusual,
almost uninhabited urbanisation areas such
as the north, deserts and high mountains.
They have nothing in common with the
places that have undergone urbanisation
since the beginnings of humankind. In the
21st century we will witness a radical modification of the criteria of geographic value; we
will see a change of human geography which
will entail the establishment of new cities
and a collapse of old ones.
Thus, climate will have a key role in future
urbanisation of the planet, following the
global thermodynamic values related to the
location parameters, with regard to latitude
and altitude. It may turn out to be a solution
fostering globalisation based not on unjust salaries or a specific international distribution of
labour but on ecological and climate criteria
applied on the scale of global population.

The second example is the Swiss village of
Trient. The small village, with a population
of 150 residents, hidden in the rugged mountains of the canton of Valais, without a ski
lift, will receive several million Swiss francs
in the next few years because it has a glacier
that supplies water to a dam which provides
electricity to the whole Swiss railway.
The third example is the German project
Desertec, under which it is proposed to cover
the whole of Sahara with solar panels to
supply electric energy to the whole of North
Africa and Europe16.

16
‘All kinds of renewables will be used in the DESERTEC
Concept, (…) but the sun-rich deserts of the world play
a central role: within six hours deserts receive more
energy from the sun than humankind consumes within
a year. In addition, 90 percent of the world’s population
lives within 3,000 km of deserts’. http://www.desertec.
org/fileadmin/downloads/desertec_foundation_flyer_
en.pdf (access: 8 August 2013)

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13-10-30 14:38

therModynaMiC parK
We have applied global thermodynamic
principles on a microscale in a city park in
Taiwan: we created climatic differences as if
we were to reorganise the planet’s geography
reduced to the size of the park. The structuring principle is differentiation of climatic
environments: from naturally existing
warm, humid and polluted ones to newly created cooler, less humid and less polluted areas. Departing from what already exists, we
defined three climatic maps, each of them
typical for a given parameter of the atmosphere: the first one describing temperature,
the second one referring to air humidity, and
the last one describing the level of air pollution. Each of these maps contains modulations of respective parameters: from areas
with extreme climatic conditions to those
with deeper modifications and thus more
suitable for human habitation. These three
maps cross each other, freely overlap and
thus create diverse microclimates, a multitude of various environments within the
park’s space. One part will always be warmer
but less humid, with less polluted air, while
other parts will be cooler, drier but will have
polluted air. The three climatic maps are
based on the gradation principle: from 100%
inconvenient, naturally intense conditions
– typical for a local city (100% pollution,
100% humidity, 100% heat), to more pleasant
zones with levels reduced even to 20%, where
temperature, humidity and pollution were
reduced to a minimum. To work out these
three meteorological maps, we developed an
extensive system of devices each of which
reduces excess heat, humidity or pollution.
What I call ‘meteorological devices’ are both
plants, trees with specific qualities that absorb pollution or reduce insolation through
dense foliage and waterspouts, humidifiers,
fountains or technical solutions such as air

dehumidifiers or mosquito repelling ultrasonic speakers. If we want to create a cool
place, we increase the number of appropriate devices. Depending on their density in
a given area, we create more or less pleasant and convenient spaces where climatic
conditions sometimes overlap, combine,
condense or, conversely, separate and dilute,
generating diverse atmospheres which users
can freely choose at will. Climatic devices
are contemporary extensions of traditional
park facilities: small constructions, such as
benches, fountains, kiosks, garden pavilions or gazebos. Each of the devices reduces
inconvenience caused by climatic factors at
work and diffuses a more favourable climate,
influencing one parameter only. The first
are air dehumidifiers, followed by purifying
devices, the third ones are air refreshing,
light diffusing and shade creating devices. If
we want to achieve a low level of humidity
in a given spot in the park and create a drier
place, we simply place more air dehumidifiers there.

translation froM frenCh:
aleKsandra wojda
english translation:
anna MirosławsKa-olszewsKa

taiChung gateway parK
authors: philippe rahm architectes, mosbach
paysagistes, ricky liu & associates
investor: taichung city government
location: taichung, tajwan
total area: 70 hectares
design: january 2012 – december 2012
completion: january 2013 – july 2015
aleKsandra wojda

Meteorological devices and the type of soil
which determines them are the basic elements of our composition, scattered over
the landscape in the form of various levels
of concentration depending on the intended
level of efficiency. They enable modulation of
the landscape texture and are unique to our
architecture.
The distribution of programmes – public
utility buildings, recreational areas, passages
or playgrounds – takes place in a natural
way, depending on the intensity of the new
climatic zones. In the least convenient places
there are closed air-conditioned buildings.
Recreational areas are situated in the most
favourable climatic zones, where the humidity levels and temperature are the lowest,
and the pollution is minimal.

autoportret 3 [42] 2013 | 21


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pollution_map.pdf

1

13-09-23

16:45
plan-general.pdf

sections.pdf

1

13-09-23

sections.pdf

1

1

13-09-23

16:45

16:44

13-09-23

11:57

philippe rahm architectes, mosbach
paysagistes, ricky liu&associates,
general plan of the thermodynamic
park in taiwan, design: 2012,
completion: 2013-2015
the architects developed three spatial
narrations including layouts for
devices connected, respectively, with:
temperature (pink plan), humidity (blue
plan) and environmental pollution (grey
plan). the narrations overlap, forming
the general plan of the construction
(right).


13-10-30 14:39

Humid air

Electric fan
Refrigerated coil

H20 condensation

Dry air

Concrete slab with
radiant tubing

Humid air
Condensation

Dryer air

Cooled fluid

Water
drain

Underground
heat sink
(2m depth)

29˚C

Atmosphere

25˚C

Top soil

18˚C

Eluviation layer

12˚C

Subsoil

hot air

Cool air

Electric fan

12˚C
constant earth
temperature
Mosquitos

Mosquito-free
space

Noise pollution

Quiet space


13-10-30 14:40

Lucy Sargisson
Illustrations: Anna Zabdyrska

Democracy,
Nature,
and Utopia

T

here is a trend in contemporary environmental political theory towards
a call for a more democratic relationship between humanity and nature.
Deep ecologists have been doing this for a long
time but the trend I’ve observed comes from
more mainstream sources. These include John
Dryzek, who wants to develop a more ecologically responsive deliberative democracy
and Andrew Dobson, who argues in his most
recent work that we need to start a process of
democratic listening to nature. It also includes
thinker such as Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett who explore a new political ecology. All
these thinkers raise questions about political
agency and political participation: Who (or
what) belongs to the demos? And they have
all, in different ways (from diverse epistemological and ontological perspectives) arrived
at the conclusion that ‘we’ (that is to say,
humans) need to include ‘nature’ in the demos.
Re-thinking environmental politics in these

more inclusive ways involves re-thinking the
relationships between humans and non-human beings, between beings, things and stuff.
And I suggest that utopias are a good place in
which to start this process.
Calls for a ‘democracy of all
nature’
In his most recent work, Andrew Dobson issues a simple but radical challenge to green
political theory. Historically, he says, attempts to broaden democracy have focused
on enabling excluded ‘Others’ to ‘speak’ (in
order that they can participate in democratic
politics). But he argues that if we really want
to expand the demos to include non-humans,
we need to re-focus our attention onto listening.
According to Dobson, ‘the usefulness of the
capacity to speak is compromised without the
reciprocal capacity to listen – if we do not
know how to listen, how will we know what

to speak about? Given this, it seems odd that
political theorists should have spent so much
time worrying about how to get people to speak
without thinking at all about how we get them
to listen’1.
Historically, the excluded ‘Others’ have needed
to acquire political competencies. Dobson’s
suggestion that those inside the demos or
citizen body should learn to listen (above all,
to those outside the citizen body) prefigures
a very different kind of democracy. It places
the onus on those who already hold power. It
suggests that broadening the demos to include
non-humans would involve learning to ‘listen
to nature’. But it is unclear quite what this
would look like.
John Dryzek’s work on the environment and
deliberative democracy might help. He argues
that ‘democracy can exist not only among
humans, but also in human dealings with the
natural world’. and he suggests that nature
exhibits ‘a variety of levels and kinds of communication to which we might try to adapt’.
He says ‘The key is to downplay ‘centrism’
of any kind, and focus instead on the kinds
of interactions that might occur across the
boundaries between humanity and nature.’
He’s seeking an interchange with nature that
involves progressively less of what he calls
‘human autism’.2
But Dryzek doesn’t just want to use liberal democracy as the vehicle for this communicative
shift. He doesn’t think it’s sufficient to grant
legal rights and guardians to animals. ‘Any
A.Dobson, Democracy and Nature: Speaking and Listening,
‘Political Studies’ 2010, 58(4), p. 752-768
2
J.Dryzek, Political and Ecological Communication, 2007,
reprinted from: Ecology and Democracy, ed. F. Matthews,
London: Frank Cass, 1996, p. 3-29, next edition: J. Dryzek,
Political and Ecological Communication [in:] J. Dryzek, D.
Schlosberg, Debating the Earth: the environmental politics reader, Oxfrod: Oxfrod University Press, 2007, p. 637
1

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such representation might downgrade nature
to [just] another set of interests, disaggregating and isolating these interests by assigning
them to identifiable natural objects, thus
ignoring their intrinsically ecological (interconnected) character’. Instead, Dryzek turns
to Habermas’s notion of communicative rationality, grounded in ideal speech situations:
‘The key, he says, would be to treat communication, and so communicative rationality, as
extending to entities that can act as agents,
even though they lack the self-awareness that
connotes subjectivity. Agency is not the same
as subjectivity, and only the former need be
sought in nature’3.
Dryzek declines to offer a model of how this
might look, saying that it would be inappropriate to offer a ‘blueprint’ because this new
kind of democracy should emerge discursively. That’s understandable. But it’s a bit
frustrating. Dyrzek and Dobson both make
important arguments but they both stop, just
when things begin to get interesting. And
I’m going to suggest that utopian fiction and
experiments can help. I’m going to examine
2 examples, very briefly, and I’ll begin with
a real-world experimental movement. These
are ‘The Councils of All Beings’. You may feel
that they shouldn’t be included because they
are coming from a deep ecological perspective, which is incompatible with deliberative democracy - but I think they’re worth a
look. The website of Joanna Macy (author of
the book ‘Thinking Like a Mountain’ and a
founding figure in the movement), describes
the councils as a step towards ‘opening’ a new
relationship with nature. These usually occur
as guided workshops, which seek to ‘connect’
participants to the world around them, leading to a shift in consciousness and, ultimately,
to permit the ‘voices’ of non-humans to be

‘heard’. The workshops involve a series of
steps. These are ‘mourning’ (‘allow[ing] ourselves to feel the pain of the earth), ‘remembering’ (our evolutionary history and releasing the memories in our DNA) and finally
‘extending our identity’. They combine to
enable participants to ‘give voice’ to nature:
‘after finding an ally in the natural world
and making a mask to represent that ally,
we discover that we can indeed give voice to
the voiceless ones. In Council, we lend our
voices to the animals and plants and features
of the landscape and are shocked at the very
different view of the world that emerges from
their dialogue. Creative suggestions for human
actions emerge and we invoke the powers
and knowledge of these other life-forms to
empower us in our lives4.
This is a method that seeks a deeper intuitive or spiritual understanding of nature.
It invites the human participants to ‘open’
themselves and to ‘hear’ the voices of nature,
and then to represent them. I find this deeply
problematic because it appears open to all the
objections about abuses of representative politics and interpreting the needs of the Other
which have been frequently voiced against
more traditional forms of representative politics. However, it does offer us a space in which
to imagine – and perhaps experience – how it
might feel to develop a new sensibility and a
more inclusive polity from a deep ecological
perspective.
I now propose a brief visit to Marge Piercy’s
Woman on the Edge of Time. Piercy depicts a participatory democracy embedded in a society
in which a different ecological sensibility
exists. For example, Connie is told, “We plan

Ibidem, p.638-639

“Who is that with the green hair?” [asks Connie]
“Earth-Advocate [says Luciente] - speaks for
the rights of the total environment. Beside
per is the Animal-Advocate. ... Every spring
some people dream they are the new Animal
Advocate or Earth Advocate. Those who feel
this come together and the choice among them
falls by lot”6.
The council is discussing a proposal to clear
some woodland in order to produce more
edible crops for one village. The woodland is
a rainwater catchment area and this proves
contentious:
“We have none too much water, people” a
person with green hair said…“Without water
we can grow nothing. Our ancestors destroyed
water as if there were an infinite amount of

M. Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, New York: Alfred
Knopf, 1979, s. 125
6
Ibidem, p. 151
5

all quotations above from http://www.rainforestinfo.
org.au/deep-eco/council.htm
4

3

cooperatively. We can afford to waste nothing.
You might say our – you’d say religion? – ideas
make us see ourselves as partners with water,
air, birds, fish, trees” 5. In this utopia, humans
have learned to notice (and respond to) nonverbal communication from sentient and nonsentient nature. With some mammals this is
quite sophisticated, but it relies always on the
human learning about the mammal’s norms of
communication. At one point, Connie asks her
host (Luciente) about ‘government’. Luciente
is puzzled (because there is no state and very
little governance in Mattapoisset) but she
invites Connie to observe a meeting of the
township’s planning council. This gathering
consists of 25-30 people of mixed ages. There is
plenty of argument, but no ‘speechifying’. And
it contains two special advocates:

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it, sucking it out of the earth and dirtying
and poisoning it as flowed,” .. .Let us not be
cavalier about water. What does the soil bank
say?7”
The computerized soil bank indicates that the
water table will indeed be affected and the
proposal is rejected. Instead, the neighbouring
community (that needs more crops) will be
aided by plant geneticists and soil scientists to
increase the output of the existing land.
Here Piercy is deploying the twin function
of utopian criticism and creativity – what
I call the Janus face of a utopian approach.
Janus was a Roman mythical figure – he’s the
God of beginnings (the month of January is
named after Janus) and endings, change and
transitions. I use him to signify the ways that
utopias simultaneously face the present and
the future, and the ways that the utopian gaze
offers simultaneous criticism and creativity.
Piercy’s voices from an imaginary future tell
us that their ancestors messed up, and left
a depleted ecology. The creative responses
offered by Piercy include a radically egalitarian and democratic system of autonomous
governance.
Woman on the Edge of Time imagines how
(amongst other things) a small, face-to-face
democracy could contain advocates for the
shifting actors of a given context. It imagines
what kind of society might emerge from a
politics that includes natural agents. It offers
a picture of a political community containing
humans who listen to non-human life, even if
it is unclear how nature can ‘speak for itself’.
Reading it enables us to begin to contemplate
how such a society might feel and also to identify problems with it. For example, Piercy still
uses the language of rights and the politics of
7

Ibidem, p.151

advocacy and I wonder whether this raises the
same representational problems as the Councils of all Beings.
Utopias such as Woman on the Edge of Time permit
the reader imaginary visits to societies in
which communication with nature forms part
of daily life and is structured into systems
of (self) governance. This is really valuable.
Utopias open up spaces of possibility. In these
spaces we can explore positive alternatives
and anticipate problems and I suggest that
we need to do this if we are to think seriously
about something as incredible as ‘listening to
nature’. I’ve been making claims about the
value of utopianism for an environmental
democratic politics. But I don’t want to overstress its value. It has limits. In particular it
doesn’t provide models to follow or blueprints
to copy. It’s important to note about the Piercy
example, for instance, that the democratic
utopian systems and processes that I described
are embedded in a whole-society vision. It is
ontologically and culturally different from
now. It contains people who are motivated by
different values than we are. It is embedded
in a different culture. We can’t just extract
and apply the democratic processes from such
texts.

projects and they always lie over the horizon;
unrealised and unrealisable.
In this paper, we have visited two different
utopian attempts to imagine a more democratic relationship with nature. We might
feel that neither is entirely satisfactory. We
might find them deeply flawed, unattractive
or simply bizarre. But the exercise of examining them is still valuable. To explore an idea
to breaking point and to observe what happens when we do so can help us to clarify our
thoughts about its first principles. For me,
it confirms my discomfort with Dryzek’s approach and raises concerns about the politics
of representation.

This paper was first presented at the Utopian Studies
Society Annual Conference in New Lanark, UK, July 2013.
An extended version of this paper is available as Lucy
Sargisson ‘A Democracy of all Nature: taking a utopian
approach’ in the journal Politics Electronic version: 13
DEC 2012 DOI: 10.1111/1467-9256.12005 or hard copy: Politics
Volume 33, Issue 2, pages 124–134, June 2013.

Their value, for social scientists, is partly
heuristic. They permit imaginary trial-anderror thinking – they become fictive versions
of philosophical thought experiments. This
is significant and it builds on the mirror
function of utopianism that’s been identified
by scholars of canonical utopias8. They reflect
our imperfections and flaws back to us. They
encourage us onwards to something better. But
they are not perfect Utopias are impossible

M. de Geus, Utopian Sustainability: ecological utopianism,
[In:] The Transition to Sustainable Living and Practice, eds. L.
Leonard, J. Barry, Bradford: Emerald, 2009

8

autoportret 3 [42] 2013 | 26


13-10-30 14:40

On Ecology and a Dubious Ethos
of Technological Determinism

‘Well, well, well, at least there’s a precise
definition here,’ J. Reinforced-Concrete read
under his breath. ‘»In the current state of
civilisation, sustainable development is possible, it is the kind of development where the
needs of the present generation can be satisfied without decreasing the chances of the
future generations to satisfy theirs, too»’.

Architects are so used to meeting ghosts that, hardly
surprised, J. R.-I., M.Eng. made coffee and served it to
his guests. This is how that literary evening began.

And, as if to confirm his words, Straw Mulchman showed a few pictures.

Act 1: On Eco-development and
Surplus Words

The reader may wonder who Straw Mulchman is. It is
a personification of a straw mulch, which, in folklore,
should not be offended for fear it may play tricks on the
offender. It may also represent inability to act (trans.
note).

J. REINFORCED-CONCRETE: Whoa! If the term
comprises ‘development’, it is, I suppose,
about developing, and not going back to clay
and straw. I like technology and I’d like to see

2

World Commission on Environment and Development,
Our Common Future, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1987.

1

autoportret 3 [42] 2013 | 27


ouse.at/

‘To me, it’s clear,’ replied Straw Mulchman2,
turning up on the window sill. ‘It’s about two
kinds of fairness: one, between regions in the
world, and the other, between generations. All
later interpretations of the report are tons of
cosmetics which dilute this one word: »fairness». Let me add, for the sake of clarity, that to
me the conditions of sustainability are fulfilled
only by low-tech buildings made of natural
materials: straw, such as this,’ he said, taking
out some straw from his shoes, ‘and clay, wood,
possibly also recycled materials’.

://www.s-h

John Reinforced-Concrete, M.Eng., M.Arch., lover of
black turtlenecks and global architecture, was reading Our Common Future, the famous Brundtland
report of 19871, which introduced the concept of sustainable development. He was looking for a quotation
to describe his project when he found one… He did
not know, however, that more and more ghosts were
congregating in his study…

‘…But what does it actually mean?’ asked a
toga-clad ghost of Socrates who was leaning
against the drawing board.

Photo: http

Prologue

Photo: m. siplane

SOCRATES
AND ENTHUSIASM
FOR STRAW

Photo: m. siplane

Marcin Mateusz Kołakowski

Above: Salto Architects, Straw Theatre – temporary
headquarters of the NO99 theatre ensemble, Tallinn,
Estonia, 2010-2011
Below: Robert Wimmer (Gruppe Angepasste
Technologie, Technische Universität Wien), S-House –
house of straw and wood, Böheimkirchen, Austria, 2005

13-10-30 14:40

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