One movement, one goal: truly sustainable living.

"The evolution of civilization is under way. The people of this planet are opening to change. Most of us now know that the disastrous consequences of our lifestyles are accelerating. Green buildings have captured the imagination of many in the mainstream, but for green professionals the time has come to stop designing for mere energy efficiency and start designing to regenerate and restore. And that means taking responsibility for what people do in buildings and communities after they are built.”

by: Greg Searle

Self-evident Truths:

1. Communities are people, not buildings.
2. Communities will change when the people living in them change.
3. At least half of human impact on the planet comes from our lifestyles - the choices we make every day. Where, and how, we travel. What we eat. What we wear. The stuff we buy, and how we get rid of that stuff when we're done with it.
4. These lifestyle choices are not made in a vacuum. They are made in communities, and are influenced by community design and buildings.
5. The way we've designed our cities and buildings in the past has created a template for living that most people follow without much thought, and that template makes it inconvenient to live sustainably.
6. Those of us who plan, design, finance, insure, build, sell, lease, manage and maintain the places we live in have tremendous influence to change this template, and to make it easier for people to change their lifestyles.
7. Some of us have been pre-occupied with making buildings, streets, and infrastructure that use building materials, water, and energy in smarter ways. We call ourselves "green professionals". We call our movement the "green building movement." But we now recognize that the biggest problems are fundamentally social ones.
8. Since buildings and technology represent only half of the problem and half of the solution, clearly the present green building movement doesn't go far enough
9. All across our cities, entrepreneurs and environmental groups are emerging with solutions to specific challenges of our unsustainable lifestyles - car-sharing companies, local food advocates, re-use innovators. But most of these green lifestyle initiatives are not joined up with the green building movement, or each other.
10. We urgently need an umbrella movement that will bring us all together to create and operate truly sustainable communities with intent. The time has come to apply the vast ingenuity of the green building movement to making green lifestyles just as convenient as "grey lifestyles". The time has come to broaden our design teams, to bring green lifestyle experts to the table.
11. We cannot wait for someone else to bring us all together. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

in: The Green Living Manifesto

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No dia mundial da Terra...

Fica a sugestão...



de uma série épica que celebra o planeta de uma forma nunca antes vista.

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Hipótese de Gaia

A Hipótese de Gaia, também denominada como Teoria de Gaia, é uma tese que sustenta que o planeta Terra funciona como um ser vivo, como um gigantesco ecossistema. A hipótese foi apresentada em 1969 pelo investigador britânico James E. Lovelock, e afirma que a biosfera do planeta é capaz de gerar, manter e regular as suas próprias condições do meio-ambiente.

Apesar das dificuldades de definição do que é a vida no mundo científico, esta teoria é uma forma de entender o meio onde estamos inseridos. A Terra é uma interacção entre o vivo e o não-vivo.

O nome Gaia é uma homenagem à deusa grega Gaia, da Terra. Vista com descrédito pela comunidade científica internacional durante muito tempo, a Teoria de Gaia encontra simpatizantes entre grupos ecológicos, místicos e alguns investigadores e cientistas.

No entanto com o fenómeno do aquecimento global e a crise climática no mundo, a hipótese tem ganho, cada vez mais, credibilidade entre cientistas de todo o mundo.

Em de 2006. Lovelock afirmou no "The Independent" que "o mundo já ultrapassou o ponto de não retorno quanto às mudanças climáticas e a civilização como a conhecemos dificilmente irá sobreviver".

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Green Typography

by: Gyongy Laky

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Design research, design thinking and imagination: the abilities to imagine and to image

Design as we know it - “industrial” design - is a relatively young discipline, little more than two hundred years old. The industrial process of design developed to cope with the social and technological changes of the Industrial Revolution. Design as we know it is a corollary of industrial society, industrial technology and the industrial production system.

The question we face is how design can be transformed as society and technology transform from industrial to post-industrial forms.

There have been different interpretations of the concept of post-industrialism. The differences have tended to polarise between the “info-tech” vision and the “eco-tech” vision. In the former, post-industrialism means a form of hyper-industrial technology, based on the information revolution, automation and highly advanced technology. In the latter, it means a more small-scale, resource-conserving, “convivial” technology. In the former, technology is regarded as an autonomous, science-driven force; in the latter, technology is brought under the influence and control of people and communities.

The products and processes of a technology are linked with each other. Pre-industrial technology had its own particular types of products and processes, just as industrial technology can now be seen to have had its own particular types of products and processes. In turn, post-industrial technology will have its particularities which will affect its design processes and the products that stem from it. Perhaps a new paradigm of technology can emerge. Some features of the new technology will be continuations of the old; some will create discontinuities. Some features will be generated by the possibilities of technological development itself, whereas others will be responses to the problems created by that same technological development.

Design as it might be - “post-industrial” design - is an issue for design research. Design research is an incredibly young discipline, only about forty years old, but nevertheless having significant influence on design practice and process and having great potential. Design research has a fundamental commitment to interdisciplinarity that will be essential to post-industrial design, and it is establishing a world-wide, international basis of cooperation that will be equally essential.

Design research is built around design thinking. Fundamental to design thinking is imagination: the abilities to imagine and to image.

in: Changing the Change by: Nigel Cross

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tirado daqui

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Design Research builds on the core competence of the Design Culture

"Any economy that intends to maintain its sustainability in time needs to explore, on a continuous base, scenarios and hypotheses for constant improvements and advance.
All stakeholders of an economic system need to devote attention and resources to innovate and create the conditions for their sustainable profitability while creating recurrent improvement of the quality of life.

This challenge is common to all type of economies in all geographical location. Micro and macro economies, all together concur to form an interdependent global economic system always in search of balance and sustainability.

In this environment “innovation” is an imperative, and all the stakeholders in the economic system are in search and in demand of innovation.

The challenge is the one to qualify innovation and rank it on a model that indicate it social nature and its social economic impact. This new model is relevant to redefine long term strategies and frame short term investment roadmaps.

To support the strategic process of testing options that optimize the balance and the coherent fit between short term innovative solutions and long term vision and direction it is relevant to develop and adopt new methods of research for innovation that fast, effective and economic.

Design research methods represents to day one of the new answers to this need. Influential Business magazines such as Fortune, Time, Business Week, Fast Company devote more attention to it disseminating the experiences and promoting its adoption.
Philips Design has pioneered in this field during the last two decades and has demonstrated , with the support of business consulting companies such as Mc Kinsey and Kaiser, how Design Research provide speed and focused effectiveness.

Design has it foundation in a techno-humanistic culture and performs its creativity interfacing connecting and integrating society, end user, technology and economy.
Autonomous fields of research such as societal foresight, Business spaces, Industry development and technology development and innovation are taken therefore in an accelerated integration by Design Research maximizing time and investments effectiveness. But even more important than this, Design Research builds on the core competence of the Design Culture providing tangible options for solutions and innovation that maximize end user, societal and customer centric effectiveness and are easier to be validated because of their articulated, visual and understandable representation."

by: Stefano Marzano

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TIBETE

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CGD - Boas práticas de eficiência energética

No âmbito do programa estratégico da Caixa Geral de Depósitos, o Caixa Carbono Zero 2010, foi instalada uma central solar, a maior do país, no Edifício Sede da Caixa, com o objectivo de abastecer o edifício numa óptica de boas práticas de eficiência energética.

Com a instalação destes 1600m2 de paineis solares, a Caixa evita a emissão de 1.700 toneladas de CO2 por ano, poupa a electricidade equivalente ao consumo anual de 2.000 pessoas e preserva anualmente o oxigénio libertado por 170.000 árvores.

in: O Planeta Agradece

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Future by Design - A film about the work of Jacque Fresco

Future by Design é um documentário sobre os conceitos e desenhos de Jacque Fresco, um futurista, designer e engenheiro social, considerado por muitos o Da Vinci moderno, um estudioso de vários campos e um inventor. Jacque Fresco, hoje com 90 anos, passou toda a sua vida a criar invenções a várias escalas através do uso de tecnologias inovadoras.

Responsável pelo projecto “The Venus Project- redesign of a culture” trabalha para integrar a ciência e tecnologia num plano para uma nova sociedade, baseada em preocupações humanas e ecológicas.

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Frases do dia -21 de Março de 2008

"... the Buddhist economist would insist that a population basing its economic life on non-renewable fuels is living parasitically, on capital instead of income. Such a way of life could have no permanence and could therefore be justified only as a purely temporary expedient. As the world's resource of non-renewable fuels--coal, oil, and natural gas--are exceedingly unevenly distributed over the globe and undoubtedly limited in quantity, it is clear that their exploitation at an ever-increasing rate is an act of violence against nature which must almost inevitably lead to violence between men."

"The most striking about modern industry is that it requires so much and accomplishes so little. Modern industry seems to be inefficient to a degree that surpasses one's ordinary powers of imagination. Its inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed .

"Any fool can make things complicated, but it requires a genius to make things simple."

by: E.F. Schumacher, autor de Small is Beautiful, Economics as if People Mattered

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AQUAOVO

Com o formato de um ovo o AQUAOVO é um reservatório de água para consumo. O dispositivo tem uma capacidade de 11 litros e é ambientalmente eficaz por várias razões:
1) Não consome electricidade, utilizando a gravidade para filtrar e revitalizar a água estagnada.
2) Os materiais utilizados para a sua produção são a cerâmica, vidro e metal
3) Contém um filtro multi camadas que é reutilizável e os seus materiais são 100% recicláveis. O filtro é uma combinação de KDF 55 (sem aditivos químicos), carvão activado, biocerâmica micro porosa e cristais de quartzo.
4) Promove a redução do consumo de água engarrafada.

A água engarrafada, bebida cujo consumo mais cresce no mundo, tem um alto custo ambiental, por acumular plástico em depósitos e exercer pressão sobre as fontes hídricas.
A água engarrafada torna-se excessivamente cara em termos ambientais e económicos.
Enquanto nos países desenvolvidos se compra água engarrafada por causa da segurança, limpeza, gosto e status, mais de 1 bilião de pessoas em países pobres não têm acesso a água potável, seja ela engarrafada ou não.

Além do custo energético de produzir, engarrafar, empacotar, armazenar e transportar a água, também há o custo ambiental de milhões de toneladas de plástico derivado de petróleo. A maior parte da água é ainda embalada no material plástico conhecido por PET, que exige menos energia para reciclar e não liberta cloro na atmosfera quando é queimado. No entanto as taxas de reciclagem têm vindo a diminuir: cerca de 23,1% das garrafas PET de água foram recicladas nos Estados Unidos em 2005; dez anos antes, haviam sido recicladas 39,7%.

"A indústria de bebidas beneficia ao máximo da nossa obsessão por água engarrafada", refere Ling Li, no relatório que escreveu para o Worldwatch Institute sobre os impactes na sociedade do consumo de água engarrafada. "Mas isso não serve de nada para o incrível número de pobres do mundo que vêem a água potável segura como na melhor das hipóteses um luxo, e na pior uma meta inalcançável."

A água engarrafada custa entre 240 e 10 mil vezes mais do que a água de torneira.

Por este e por todos os outros motivos o AQUAOVO e um aparelho elegante que se pode revelar altamente eficaz em escritórios quer a nivel da sua performance como produto quer pelo seu poder em contribuir para a alteração de hábitos de consumo.

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Cultivos urbanos

"A equipa formada por Camilo Vaz, Marlene dos Santos e Bruno Oliveira constituiu a única participação portuguesa a vencer um primeiro prémio em território estrangeiro no concurso internacional de ideias Europan 9. A sua proposta, intitulada "Cultivos Urbanos", incidiu sobre uma área situada em Poïo, nos arredores da cidade de Pontevedra, capital da província com o mesmo nome da comunidade autónoma da Galiza.

A mais recente edição do Europan teve como temas a “Urbanidade Europeia, Cidade Sustentável e Novos Espaços Públicos”. Ao todo estiveram propostas a concurso 73 cidades distribuídas por 22 países europeus. Trata-se da mais vasta competição de arquitectura da Europa, sendo dirigida a profissionais com idade inferior a 40 anos. Os vencedores têm a oportunidade de tornar a sua visão em realidade, trabalhando numa fase posterior com os promotores de cada uma das intervenções apresentadas."

Ver o resto do artigo, incluindo uma explicação do projecto e entrevista com os autores aqui

tirado de: A barriga de um arquitecto

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Thoughts ...

"All of these changes are leading us to an inevitable conclusion, a place we must go, if we can - a place that promises peace and prosperity within a sustainable future."

"If we are to survive as a life form on the planet, at more or less the scale of our present occupation, there is no other way. Collectively, we must come to the realization that there is no exterior to our ecology. There is only one environment and everything is entered on the balance sheet. Every positive. Every negative. Everything counts. There can only be true prosperity if it is global prosperity, and we can only count our wealth in peace when we count it together."

"The good news is evidence all around us that not only are we as a global culture commited to Arnold Toynbee's vision, but we are actually pushing beyond the human race in our consideration to imagine the welfare of all life on earth as practical objective. In the words of John Cage "the world is getting better, s-l-o-w-l-y.""

in: Massive Change - Bruce Mau and the Institute without Boundaries

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