Redefining the Design Team, 1995

The complex problems of tomorrow

A new wider and more appreciative Europe is, hopefully not simply the creation in the coming years of the largest, most powerful single economic market that the world has ever seen, with its consequent energy growth demands, but a staging post, symbolic of a desire to achieve a more integrated whole world.

Monetary economics has so far failed to find a way of dealing with social costs or with renewable resources. The present western mania (indeed more and more global) for development based on a mechanistic and materialistic viewpoint, supported by the present inadequate economic methodology has led to increased pollution, both on a global and local scale. To most economists it appears that the social and environmental costs still remain intangible. One may think that the point of economics is to help us manage the world better, however I suspect that few economists see it this way. It seems inevitable that there must be a change in the current economic way of thinking. Man developed the present model, and our actions still maintain it. A sustainable economy means a more compassionate one, in the way we relate to each other and the planet. The earth owes man nothing. The global spread of the free market economy (so far leaving aside the polar regions) sucking the earth’s wealth will probably lead our present concept of progress into oblivion. Excessive borrowing from each other and our children is wrong.

Exchange through discussion and openness of information is essential for understanding, and when this engages cultural exchange a major prerequisite for creativity is in place. This in turn makes creativity more accessible and maybe more democratic in a less competitive environment. Competition has been and remains the conceptual trigger of our present economy and society. We do not believe that this is inevitable as is often argued. Collaboration, cooperation and indeed altruism is as common a natural inheritance as ‘survival of the fittest’. This is a clue to redefining economic ethics, where the economy is seen not only to serve people in a material sense but to place it in a wider, more holistic context, where non-material issues are as important as material ones.

Quantum mechanics has shown that we are not observers, but participants in the world around us, and yet through our limited human perceptions, we continue to describe and prescribe as if our minds were still outside our own bodies and environment. The study of ecology has brought this into focus for us. Science has also shown us that the only certainty about certainty is uncertainty. These observations, which have undermined science’s own imperious position, ought to be making us more tolerant and more ready to participate together in many more aspects of life.

Is not the art of living the ultimate art?
In the end, it is not the planet which is at risk but man’s place (and existence) with it. Our present concern for the planet appears to be a reflection of our selfishness (e.g. Energy Conservation Bill debate illustrated above). We hear and talk about the loss of the world’s natural resources, plant and living organisms, both in our own country and across the planet, but more often than not in the camouflaged context of our human survival through nature’s diverse resource for human welfare (medical, etc).

It is important to participate as an individual to express concerns about the wider issues which affect architecture. Like holography, in each part is the whole, but unlike the hologram, each part is important to the whole. Ideas popularized in the 60’s, dematerialism (conceptual art), ecological awareness, spaceship earth – world citizen and the revolution in life-styles (sexual and religious taboos) have been slowly and discreetly absorbed and transformed by western society into more practical and vociferous views on how to begin solving world issues such as hunger, pollution, shelter and inter-cultural communications. (Some would argue that this is potentially another form of colonialism). Yet the economic model remains largely impervious to them.