REDUCE CO2

The Joys of Ecolomy

How to Make Sustainability a Haven of Hedonism
Bjarke Ingels / BIG

The issue of sustainability is a dominant theme now, and especially in relation to design. But there is a moral undertone in a lot of the talk surrounding sustainability, a protestant-like implication that life has to hurt in order to be good. You arent supposed to take long showers because it isnt good for the environment; you arent supposed to fly because airplanes are bad for the environment. Gradually one gets the idea that sustainable life must be less fun than normal life. On the other hand, sustainability has become hip and unavoidable. You cant submit anything to a competition today without supplying information about how green your project is. Of course this also has its virtues, such as establishing climate change and sustainability as major subjects of design. But by formulating our environmental problems mostly in terms of political correctness, the discourse on sustainability deprives architects of finding answers to our climate challenge through design. You may describe todays environmental problems as political, economical, or ecologicalbut we see them essentially as a design challenge. We are convinced

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Bjarke Ingels

that we need to find a way to organize all the activities of our society so that we can keep doing what we want to do without having to deny ourselves the freedoms that technological development has given us. A sustainable society should not be built upon frugal and ascetic behavior but rather on innovative design solutions. We believe that through the combined effort of manufacturers, developers, investors, foundations, workers and residents, both public and private, engineers, and architects, we could design a society that works like a perpetual motion engine. Our cities, our buildings, everything we make, can be designed in a way that allows us to drive as much as we want, to have an air-conditioned room, or take a 45-minute shower without harming the planet. Now, more than ever, design can improve human life. Architectural projects should arise from the given conditions of society. They should not be driven by a single architects supposedly superior knowledge about how people should live, or what the city should be or what the right esthetic is or isnt. Design needs to be a process of curation rather than the act of a superior creator. Designers have to attempt an almost impossible summersault, without stepping on anybodys toes, to please everyone. That increases the demands on architecture, and it also forces architecture into a more exciting way of operating than heroically, but no less stupidly, disregarding fundamental constraints such as relating to your context or staying within a budget. To Mies van der Rohes motto less is more we would retort yes is more. Essentially, architects should say yes to all of the different aspects of a project. Following the discourse on sustainability, and aware of the threat posed by climate change, we think you can address all of those issues sustainably in architecture. Architecture is a means through which we can address todays ecological concerns in a way that is also economically sensitive and sensible, because architecture is capable of harnessing multiple inputs. Sustainability in the current discourse is too much about ecology, and not enough about economy. We believe that there is a fundamental misunderstanding that pits ecology against economy, in a relationship akin to good vs. evil. Ecology and economy are not diametric opposites but rather two sides of the same coin. Ecological initiatives will only prosper in the real world if they work as viable economic models. Business models based on wearing down our national resources are not viable for long-term growth. Economy and ecology need to merge into ecolomy. In economy, waste is worthless. In ecology, there is no waste. In ecolomy, the waste of one is the food of another. The engine of ecolomy builds a hedonistic kind of sustainability, a so-

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