Blog_Post_3

From the reading in Massive change about energy, Mau talks about energy from solar to thermal. I think though I like his positive thinking, the truth is, people will most likely go with what’s easiest, which at this time is coal or nuclear. The idea of solar energy is extremely uplifting, finding out that almost all energy on earth is from the sun. However, without the ability to easily get this energy, I think people are going to overlook it. If you ask the majority of people at DePaul, they find the solar panels in the quad extremely ugly. People want things to be easy and pretty, and so the idea of solar energy as a major source seems to be in the distant future. I think that peoples attitudes are going to need to change if we want to start taking advantage of alternative energy that doesn’t pollute.

I thought that the speaker on Tuesday, Edward Ozimek, was definitely one of the best speakers we’ve had thus far. His idea of constantly challenging the systems in place in order to progress them was great. I liked his thoughts on mixing old architecture built with materials such as stone and meshing them with the new. I also thought his idea that things are now built to only stand for 15-20 years, while older buildings were meant to stand forever. This seems to fit in with what society is doing now, building things that are meant to be thrown out.

Adam Rosenquist

Energy On the Go

In both of our required readings the idea of using solar energy is developed. The sun supplies more than enough energy everyday to meet current needs so it seems natural for humans to use solar energy. But then I started to imagine a world in which all energy is solar energy…
Just because solar energy would replace petroleum based energy does not mean that it will change humans’ greed and excessive use. I just imagined solar panels everywhere and no light shinning through. People trying to obtain as much space as possible in order to utilize it for collecting sunlight. Solar energy will/has the potential to become just as capitalistic as petroleum energy.
Humans need to change our way of living and control our energy use. I had never thought about how addicted humans are to energy. People all the time are walking around with energy plugged into their ears via IPODs. We use batteries so that we can take energy around with us and we move and travel. I had never thought about energy in this sense even though I use my IPOD everyday.
I believe that the solution is not substituting one source of energy to another source but to re-evaluate energy use all together. I am not saying that converting to solar energy is bad by any means; I am just saying that we cannot stop there. We need to take solutions to the next level and change our mindset and way of life.

Smart Design and Checklists

This week’s speaker coupled with the Massive Change readings on energy efficient economies made me think of ways in which we can harness design and innovation to become more efficient with the resources we have now. Much about renewable energy is about the future, it seems as though everyone is waiting for a breakthrough in technology, yet nobody seems to be thinking about what we can do now, with current technology. Our speaker shed some light on what he thought was most important in sustainable design, and how he though many of the difficult questions surrounding effective design don’t have definitive answers. I think Mau does a great job in making the point that there isn’t one solution. Each economy and each ecosystem has its own capabilities and pitfalls. For example, the city is not the most effective place for solar, but more rural lands are. And in Toronto they are harnessing new technology to use existing cold water to fuel air conditioners, saving 75% of the energy normally used. I feel as though these current engineering capabilities and the intelligence that designers now possess can create some change now, while we wait for the breakthrough were all anticipating.

On a different note, I felt our speaker’s interpretation of LEED was great. I like the idea of checklists being synonymous with the bear minimum. I also think it’s interesting looking back and thinking about the way that Bob Janis responded to some of our questions regarding DePaul’s grade on efficiency. He also admittedly did not agree with checklist criteria, or needing to adhere to a set of rules, but that same checklist was the thing that spurred some of the changes we have seen (green roof, composting, solar panels, etc.). So I wonder whether a checklist such as this does more good in the community or does it foster the sense of bear minimum success. For instance, without the checklist would we have done more with regards to sustainability, or continued to ignore it all together?

There have been a lot of really good posts concerning the lack of effort truly being made at DePaul, as well as about the fact that the 'green movement' is not the first time that a lot of environmentally and ecologically based technologies have been around. On page 141 of Massive Change, at the beginning of the Material Economies section, it reads,

"Material has traditionally been something to which design is applied. New methods in the fields of nanotecnology have rendered material as the object of design development. Instead of designing a thing, we design a designing thing. In the process, we have created superhero materials and collapsed the age-old boundary between the image and the object, rendring mutable the object itself."

I think this shows a lot of how we have historically viewed nature and natural

resources, as something to apply our knowledge to, to render it to our will rather than to understand the materials we are working with and use them in a way that will make them better (more durable, stronger, more intelligent) and more like themselves. I am not entirely sure how to do this, but I think it is going to take a lot of letting go of long-standing assumptions that we have concerning production, manufacturing, efficiency, and even the nature of materials themselves. This is going to be tough to do as long we still have a 'more and bigger is better' mentality, because it IS actually going to require a different mode of thinking and a restructuring of our society, not to mention up-front costs. But this idea that if we design specifically for materials involved we will be able to do so much more with them, rather than mold them to our current way of thinking, shows that the possibilities are endless as long as we can actually get people to be open to something new.

Design fetishism (Reflection #2222222 since this is a blog i can format it any way I want to)

BUCKY.

said that "there is only one revolution tolerable to all men, all societies, all political systems: revolution by design and invention."

Bucky fetishists

R. Buckminster Fuller designed the geodesic dome, proving he was a genius, but he also believed that people would do the right thing, given access to the right information. He also believed that design was the answer

examples of design, from Bruce Mau:

NANOFIBERS

CARBON NANOTUBES

TINY COMPUTER CHIPS

BAMBOO SHIT

SUGARCANE ETHANOL

100 PERCENT RECYCLED EVERYTHING

well

well. I am writing to tell you, I think he was mistaken. we have all the right information, but we don't have the right truths. we are a society of people who beLIEve that market forces will regulate and solve our environmental problems. We are naive to think that any economy of mass production will lead to a sustainable future for humans on this planet. I was in some ecology class awhile ago and we were talking about

how

Human SOCIEties just move from one unsustainable form of existence to another. This is why we romanticize nomadic cultures -- BEDOUIN, PLAINS INDIANS, RURAL MONGOLIAN NOMADS (those people who live in Yurts), ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIANS -- they exist in smaller groups that have the luxury of travelling from one place to another after they have exhausted their resources.

In fact, this is how the savannas and prairies were made.

How they became stable.

Check out this map.

Makes you think

you can kind of put on that map where "sustainable" and "unsustainable" societies concentrate. Notice: no grasslands in europe -- the proverbial source of all Western problems! Also, I would like to point out desert-dwellers as being really cool. Flat land, not grass land, but deserts are lands of plenty, if you have some indigenous experience.

If you were standing in a field of grass and you were really hungry, how long would it take you to get some bread? some cheeseburgers? some whiskey? what are you talking about crazy lady?

"Infoporn" (definition 3)

www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=infoporn

IRONICALLY:

http://www.zazzle.com/custom_urban_dictionary_mug-168421401815798969

Take Recycling.

I am looking out the window.

The world is still beautiful and alive.

Isn't this fall really nice so far????????

I am not motivated to take part in any revolutions.

I recycle because I see other people doing it. I have the right knowledge, and the psychotic/religious/guilt/orientation to stick to recycling for its own sake, but I'm way more motivated to do it when it's a public and neighborly ritual, instead of driving my recycling bags to the dump. Anyway, whatever, who cares about recycling.

Recycling is a white-western cultural problem. Who can afford to throw things out? Why can we, as individual consumers, afford to throw things out? Why can we afford to send away our plastic containers?

Anyway back to the subject of infoporn:

here are some FUN eXampleS

Look at all this knowledge!

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/01/06/opinion/06opchart.large.gif

http://www.nextgenfoodus.com/media/media-news/090812-NGFoodUS-FoodAssassi.png

http://yunshui.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/scientime-long1.png

http://joaobordalo.com/files/topInternetHistory.png

http://moritz.stefaner.eu/projects/eigenfactor/download/eigenfactor_neuroscience_full.pnghttp://cache.io9.com/assets/images/io9/2008/07/escapism-new.jpg

knowledge is pornographically disseminated through the internet, TV, and print media until it becomes completely meaningless. We have the right information and motivated designers, but we REALLY need (environmentally sound technologies have been around way longer than green hype) some non-fascist social pressure.

reflection two

It was Saturday and I was sitting at work, I am a lab monitor in room 311. Most of my job is just to sit and occasionally let people in the door. There was no one in the lab so I started reading the third chapter in Cradle to Cradle. The first section about re-designing the concept of books didn’t really interest me that much and I considered to put the book away and do something else but then I started to read the next section and the concept of designing buildings “that gave the workers the feeling that they’d spent the day outdoors” and it really interested me. While I was reading this I was in a room that only had windows on the one wall and has light blocking blinds that are always down. All the light is artificial and comes from the eleven fluorescent lights and the 30 computer screens. There is no airflow in the room either; being in that environment for eight hours is exhausting. Even just reading about the giant windows, skylights, and tree lined interior of the building made me feel better. If that was the working environment for everyone I cannot image how productivity wouldn’t go up. It would energize people, instead of exhaust them.

Green for Green?

What price do we put on the environment? Do we give the environment a limit of money that we are willing to spend? A limit on the time and effort that we are willing to invest into the environment?
I thought that some of the so called "green" initiatives that DePaul is trying to put forth were very admirable. The fact that the McGowan building received a "Gold" rating is great.... but what does that really mean? I have seen huge signs congratulating DePaul on receiving this gold rating for the new building all over the school. (Are these signs “green”? We may never know.) What is the point of these signs? To advertise DePaul as an environmentally friendly school? The signs are definitely not there to help save the trees. It seems to me that DePaul is contradicting itself in their actions and goals.
When Bob Janis came in to talk to this class I felt as though he was doing all within his capabilities to help make DePaul environmentally friendly. He is doing all within his capabilities but that does not mean that DePaul is doing all that it can be doing as such a large institution.
If we did have someone in charge of sustainability at DePaul I believe that things could be a lot different. It would help orient all of the collective efforts in this movement and create a more efficient system in implementing policies and solutions. It was kind of a cop out for Bob to say that he thought it was a waste of money to pay someone 180k to be in charge. Who is to say that we are not wasting that much money in non-cohesive efforts to change DePaul right now because there is not a head person evaluating all efforts and looking into projects for the future? Having someone is charge of sustainability at DePaul would make DePaul accountable for their actions and I believe in the long run would really help synthesize “green” efforts.