Judith Tankink, intern at The Beach, wrote an article about Michiel Schwarz' essay in Het Financieele Dagblad of last October 7th.
Futurist and cultural sociologist Michiel Schwarz has written a fascinating essay about sustainist design in times of crisis. According to him, "a true shift of culture underlies the current societal and economical transitions". Sustainist design offers a new perspective on how we can design our surroundings, and focuses on four social-sustainable qualities: sharing, connectedness, locality and the human dimension.
The current crisis forces us to look at our surroundings with different eyes. Must it always be faster & bigger in order to be bétter? Often, a crisis announces a transition towards a new era, in which the societal value system and ethos are changing. Mankind has been confronted with crises before. The eighties, anyone? However, there is one big difference this time: the internet.
Michiel Schwarz says: “Awareness of the fact that models from the old era do not function anymore often marks the beginning of a new era. But not until people are going to look at the world 'with different eyes' does a new era truly arise.”
Thanks to the internet it is easier than ever before to look ‘with different eyes’ at the world. Moreover, with the arrival of Web 2.0 (among others social media) mankind has become connected to one another and an increasingly energetic society has emerged. Sharing is the new having. This applies to information as well.
As said before: this is not our first crisis. And the fact that, in times of crisis, society resorts to local products and traditional crafts is not news either. What is news, is that to engage an interaction with the rest of the world is for the individual only a few mouseclicks away. Because of the growing means of communication it is so much simpler for peopl to unite into communities nowadays. At the same time, individual initiatives are more likely to succeed. This makes sustainism the leading culture of the 21th century. Because it promotes on the one hand an expanding network (sharing & connecting), and on the other hand a reappraisal of the small scale (locality & the human dimension).
Urban design and architecture increasingly pick up on bottom-up developments. People talk about ‘organic area development’, in which residents 'make' their own neighborhood and a ‘spontaneous city’ arises. Sustainism as the synthesis of top-down and bottom-up.
And all of this thanks to the internet. The world as a honeycomb.
Read the original essay here: Sustainisme vraagt om ontwerpen ‘van onderop’
