Oh, the article that started it all!

"Ecotopias Aren't Just for Hippies Anymore - and They're Sprouting Up Worldwide"
By Frank Bures

01.18.08 (Wired)

"In the 1970s, environmental idealists had a vision of Ecotopia: Everyone recycled, there was no pollution, and we all worshipped trees and co-ops. Today's eco-communities are less crunchy and a lot more high tech. In addition to using renewable energy sources, these projects aim to limit their impact on surrounding ecosystems by building with green materials, promoting earth-friendly transportation, and recycling water and waste. The race for the first carbon-neutral, zero-emissions community is on."

I read this and thought, wow, the new Utopias. Communities based on an ecological ideal, instead of a philosophical one. Since utopia as a concept is certainly complex, questionable, and flawed, I felt like I was on to a good film topic.

Here's one of the projects, in China - the Guangtang Chuangye Park:
































"Nature, whose status as a norm of beauty or as an ideal form waned, has since returned as a condition for the sustainability of all built environment. As such, nature plays a role in the twenty-first century that is as central as it ever was in the past. The challenges are enormous and the markets and demands seem boundless."
(Sverker Sörlin in "Nature" from Crucial Words: Conditions for Contemporary Architecture)

Sea Ranch - California, of course

New York Times
December 14, 2008




















"The wind still holds sway at this once-idealistic second-home community, where man and nature are engaged in an intricate dance. Sea Ranch has achieved a sort of a cult status among architecture mavens, who house-gawk rather than bird-watch, bearing a glossy tome by Mr. Lyndon, a spiritual dean of Sea Ranch, as a guide. They come to see a style forged by A-list architects (shed roofs to deflect the wind, windows punched through redwood boards) but perhaps more than that, to pay tribute to a big idea: the then-radical notion, influenced by Mr. Halprin’s experience on a kibbutz, of open land held in common and houses designed in deference to nature."

Principal Architect: Charles Willard Moore
Moore preferred conspicuous design features, including loud color combinations, supergraphics, stylistic collisions, the re-use of esoteric historical-design solutions, and the use of non-traditional materals such as plastic, (aluminized) PET film, platinum tiles, and neon signs, As a result, his work provokes arousal, demands attention, and sometimes tips over into kitsch.

Principal Landscape Designer: Lawrence Halprin
"The work of Mr. Halprin is one of the most celebrated among environmental designers. His projects range from designs for rapid transit systems to university campuses, from new cities to civic redevelopment, from large-scale land developments and inner-city parks to small private gardens. Among them are Sea Ranch on California's central coast, representing the application of town planning principles to an exquisite rural landscape designed with extraordinary sensitivity to the natural environment." (National Parks bio)

Past = Future

I've been reading Jules Verne books to get in the science fiction mood. The Mysterious Island was first, and now Journey to the Center of the Earth. They're both great, although that guy sure had some strange ideas about social structure, which I won't go into here.

While reading "Journey" I was constantly curious whether or not Professor Lidenbrock was right in his theories about the formation of the Earth. So, I started reading a bit about our planet<.

The contemplation of the past looks a lot like contemplation of the future. Palin argues in a vice presidential debate that there's no need to look back, we just have to leap forward and solve these environmental problems and not worry about where they came from - and we all laugh because that is so obviously not true.

To take it a step further, art/fiction about the future resembles in many ways art/fiction about the past.

Verne's work actually goes in both directions. There are a lot of predictions in his work, particularly in The Mysterious Island. Some of which have turned out to be catastropically wrong. Namely he has a theory that coral reefs will be the big push in the creation of new land mass on the planet and that at some time in the remote future, the original continents will have disappeared, with coral reef continents in their place. Right now, we're looking at the possibility of having no more coral reefs or any of the life that relies on them in about 50 years.

So, obviously human beings have this urge to speculate on the past and future nature of this ball of granite, oceans and volcanic upheavals that we live on. I think this ties in to Kim's work a fair amount. Do art and science compete for a better understanding of what's actually happened and going to happen. Do the abstractions of art take us closer or further away to the truth of the matter?


I was trying to find illustrations from "Journey", the book (and not the movie with Brendan Fraser, which overwhelmed Google). Eventually did come across a lot of stuff about Verne's main illustrator Édouard Riou. You can see a lot of his illustrations here, and specifically from "Voyage au Centre de la Terre" here.

An artist with eco-vision

I stumbled across Kim Holleman's work at the Black and White gallery during a lovely walk through Williamsburg on Memorial Day weekend. A few weeks later, I sent her an email and almost immediately I got a phone call from her. And we talked for about an hour. About everything from permaculture to anti-toxic waste mycelium to ecotopic literature, like the book Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach.

One of Kim's pieces, which was parked outside Black and White, is TRAILER PARK, seen above. I quote from her website: "Trailer Park...examines the paradox of inner/outer space by sheltering the completely functional 'real' park from environmental damage by placing the park inside a mobile Coachmen Travel Trailer." I saw it as a playful reimagining of a space that is traditionally seen through a class lens and a suggestion that any space can be converted into a personal-sized oasis. A resizing of the public beauty ideal.

Kim also showed in the back yard of the gallery her FUTURE MOUNTAIN installation, which is entirely made of un-recyclable plastic bags. It's uncannily beautiful. Again, it's a re-contextualizing of cultural ideals. Plastic bags shouldn't be beautiful, and yet they're everywhere and we can't get rid of them. Maybe we should learn to live with them.

This is what I like about Kim's work. Though I do infer a social judgment from some of her work, what I mainly get from it is the idea that we should accept on some level what our landscape is actually made of and adjust our Arcadian ideals to that reality. Perhaps we can have new Arcadian ideals?

Out west

While in New Mexico volunteering for the Obama campaign, I'm going to make my way down to Truth or Consequences to visit Jehanara Wendy Tremayne, who does a lot of cool things like Swap-o-Rama-Rama.

But what I want to see is this off-grid B&B she's creating in T'rC with her boyfriend, Mike Sklar. I think it's a bit off-topic for me, but I figured I'd film something while I was out here.

I also would love to see this place, Arcosanti:















but it's all the way out in Arizona, so that won't be happpening on this trip. Here's a quick description of Arcosanti, though:

In 1970, the Cosanti Foundation began building Arcosanti, an experimental town in the high desert of Arizona, 70 miles north of metropolitan Phoenix. When complete, Arcosanti will house 5000 people, demonstrating ways to improve urban conditions and lessen our destructive impact on the earth. Its large, compact structures and large-scale solar greenhouses will occupy only 25 acres of a 4060 acre land preserve, keeping the natural countryside in close proximity to urban dwellers.

Arcosanti is designed according to the concept of arcology (architecture + ecology), developed by Italian architect Paolo Soleri. In an arcology, the built and the living interact as organs would in a highly evolved being. This means many systems work together, with efficient circulation of people and resources, multi-use buildings, and solar orientation for lighting, heating and cooling.