Part of the AAction Lecture Series 2021-2022 : Who’s counting?
'If the Environment Were a Bank, It Would Have Already Been Bailed Out'* Bernie Sanders
Financial models, economic plans and insurance allows accelerated processes and the political geometry of extraction and movement to operate to the detriment of the planet. Yet economic collapse correlates with the ongoing transformation processes as a result of climate change. If we are to negotiate and take planetary action, we must understand that we are suspended within economic structures that both fund and risk manage on behalf of individuals and corporations. We need a shift in perspective. How do we alter technological systems toward a more planetary condition? Can we estrange insurance from its colonial pathways? How do we re-value technology? How do our choices and involvement bail out the planet?
The presentation will discuss how design can contribute to a sustainable and resilient future for the planet. It will discuss three principles: ecocentricity (as action by human society including designing, based on the science of ecology), ecomimesis (as action based on emulating and replicating the attributes of ecosystems, including the provision by nature of of ecosystem services), biointegration (as action by the integration of a set of eco infrastructures into a whole system). These principles will be illustrated by explanatory diagrams, and by design and built projects, referring briefly to human society's social-economic-political-institutional factors.
Ken Yeang is an architect, planner and ecologist, known for his signature ecoarchitecture and ecomasterplans, which are differentiated from other green architects by an authentic ecology-based approach, and by their distinctive green aesthetics, performance and biodiversity, extending beyond conventional rating systems. He was trained at the Architectural Association. He has pioneered ecology-based architecture since 1971, working on the theory and practice of sustainable design. Yeang's headquarters are in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as Hamzah & Yeang, with offices in London as Llewelyn Davies Ken Yeang Ltd. and Beijing as North Hamzah Yeang Architectural and Engineering Company.
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