The article is from A&B issue 03|2023
The Anthropocene, the age of man — in practice, does it mean further subjugation of the world to created human behavior, or a change that will enable survival? The curators of the "Anthropocene" exhibition, presented first in Warsaw and now (until May 21 this year) in Wroclaw, talk about a unique project dealing with these questions in the context of architecture.
Kacper Kępiński — Architect, architecture critic, curator of architectural exhibitions. Head of the Department of External Projects and Exhibitions at the National Institute of Architecture and Urbanism. Co-founder of the Krakow Association of Space-Leisure-City and member of the board of the Architecture Institute Foundation. Regular contributor to the "Autoportret" quarterly and editor of the architekturaibiznes.pl portal. Co-teaches design classes at the Inclusive Housing Studio at the Faculty of Architecture of VUT in Brno.
Adrian Krężlik — Architect and designer, PhD student and researcher at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Porto, founder of Dosta Tec, a regenerative design company, lecturer at the School of Form. His professional and research work combines contemporary and traditional technologies. He explores the causality and impact of design on the environment and nature. He previously worked at Zaha Hadid Architects, Rojkind Arquitectos, among others.
Anna Walewska: What is the economics of the ringgit?
Adrian Krężlik: Girth economy is an economic system based on post-growth. It aims to reduce the negative impact of humans and human activities on the planet. The system is intended to help create a development model that will allow human beings and human activity on earth to function safely for the planet. A bagel is a torus that has planetary boundaries on the outside and a social base in the middle. We have to stay between these two curves.
Kacper Kepinski: What's important about the economics of the bagel is that we're talking about post-growth, that is, we're looking for a different model of functioning, of development than continuous growth based on the GDP index, which in turn translates in architecture into a discussion about whether we should still be building at all. Rim economics looks at these processes in a broader context and allows for further growth, but in areas where we have shortages. This is the case, for example, in developing countries, where the social base is not met at the same level as in developed countries. This is about all the needs related to education, health care, equality. On the other hand, in environmental issues, that second ceiling of the economics of the rim, as the rich North we have a great deal to do to compensate for the costs that the planet has incurred. So it all depends on the context, and the economic model should be based on a common goal, not economic metrics such as GDP.
Biodiversity section of the exhibition
Photo: Jakub Rodziewicz / NIAiU
Anna: Doesn't the problem center on the age-old conflict of nature vs. architecture?
Adrian: I think that these are not two mutually exclusive areas. The development of various civilizations shows that it is possible to build with respect for nature. Rather, it is the conflict of greed and capitalocene with nature. In the exhibition we show positive models of how we can cooperate with nature. How we can build in a way that strengthens some natural systems.
Anna: What are these ways?
Kacper: Our goal was not to leave the viewer with a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. Our focus was to show that solutions exist, it's just that we don't take advantage of these opportunities. We were concerned with creating "irritation" with this. The architectural market, the manufacturing community, the lobbyists who influence current regulations, have caused us to develop technologies that cut us off from nature completely.
Adrian: It's to show ways of thinking that allow for good design. We bring up topics such as circular economy, post-growth, designing for plants and animals, and a few others to show that there is hope and building more catastrophic visions we should shelve and think about how we can collectively start building the future. Without a positive vision, we have no goal. Setting such a goal is very important so that we can move toward it.
part of the exhibition dedicated to water
Photo: Jakub Rodziewicz / NIAiU
Anna: If we have every opportunity to make it different, to stop some processes and fix others, why doesn't it work on such a scale that we don't need to do projects about it?
Adrian:This is a very broad question. We know how bad it is, not only in the field of architecture. We know the impact of human activity on nature and planetary systems. We've known this at least since the 1960s, and in terms of climate change since the 1970s. We've made many attempts. The establishment of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Paris Agreement, the Kyoto Protocol and so on. In the last fifty years, it has been possible to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere three times: during the Great Fuel Crisis in 1973, the Great Economic Crisis in 2008 and at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. No agreements, between any countries or governmental arrangements have changed the situation. Today we know that the Paris Agreement will not be kept. The recent COP summit in Sharm el-Sheikh shows that it is just a blowout activity. We make an exhibition about architecture, because we are architects, we act in a context where we can do something. Without political tools, we won't change anything. We show good practices that are one piece of a larger puzzle.
Mock-up of the University Library in Warsaw (design: Marek Budzyński, Zbigniew Badowski; greenery: Irena Bajerska).
photo: Jakub Rodziewicz / NIAiU
Kacper: I think the processes are global and can't be taken out of the planetary context, because their influence is much broader than the borders of our country. We show that science knows the answers, that they permeate into practice. It's not that there is scientific knowledge that now needs to be translated into new solutions, to look for innovations. Solutions already exist, but consciously or not we do not use them. It's usually the choice of mainly the investor, then the architect, who are behind the solutions in the building, where some group of people decides that the office building being erected will be another energy-intensive glass box, rather than a more responsible solution. These are design decisions that affect environmental performance. The construction industry has developed a certification system for buildings that have nothing to do with environmental performance, but allows them to be called green. This pays off handsomely. We recently had an example of an investor who built a photovoltaic power plant near Opole to power a skyscraper in Warsaw. This is a total oversimplification and greenwashing.
Adrian: There are also certificates, which are local certificates. They are much more related to construction law. In northern Italy, in Switzerland, they are certificates that are very focused on the amount of energy, on the carbon footprint, they incorporate transportation issues; they are tied to tax rebates, focused on energy and carbon, locally. There are guidelines for the size and proportion of windows in a building. They talk about thermal transmittance. They are design tools to better understand the climate, and they help you do that based on scientific research and the experience of a particular region, location. To a lesser extent, they are based on international standards.
An excerpt from the installation "Wisdom of the Garden" by the Landscape Architecture Studio
Photo: Jakub Rodziewicz / NIAiU
Kacper: All office buildings being erected now have certificates, but this is not required by law, but is due to financial regulations and the needs of the developers themselves. There is no such thing for residential buildings or for public buildings, because it does not translate into financing or sales of such facilities. An important topic concerning the awareness of the architectural community itself is, for example, architectural competitions. Architects have a very strong influence on shaping the terms of the competition or determining the weighting of points. To the juries of competitions, specialists in the field of the environment and its protection, who would be able to evaluate a building from this point of view, are extremely rarely, if ever, invited. Not to mention landscape architects. At the exhibition we show that architecture must become much more interdisciplinary, that we must allow more and more specialists from different fields to participate in projects, to decide on the shape of investments. A building is created not only by architects, but also by people who deal with trees, animals, landscape, climate. These are very complex processes. No architect can acquire all the knowledge that is required to make a building work in an environmental context as well. At the same time, self-reflection alone will not do much, because all legislation is built for the needs of the market, which needs specific features or comfort, and existing buildings undergoing adaptation are not always able to provide this. It could be the height of the rooms or other physical aspects of the building that cannot be changed. Which is not to say that such a building is useless - it does not meet modern standards, but contemporary forms were often created not because it is impossible to do otherwise, but because someone lobbied them that way.
A fragment of the installation "Re-nature" by Kasper Jakubowski
photo: Jakub Rodziewicz / NIAiU
Anna: It seems to me that in addition to systemic change, what's needed is a change in habits and a sense among decision-makers that it pays off, in the short term.
Kacper:You can encourage with a carrot, explaining that it pays off, or you can use a stick to regulate these issues and force certain decisions. I suspect that this has to happen in two ways. We are already trying, not so much to avoid disaster, but to limit it. In the exhibition, we have identified six categories, which were developed by six design teams we invited to work with us. They concern regenerative strategies. The projects address landscape, biodiversity, water, land transformation, pollution and climate. We are advocating the reuse of everything from the buildings themselves to the building elements, looking for architecture after the era of air conditioning and away from its continued dependence on oil, fossil fuels, electricity. We are rediscovering passive solutions from before the air conditioning era that modernism developed. What will be the new level of comfort we are able to provide with less strain on the environment?
Anthropocene
Photo: Jakub Rodziewicz / NIAiU
Anna: What proposals are emerging?
Kacper: We divided the proposals according to the economics of the bagel. Between the borders of the bagel is a just and safe space for humanity, there we see a field for architecture. The field is defined by the six projects presented. Even musical installations were created in the context of biodiversity, which expands the notion of architecture or space. We tried to reach for other languages, including more emotional or abstract ones - this helps to go beyond the industry discussion. The problem of landscape was tackled by Marta Tomasiak and Marta Przygoda (Pracownia Architektury Krajobrazu), who took thuyas and thujosa. They checked where the dominance of this species in home gardens or squares comes from. And here we return to market mechanisms. The production of thuyas is profitable for nurseries. This is a tree that is very easy to propagate, grows quickly, and does not need a large financial outlay from the nursery industry. It is a very attractive product for producers. The proportions of availability of tree species or plants on the market make garden owners have no choice. The authors also show how specific trends in landscaping or gardening have affected real estate prices, and what the aspirations of garden owners have been over the past decades in Poland. These are market mechanisms that are shaped by manufacturers on the one hand, and on the other, gardening journals that reproduce certain patterns, such as Zen gardens or English assumptions. In the end, a paved driveway or an evenly trimmed lawn, aspects that are not at all useful to nature, are more likely to increase the value of a property. The architects have prepared a zine showing how we can arrange our gardens for the benefit of biodiversity, animals or nature in a broader context. Kasper Jakubowski's piece "Re-nature" shows ruderal plants, the fourth nature. We see species that are able to grow in such places that were not intended as green spaces. Ruins, rooftops, abandoned parking lots. These are plants that can prepare the space for more demanding species. Just a decade ago, green spaces between office buildings didn't look like they do today. We have much more biodiversity, species are being introduced, grasses are being introduced, insects are being thought of, the greenery is becoming more lush, more attractive, with different textures. However, these are still mainly ornamental grass species that require care. The species Kasper shows can grow in temperatures ranging from 60 degrees Celsius of heated asphalt in summer to -20 in the cold. These are species that are often non-native, which is why they are treated with caution. Their manner of growth means that they don't look the same every year. Landscape architects are unable to control them. It is an unpredictable vegetation, but it reduces the water consumption to maintain such gardens and the human labor input.
Mock-up of the Meteorological Observatory on Śnieżka (designed by Witold Lipinski, Waldemar Wawrzyniak).
Photo: Jakub Rodziewicz / NIAiU
