And what would happen if we as individuals and architects undertook Grand Projects in a whole new logic of REDUCTION? For example: a job that doesn't require a car commute. Influencing our neighborhoods so that we can live in them on a pedestrian or bicycle scale without driving to big-box stores. Buying fewer of the more durable, arguably more expensive items and learning how to repair them, or who to entrust them to for repair. Buying second-hand clothes or sewing your own clothes and making your own furniture. Buying a plot of land in the worst possible condition and planting a forest on it with a well-thought-out mix of locally occurring plants. Limiting the consumption of meat and highly processed products. Growing your own vegetables and fruits. Minimizing the amount of reinforced concrete in the buildings we design. Reducing the square footage of the houses we design. Brushing our teeth with the tap turned off.
I have to stipulate right away that I have taken on a few of these projects, and so far the best thing I've done is to move my studio to the backyard next to my house and live in a neighborhood where you really don't need a car. Anyway, I have been working from home since the beginning of the pandemic. I bought a plot of land, but haven't reforested yet. I have reduced the number of clothes I buy, but I still happen to sin with some not-quite-justifiable purchase of another blouse with horizontal stripes. I almost don't eat meat, although I can't resist Spanish cured meats and the occasional leg of poor octopus (a multiple sin: the murder of animals on land and sea, methane emissions, water consumption and the carbon footprint of transport to Poland!). It didn't work out with vegetables, everything was eaten by snails, so I buy them from the Agricultural Cooperative. I can only assemble furniture of a certain Swedish brand myself. For that, not only can I mash my socks, but even as an even more minimizing gesture, I can unmash them and wear them long after they have gained special holes through which my toes, triumphantly and hopefully, look towards the sun, like, without a little, Le Corbusier on the beach at Cap-Martin.
Because despite everything, ladies and gentlemen, we must remain optimistic and bravely push forward with our Great Projects!
