Informant38

a truly Faustian bargain:

You can see a close-up of some of that futility in the new book "Design Like You Give a Damn" from the nonprofit Architecture for Humanity, a book that is lovely in every sense of the word. The group started by sponsoring a competition for new shelters for refugees, and the range of replacements that people thought up for canvas tents makes clear just how much talent is currently going to waste designing McMansions. There are inflatable hemp bubbles and cardboard outhouses and dozens of other designs and prototypes for the world's poorest people and biggest disasters. As time went on, the group also collected photos and plans for attractive buildings around the world: health clinics that generate their own power, schools cheap enough for communities to construct. Still, there's something sad about the entire project -- most of these designs have never been carried out, because the architects lacked the political savvy or influence to get them adopted by relief agencies or national governments. When there's a disaster, relief agencies still haul out the canvas tents.
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The technology we need most badly is the technology of community -- the knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done. Our sense of community is in disrepair at least in part because the prosperity that flowed from cheap fossil fuel has allowed us all to become extremely individualized

Bill McKibben/Salon 24.Oct.06