in praise of green

it used to be the modernist fervour over "public space", now "sustainability" has become the keyword. many students do not know themselves have become "green"washers. it becomes a moral statement for covering up mediocrity and lack of innovation. sustainability is NOT a design aesthetic, but first and foremost a technical aspect. the "kampung" days are totally NOT sustainable if anyone who stayed in a kampung wld attest. prawn farms (listening in wuks grp discussion once) are totally nature destructive and unsustainable ways of farming. its not only ur grp wuks who are so into these "back to nature" shit. i've got pple in my grp gg for this kind of nonsense too. and yet they were thinking they have reached the new design paradigm. it is a long process of unlearning and relearning. the desperation is there to clasp onto known examples and copy them. it is the singapore learning paradigm. it is damn hard to work against it.

about wuks paranoia abt obnoxious strangers and watching CSI, it has a lot as a result of modernist town planning. if decidedly u design back a modernist town, u get the modernist effect. not all is bleak when u think of solutions to solve such bleakness. it all goes down to designing for the basic human esteem, and solutions conceived by architecture. thats what as students we are supposed to explore eh? what we think is wat we reflect upon ourselves. i find our NUS pple having a damn negative mindset of human behaviour. i often go down site and find that pple are more than willing to talk, more than willing to share. however that does not mean having a pavilion as a public space means a celebration of the human spirit. most designs like this are actually guilt ridden compensations to what the architects take away. taking a higher moral ground in the "public space" for actually destroying everything else. u design for monkeys, u get monkeys.

nature is another contentious point. what is nature? ever since singapore's culture strives in the low self esteem ever since our role in the world as a brit colony and rejects of the mandarins in china, we've been looking up to their victorian aesthetics of manicured nature and primed chinese gardens. our nature just GROWS and EATS up everything! its beautiful, but can soft shelled urbanites take it? pple who grow up thinking nature are town parks? tropical nature is abt sprawling greens, muddy mangroves, brackish water, searing heat, how could one learn to accept our natura; heritage when it is not even in our culture to accept ourselves? however saying all that, there ARE people who are made to accept living in the jungles, there ARE pple who had lived half their lives in the jungles and they appreciate and enjoy it. lets live it open. architecture shd leave a choice. it has been the result of egomaniac determinism for far too long. but then to come to this point i am not in direct confrontation with wuks. i DO agree though the spirit of his site does NOT warrant a back to nature approach. it is a BROWN field regeneration in the first place! any nature that is grown is MAN made henceforth! and MAN made nature means dengue!

a good article by this dude called peter marcuse argues that sustainability and social justice is totally in conflict. it is a tool for the rich to continue the status quo of consumption onto the 3rd world. another good book is called Natural Capitalism by lovins and paul hawkens who argues that the coming ecological crisis will mean markets naturally adopt big scaled changes and becomes a reality rather than a utopian ideal. damn persuasive book coz they know THE FACTS.

finally to conclude, i hope ur grp pple kanna khengsoon as final crit. for he KNOWS what he is talking about and he knows what he doesnt know. ironically zihao is doing a "eco" "cohousing". contrary to what wuks think is "Green is the only word that can get away without critical comments." i feel apprehensive threading this path of wholesomeness. to pple who question me about living back in the nature, i can reply, i've lived on the site for 12 hours, have you?