_Peak Oil

The term Peak Oil refers to the maximum rate of production of oil in area under consideration, recognizing that it is a finite natural resource, subject to depletion. … A debate rages over the precise date of peak, but rather misses the point, when what matters – and matters greatly – is the vision of the long remorseless decline that comes into sight on the other side of it.  The transition to decline threatens to be a time of great international tension.

Colin Campbell, ASPO, www.peakoil.net

The rate at which we are consuming fossil fuels is greater than the rate in which sources are being discovered.  How do we prioritise how we use the resources available to us?  What skills can designers and architects bring to addressing this question?

What technology should we choose to employ, and what design approaches can we use to enable a transition forward into a functional and culturally exciting society, with less cheap energy available?  We are in a period of transition.  We need many ways of visualising and making real the idea of ‘contemporary culture, within our means, within the means of the earth’.

_How the world is changing design

‘Things’ can only come into being if financial and material resources are available.  The financial and material resources available to people are changing.  The greatest challenge facing us is to learn to live within our means and the means of the planet.  It is no longer relevant to make expensive shapes or speculative offices.  If good design flourishes with constraints, can architecture come into its own as a design discipline in the current climate?

Most people dislike and are even a little afraid of change: but design means change.  It means trying out something new.  Design is also a little aggressive.  It should actively question accepted thought and dogma.  The curious and open minded will relish the challenge of surprising new vistas and will enjoy pitching their mental resources against the unexpected.

Bernat Klein, Design Matters, Secker & Warburg, 1976

_To be explored

What design needs and roles are exposed by Peak Oil and the transition towards a low-energy culture?

In light of this, what design needs and roles are exposed in my immediate community?

Themes to be explored:

Closing the gap between the designer\architect and the end-user.  Designing the means as well as the ends.  Facilitation as a design process.  The importance of dialogue.  Learning how to ask the right questions.  Closing the gap between the design process and the making process.  Defining contemporary craftsmanship. The role of prefabrication and CAD/CAM.

Words to be explored:

Ecology.  Permaculture.  Cradle-to-cradle design.  Interdependency.  Whole system design.

_Napkin Manifesto

The interdependent roles of designers, authorities and the public in shaping our environment.

Bethany Wells, Tom Lasbrey and Ceri Williams \ Oct 2009

_Just So Studio

I am a 25-year old allotment-holder, guerilla gardener and architecture student.  Originally from Sheffield, I have been living in London for 5 years.  I am currently based in North London, with an allotment near Wood Lane, friends scattered around and a guerilla garden I started last summer at Hornsey Police Station.

I look at graphs of Peak Oil and wonder what our neighbourhoods will be like to live in 10, 20, 50 years down the line. How will our supply chains, hospitals, councils, sports facilities, places of work and cultural institutions function with significantly lower energy and resource availability?  What infrastructures need to be established now [physically, culturally, socially, locally] to enable our communities to function well into the future?

How do we move forward with less energy?

I am starting by looking at Haringey, focussing on a study area around Seven Sisters and Tottenham Hale during Spring 2010.  An area with many community buildings, many sites with potential, many thriving local businesses, many grass-roots sustainability groups, and also many challenges.  There are approximately 5000 living in temporary accommodation across Haringey.  How can we meet the immediate local needs in the context of the global and environmental needs?  The blog is a record of ideas, observations and projects, and is open for public discussion.  Through interventions, design projects, the blog and Flickr photostream [www.flickr.com/justsostudio], I aim to populate both online and physical space with optimism, dialogue and whole system design-thinking.  Please add your comments, add your ideas.


\\\\\ Just So Studio \\\\\

Learning how to respond to the challenge of Peak Oil through innovative design leadership in our community.  Within our means, within the means of the earth.

_I began

I began doing what came most naturally to me – that is, following the memory of the things I had loved best since boyhood. Instead of making myself write the book I ought to write, the novel that was expected of me, I conjoured up the book I myself would have liked to read.
Italo Calvino