ØYVIND HOLMSTAD

Antipatterns are dysfunctional, wasteful of energy and resources, unsustainable and unhealthy in the long term, and they violate the human scale. Still, they are so seductive in their grand scale, and we are overwhelmed by their appearance and shiny surfaces. In fact, we have even made them our new temples!

The crude industrial processes that powered our world for a century or more leave us with depletion, fragmentation, and decay. Living systems can show us the way to recover and sustain the damaged systems upon which life depends.

The goal of permaculture is to reunite man with nature and man with man through design systems, and here patterns play an important role. Still, patterns can only reunite humans with natural systems and with each other, not with the geometry of the universe. Surely in what I like to call permatecture, better known as biophilic architecture, biotecture or neurotecture, patterns are crucial. But for the creation of wholeness and life we need a whole range of tools.

This timeless book from Christopher Alexander was released back in the seventies, and it's just as much a book on philosophy as on architecture. Still, the main purpose of the book is as an introduction to A Pattern Language. Alexander's architectural writings at the same time develop a philosophy of nature and life. He proposes a more profound connection between nature and the human mind than is presently allowed either in science, or in architecture.

I've found a wonderful flower; I discovered it not long ago. Still, it's not so much what I know about it that touches me, I'm just drawn to its colors. This flower is unique, it thrives in every country and climate, and adapts very well to the specific conditions of culture and place. Its colors, smell and form is therefore of unlimited variety and complexity, yet it is the same flower. It is the permaculture flower.

In this interview for CSSC Encounters, Dr. Vandana Shiva gives the history of her engagement and explains the situation we are in now, facing a new fascism as corporations and governments merge. Still, she is always using an optimistic tone, in spite of corporate grabs of our common heritage, the natural world — a world caught in a system where the ecology and the economy are fierce enemies, when they should have been best friends. How to reunite them? Vandana gives the answer, through true community! (plus two more talks).

What we need are generated cities, not fabricated!

Today mangroves are disappearing fast. Thirty-five percent of mangrove ecosystems disappeared between 1980 and 2000, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Shrimp farms have been a primary cause of mangrove loss, as well as urbanization and agriculture. This is why the message from The Seawater Foundation is of such an importance, as they show how to change and provide hope for the future.

Vandana Shiva speaks about a Village City, but I’m sure what she really means is a city of VillageTowns. You get the best of three kinds of life in one. You have the intimacy of a village, the magic of the city, and a real influence like in a small town.

Architecture is not an aloof and isolated subject; it is a part of the wholeness of place and buildings. Unfortunately Norwegian bureaucrats and architects have for some decades now had the idea of contrasting “old” and “modern”. The result is that almost all the beautiful wooden hotels of Fjord Norway from late 19th and early 20th century are destroyed through exceptionally ugly modernistic extension work — watching it is like getting glass splinters in your eyes.