| It is no longer possible to consider the environment merely in terms of its potential for exploitation. It is now of vital importance to consider what kind of environment and which planet we will bequeath to future generations. It has become increasingly difficult to determine the status of human beings with respect to the environment. We are currently under pressure to reconsider our relationship to our surroundings, and this requires a change of perspective—in fact, a complete reversal—which takes the environment, and not human demands on the environment, as the starting point for reflection. |  |
Environment – Giovanna Borasi
It is no longer possible to consider the environment merely in terms of its potential for exploitation. It is now of vital importance to consider what kind of environment and which planet we will bequeath to future generations. It has become increasingly difficult to determine the status of human beings with respect to the environment. We are currently under pressure to reconsider our relationship to our surroundings, and this requires a change of perspective—in fact, a complete reversal—which takes the environment, and not human demands on the environment, as the starting point for reflection.
The projects of French horticultural engineer and landscape architect Gilles Clément and Swiss architect Philippe Rahm represent two very different approaches to environmentally sound design practice. Although it would seem that they are diametrically opposed in their parameters, methods and conclusions, it is possible to see them in terms of many overlapping concerns and objectives.
Clément’s concept of “Tiers Paysage,” or “Third Landscape,” presumes Earth to be a planetary garden, which has been irreversibly altered by humans. He proposes a strategy based on returning certain spaces to nature rather than allowing them to be developed, in order to ensure the processes that perpetuate ecological biodiversity. In the case of Rahm, the proposition involves the close observation and documentation of elemental conditions like temperature, humidity and light, all of which have a direct physical and emotional impact on human life. In his manifesto, "Form and Function Follow Climate," these conditions are deployed as new instruments for determining architectural space keyed to human comfort and behaviour, but also to energy efficiency.
Clément’s and Rahm’s approaches differ with respect to the status of the user—a visitor or an occupant—in relation to the environment. For Clément, the emphasis is on utilizing the energy spontaneously produced by nature; working with, and never against, nature. The environment is conceived as an integrated system within which humans must establish themselves in a balanced relationship with the forces of nature. On the contrary, for Rahm, technology is a tool for defining a place. Humans are part of his environments only to the extent that they can insert themselves into a given system in which the conditions are all predetermined.
The exhibition raises the spectre of energy consumption and the issue of limited resources. What is the appropriate strategy for the future? How much control should be mandated, given our technological capacity? And, how can we take full advantage of renewable energy sources? Hence, fundamentally, the problem of the relationship between humans and the environment, between nature and culture, is not technological or aesthetic, but rather an ethical one.
