alpbacher architekturgespräche 2003 - ATP

to provozieren. Genauso wie der Psychoanalyst - der im Gegenteil zu den Medien passiv wird, um
den Patient aktiv zu machen - sind wir Architekten auch Psychoanalysten von Kopf und Körper. Im
Gegensatz zu den Medien können wir, genauso wie der Psychoanalyst, den Kopf, Körper und Augen
zu neuem Handeln bewegen. Deshalb ist die Architektur in der heutigen Welt eine der wichtigsten
Disziplinen, und das erklärt auch warum so viele Philosophen, Sozialwissenschaftler und andere von
Architektur fasziniert sind. Ich treffe überall auf Leute, die von Architektur fasziniert sind. Es gab nie
ein derartiges Medieninteresse, wie wir es beim World Trade Centre Wettbewerb, an dem wir auch
teilgenommen haben, erfahren haben. Vielleicht konnte man schon immer in den Zeitungen in
Deutschland, Italien und Spanien über Architektur lesen, aber jetzt hat Architektur sogar unsere primitive
Kultur erreicht und erscheint in der New York Times.
Ich glaube, dass Architektur wieder zu einem Medium wird, das Aktivität kreiert. Ich sage den Professoren
und den Architekten und insbesondere den Studenten, dass eine Revolution und ein Bruch statt
gefunden hat, wovon sie alle Nutznießer sind. Meine Generation und sogar die Generation danach
sind nicht in der Lage das zu verstehen, aber Sie sind die Computer-, die Medien- und die DNA-
Generation. Sie verstehen es. Genauso wie man mit fünfzig nicht mehr Fußball spielen kann oder man
keine schöne Musik spielen kann wenn, man erst mit fünfzig mit dem Klavierunterricht anfängt, man
muss jung damit anfangen. Ich wurde zwar mit fünfzig neu geboren aber trotzdem verstehe ich nicht
die Rhythmen Ihrer Musik oder die Spiele auf Ihren Computern. Ich kann nicht mit einen Computer
umgehen oder eine E-Mail versenden. Mein Sohn verschickt SMSs und hält mich für einen Troglodyten.
Ich bin die Botschaft von Mr. Kontinuität. Ich verkörpere die Vergangenheit, deswegen haben
Sie von mir nichts zu befürchten. Ich singe das Lied der Sirenen, um Sie zu ermutigen nicht passiv zu
werden. Ich verkörpere die alte Passivität, weil nichts das ich oder meine Kollegen heute machen,
heute klangvoll werden kann.Wichtig ist, was Sie machen.
Christoph Imboden, p. 115
Living with Decreasing Resources
Summary
The decreasing resources
Despite strongly rising environmental awareness and increased investment by
government, NGOs and the private sector in the protection of nature and the
environment, global biodiversity has continuously diminished over the past 30
years.The Living Planet Index of the WWF (figure 1) – the Dow Jones of the natural world – shows
a loss of one third in this time.
The loss of biodiversity is not just a feature of the distant tropical rainforests, - with their rich range
of species – but also something happening here in Europe. 38% of European bird species have shown
a marked population loss in the last 25 years.These are important indicators for the overall status of
biodiversity.The majority of these birds live in agricultural and wetland area and their disappearance
can be directly related to more intensive land use and development.
Living beyond our means
This apparently unstoppable decline in the diversity of species worldwide is a sign of man’s excessive
exploitation of nature.The growing need for land and other natural resources leads to a direct reduction
of living space for other species.
Humankind uses more natural resources today than nature produces, meaning that we live not just on
the interest of nature but are also eating into the limited capital. Hence we are playing with the wellbeing
of future generations, maybe putting at risk their survival. Alongside the disappearance of animal
and plant species, there are also many other signs of ecological over-exploitation: the global loss of forests
and related, sometimes catastrophic, land erosion, the reduction of the ozone layer in the earth’s atmosphere,
the global warming due to the increasing production of greenhouse gases (in particular CO2: see
figure 5), the locally catastrophic collapse of yields in marine fisheries, and many others. In order to
measure man’s use of nature; the concept of the ecological footprint has been developed. Everything
that man takes from nature must have been produced by nature – whether on land or in the water.
Hence the ecological footprint of an individual – or of society - measures the biologically productive
land and sea area that would be required to produce, using today’s technologies, all consumed energy
and other resources and to absorb all the waste produced, irrespective of where, geographically, this
land is situated (local, national or global). In other words, this ecological footprint gives a balance of
man’s use of nature and the costs of the energy and material flows required by an economic unit.This
allows us to answer such important questions as
• What is our dependence on global ecosystems?
• What pressure are we putting on these ecosystems in order to produce raw materials or dispose
of waste?
• Who requires how much of the global production of the biosphere?
For the calculation of the footprint distinction is made between five different categories of consumption:
food, living, transport, consumer goods and services. For the terrestrial part of the footprint one
can further differentiate between various sorts of production space (forests, pastures, arable land etc).
Thereby we can create a matrix linking consumption and production area required according to which,
for example, each Canadian consumes the biological production of 6.6 Hectares of land per year.
Similar calculations for the lifestyle of Austrians demonstrate an annual need for 5.24 hectares of land
and 0.39 hectares of sea (figure 7). However when the available land of Austria is divided by the
number of people living there, only 2.35 hectares are available per person.To satisfy their consumption
habits, the people in the northern hemisphere require more than twice as much land to fulfil
their consumer needs.The richest fifth consumes 80% of raw materials and uses 96% of the earth’s
ecological capacity.The other 80% must survive on the remaining 4%. Each year man consumes the
productive capacity of two earths (figure 8). Our limited natural capital is disappearing fast. Since 1960
the land required for biological production has more than doubled and the majority of this has been
due to increasing energy use.While for the absorption of growing amounts of CO2 we would require,
for example, ever increasing areas of forest, in reality these are fast disappearing, meaning that greenhouse
gases can no longer be dealt with by nature. Extrapolating into the future - a growing world
population with increasing living standards (meaning an increasing ecological footprint) - brings ever
more into question the theoretically widely agreed target of achieving a sustainable economy.
Which sustainability?
Since the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 the concept of sustainable development has become an increasingly
central theme of politics, economics and the global development community. For the first time,
it appeared, economists and ecologists were speaking the same language.Yet it is easy to agree on a
concept when it allows a wide spectrum of definitions and interpretations. For some, the emphasis is
on “sustainable”, for others on “development”. In between there is a huge grey area in which superficial
agreement on terminology disguises widely differing views on the concept itself and lack of clarity
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