My version of Cool
I’ve been pondering why the hell I’m not mainstream already :)) But really.
My dear,
There is a course by YACademy in Bologna that focuses on Architecture for the Landscape and it's got a lot (LOT) of big shots from Souto De Moura to SANNAA to Snohetta to BIG. I mean, all the guns out.
Well, of course, not for real.
Just for some lectures. The rest are courses and workshops by Italians professors. It lasts about two months and costs about 2200 euros.
The reason why I was drawn towards this course - plus the idea of going back into the academic structures I fled - is that I've been feeling increasingly lost in the wide world of internet and work. I honestly thought that whatever the niche, however strange and remote my passion, one could find others to share it with.
People who harbor the same obsessions.
Find your clients. Find people to help.
Most clients, I learn yet again, care for their own money and lack thereof, for their own imediate comfort and lack thereof and for the infinite combinations of those two. Plus social status of course, but that's another story.
The vague ideas of how a home space makes them "feel" and the mood and the wind andrelationship a house can ahve with the trees around it... Barely anyone cared about stuff like this in the 60's when hippies were all the rage. Some academia folks cared about stuff like this in the 20's and wrote some books on that.
Today, those folks are dead and Pallasmaa isn't feeling great himself. And then there are the starchitects giving lectures at this super-duper course on Landscape and Architecture. Do they have answers for me? I wish they had, I really really do.
I just had a cup of tea with Alex about this and at first he said that if it's really what I want I should do it. He’s always supportive like that. Then I told him about how it works and how the courses and workshops aren't actually held by the big guys, just Italian architecture professors talking about landscape and architecture. Is that what I need to get out of where I got stuck?
Well, they also guarantee an internship with one of the big shot firms they’re featuring, which might spark a lot of interest from younger fellows.
The great thing about firms like Snohetta or SANNA is the team and the confidence that gives you. Working with The Carbon Almanac has helped me a lot in understanding the power of having other people around who know what you don't, who can do what you can't. But who feel the same way you do about certain things.
There are so many directions I could use advice for. I used to have my dad, but he wasn't showing me my direction, he was showing me his own. Snohetta doesn't show me my direction either. They are only ever going to show me how they do things that work for them. And those things are great, but I'm pretty sure that it's not what I want.
I'm still sure there are people who I can bounce ideas with though. I even got a Twitter account to search for them. That's how I found the webinar called Cooling the Middle East that I attended yesterday (I'm paraphrasing here, I don't remember how it was called).
The idea was "bringing more cooling techniques to the market and helping governments with more support in legislating that" or something. I thought "Hey! This is something along the lines of what I want to do" (in that I also want to help people stay cool in the summer in their houses). It turned out they all were the type of bureaucrats engineers and economists who want to expand the market for "inverter air-conditioning systems" and other sustainable cooling technology*. Jargon, market shares and powerpoint slides. Just my type of guys.
*I am not saying these are wrong or useless ways of helping. It's just not quite what I was looking for
On a side note, I also got an invite for a Community Sustainability Summit, an ecovillage thing. There’s a discussion panel at the end. I was all excited until I read the topic list:
- Should we stop having children for the environment?
- When does an ecovillage become a cult?
- Is the ecovillage movement propagating colonialism?
- Is Social Media mostly good or bad for building community?
- Is religion necessary for communities to survive?
- Should intentional communities practice polyamory?
- Should hierarchies be escaped or embraced in alternative communities?
- Cultural Appropriation in the Ecovillage Movement
- Should communities practice psychedelics?
- Is the Ecovillage Movement only for white people?
- Are gender roles important on farms?
- What are the benefits of female-led communities?
- Can we call omnivorous farms “eco-friendly?”
- Should regenerative communities use Western or Holistic medicine?
I am not making this up (here).
All this to say that I am diving into a sort of experimental Passive Cooling Project, where I will try and find ways to help build passive retrofit strategies for cooling this summer and actually be helpful.
If you have a room that's overheating in the afternoons or anything like that, please reply to this email and I'll be sure to get back to you, and test out my workflow on you. It will probably consist of a virtual meeting, some screen-sharing, 3D-modeling and shade analysis, plus a sort of questionnaire to help build up a strategy.
And if you have a friend whom you know to have an overheating problem in his house, please forward him this email.
Love as always,
Jo
As spring turns precipitously to summer, Jo's Epistolary will, in its turn, turn to a sunny twice-monthly rhythm. It will probably revert back to it's winter snuggle-on-the-couch state with the first frost.
My version:
I’ve been reading through Regeneration, Paul Hawken’s last book. Jane Goodall said it's a rebuttal to doomsayers who believe it is too late, but I read the first couple of chapters, and it's bleak, man. :))
The website is pretty cool though, even with the bible-y imagery after a couple of scrolls:
Other letters from Jo you might like:
That’s quite a topic list, Jo!