//week twelve

LECTURE ON SUSTAINABILITY...



reflection... the lecture today was held by three guest speakers including; Elise Robertson, Magna Kowalk and Susan Loh, who all gave talks on their own perspectives and interests in eco cities.
The first speaker, Elise Robertson, spoke about three types of Eco-cities:
these included:  the garden city
                         historic green centres
                         and utopian green cities
//below is the model for Ebenezer Howard's Garden City for Tomorrow..

The Garden City that Howard Talks about refers to slumless smokeless cities. This idea about cities came about in the early 20th century and was very innovative for its time, it posed emphasis on creating planned cities that exhibited abundance of parks and gardens. I think that this type of utopian city be quite effective in terms of creating a beautiful sanctuary for people to live, although increasing large public areas within the city in abundance could possibly create the opposite to what is intended. It could create a dangerous city if these public spaces were not used appropriately. 

Overall i enjoyed listening to Elise's discusion and found it interesting to know that these kind of theories of utopian eco cities are not recent thoughts and ideas and infact are original theories of famous 20th century architects and urban planners. 

Magna Kowalk the next speaker stated: "All we can have are responses not solutions"

This statement got me thinking about my future profession in architecture and how it is important to think holistically about sustainability and the outcomes of certain designs. I think it is also important to note that we are commencing a change in the urban environment where we have to change the way we and others look at design. 

Susan Loh talked about eco cities through the perspective of other well known founders and urban planners. For example; Ebenezer Howard - the garden city, Frank Lloyd Wright - the living city, and William Mcdonough - Hannover Principle. Mcdonough's theory explains how humanity and nature need to co-exit in order to achieve utopia. 

Before this lecture i initially thought that the notion of eco cities was a relatively new idea, that has come about in response to the diminishing resources around the world. That is why i was surprised to find out that some of our early 20th century urban planners where already thinking about sustainable design and quality living standards.