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The Imaginarium of a Solarpunk Architect
- gunfighthacksaw 5y agoVery cool, but I don’t want to dwell on all the bugs one would swallow cycling through one of these cities.
- naravara 5y agoI'd actually have to imagine the bug count wouldn't be that much worse than a typical city, replete with flies and mosquitoes from the abundance of humans and human food waste to feed on. If anything the bug problem might be slightly improved since the ecology would be friendlier to things that eat bugs, such as frogs, lizards, and bats. Of course, then you've got the problem of frogs and lizards getting into your house. And, ultimately, things that like to eat frogs and lizards, like snakes.
- mellavora 5y agoBolivian tree lizard cleanup plan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9yruQM1ggc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9yruQM1ggc
- Majestic121 5y agoThat seems like a small cost to pay to live in such harmonious places.
- asmxyz 5y agoIf you're swallowing bugs while cycling that means you're probably mouth breathing. It's pretty challenging to convert to strict nasal breathing, but it's worth it and a side benefit is bugs aren't a big deal if you're wearing something on your eyes.
- andai 5y agoIn case people thought mouthbreather is just an insult, it can cause serious medical problems and even change the structure of your face. There are videos about it on the internet, with dramatic before and after photos (in both directions).
- jeltz 5y agoOr it may just mean he is cycling fast. It is only when cycling st a relatively comfortable pace that you can get enough oxygen through only your nose.
- gunfighthacksaw 5y agoI cycle at the higher end of my aerobic threshold to get around and my bike is single speed so I have to go anaerobic on hills. Do you cycle at a more leisurely pace or do you maintain constant nose breathing even during strenuous exercise? If the latter, I would probably caution you of the health effects of that too.
- asmxyz 5y agoI'm definitely curious if you have references to negative health effects of nasal breathing. I've seen quite a bit on the positives, even with strenuous exercise. I maintain nasal breathing when riding fast, during kettlebell workouts, and sandbag workouts.
- fredsir 5y agoBugs are not really problem if they have amble places to live and gather nutrition and so on. We have a wild garden, and people often ask if there are not bugs everywhere, and tell us they like grass to keep the bugs away. Well quite contrary - our findings are, that in our wild garden, bugs are around the plants, in the plants, but they are not are problem in the spaces we have created for ourself at all. I think people have misunderstood why insect swarm.
- mellavora 5y agoI used to get a lot of bugs on my windshield driving through Germany. That stopped in 2014. No more bugs. Bug populations are down 80%, anything we do to help them is needed.
- cameronh90 5y agoDid you happen to buy a new car? Cars are a lot more aerodynamic now. I recently drove an old van through the countryside and had to spend 20 minutes washing off insect bits afterwards, like in the good old days...
- jppope 5y agoThis is a beautiful reimagining of a different way to do cities. We need more of this in the world right now.
- msluyter 5y agoApparently "solarpunk" is now the zietgiest. Here's another interesting one: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/drawing-pictures-of-cities https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/drawing-pictures-of-cities
- _Microft 5y agoI think why solarpunk seems to come into vogue is that it is often displaying so much more livable and humane cities than we have right now. The same goes for its ornamental design that contrasts so much with the clinically sterile look of products and designs nowadays - especially the ones that are coming out of the Silicon Valley at the moment (UIs with grey-on-white designs and no embellishments, the look of voice assistent devices, speakers, watches, SpaceX' flight suits/launch towers, Cybertruck,...). PS: The spelling is actually "Zeitgeist" if you ever need to search for that (even though I would assume that search engines would deal with the typos just fine).
- nynx 5y agoIn many contexts, solarpunk is related to anarcho-communism and gift-economies. It can be difficult to see how a solarpunk-like society could sustainably grow directly out of our current economic system.
- worldsayshi 5y agoI think the seed for it lives in the open/free/libre source dream. If we can make it easy enough to produce what we need with open source tools then we don't need global capitalism. In many regards we're far from that dream but having a concretisation of what the end result could look like (and/or depictions of how to get there) in the shape of Solarpunk should help.
- npteljes 5y agoI agree. It would be wonderful to build a world where everyone is provided a sustainable baseline of existence and opportunity with open source and free culture stuff.
- gremlinsinc 5y agoHere's a thought...combine solarpunk/glamping. Create communities for singles/families... master-planned cities if you will..or more loosely communes... Homes are maybe some sort of tent/yurt on a pedestal with a bed. The community has a campus building with restrooms, showers, kitchen, cubicles (for work from home), farm-land for planting crops, solar panels, etc.. The area would have playground equipment, exercise equipment, outdoor sports/games, a makerspace/library with tools, toys, big toys (4-wheelers, etc), that people can 'check out' and use. I feel a lot of the problems w/ society is everyone has to own a drill, when one drill per street that anyone can access probably makes more sense, maybe 2 or 3 max... but still if we could just curb our need to "own" things. A shared "library" of everything from toys for kids to video games for consoles, to books, to tools and 3d printers, etc...would be pretty awesome. I think of it more in a utilitarian manner than aesthetically lots of glass/trees on skyscrapers that nobody who wants to do something in this space could ever afford to build, so it definitely remains a pipe-dream... Fashionable glamping communities could pop up super fast and be sustainable and fun.
- gmueckl 5y agoThis is the first time I hear the term "solarpunk". So this seems to encompass visions of an optimistic future when exploitation of nature, pollution, climate change etc. And strikingly, looking up the definition made me feel an almost juvenile excitement about an idea again which I haven't experienced in a long time. That made me realize that most contemporary visions of the near(er) future seem so bleak and dreadful in comparison. But, if we paint our future as this thoroughly unattractive place, then what motivation remains to make progress?
- parentheses 5y agoI feel the same way. My SOs reaction to VR was so viscerally negative. Once I probed it was clearly driven by trends of dystopian futures.
- kamranjon 5y agoI have the same reaction to VR, what is the optimistic non-dystopian view? I am generally curious because near complete human absorption in technology is what I see and it's hard for me to picture that in a positive light.
- neartheplain 5y agoFor me, VR has been a means to stay in touch with distant friends and family. It's not too different from traditional computer games + voice chat, but the extra level of immersion does increase the sense of connection. The lack of distraction in VR from e.g. smartphones, tabbed windows, or nearby things in the physical world all helps foster an increased level of engagement with other people/players in VR.
- inlikealamb 5y agoI suppose an advanced version of VR could replace some amount of travel, which is a significant source of atmospheric pollution.
- npteljes 5y agoIt's hard to ignore the level of abuse it enables.
- ThinkingGuy 5y agoI love the solarpunk aesthetic, but hasn't Roger Dean been doing this since the 1970s? https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Roger+Dean+art&iar=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Roger+Dean+art&iar=images
- Majestic121 5y agoHe seems to be from the same generation as Luc Schuiten from the article (both born in 44) The main difference would be that Dean forcused more on the art, while Schuiten focused more on the architecture part, but both seem pretty close indeed, and I would not be surprised if they knew each other
- motohagiography 5y agoSolarpunk I suspect is more important that we know, because I think rich subcultures are the seeds of massive growth. It's just some funny drawings and internet fanfic twigging our sense of novelty on HN now, but when you see it as representing the desires and longings of young people for wilderness, and also know people who left cities in the last 10y, they were the thin edge of the wedge, where post-pandemic, younger people are leaving cities to get on the real estate ladder, with remote work and amazon-style supply chains, and they are family-inclined. It incorporates passive and renewable energy techs, argritech, biotech, cannabis-driven value added production, organic and small scale food production, brewing and distilling, civic minded prepping, local vs. global, etc. I'm interested in when solarpunk blips on the radar because to me it is an aesthetic that represents new growth.
- Proven 5y ago> I'm interested in when solarpunk blips on the radar because to me it is an aesthetic that represents new growth. Don't be confused by that - those are just pretty pictures. See what nynx said below. > because I think rich subcultures are the seeds of massive growth. I that's quite hard to quantify (even the statement itself - "rich subcultures") but it's safe to say that socialist subcultures don't produce much of anything. Look over time, over cultures (and subcultures) - their results have been consistent: misery and even starvation. But they've done really well in terms of controlling their CO2 output, if that's a plus in your book. (How come North Korea never gets any recognition for their fight against climate changes?)
- tomc1985 5y agoFirst of all, where is the 'punk' aspect? There needs to be an aspect of dystopia to use that word. This sort of organic-growth-everywhere aesthetic is not new, it has been in utopian urban visions for the last 20 or 30 years. Personally I think it started with SimCity 2000 arcologies, but I am probably wrong.
- taylorlapeyre 5y ago> There needs to be an aspect of dystopia to use that word I disagree, "punk" is not about dystopia, it's about rebelling against the status-quo. Solarpunk, at its core, is about rejecting our current way of life. That's where the punk comes from.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoSolarpunk is a cool concept. I saw it in 2067 (the movie -I haven't actually time-traveled).
- twoquestions 5y agoMost of the things in this article are deliberately avoided in cities these days. Sufficient seating, public transport, and walkable streets make things easier for poor/homeless/other untouchables, and making their lives worse is prioritized above making the space better. If we can fix that, we'd be well on our way to realizing better living spaces like the artist (among many others, myself included) dreams of.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wrinkl3 5y agoThere's currently a huge push online to make Solarpunk a thing, as a kind of an optimistic counterpart to Cyberpunk, but I'm skeptical about whether it can attain the same level of cultural traction as the other big *punks. Cyberpunk and steampunk both fetishize aesthetics from the past - 80's corporate Japan and the Victorian Britain, respectively, - there's a sort of nostalgic longing that keeps them culturally relevant. Solarpunk tries to fetishize sustainability in a similar way, but I'm not sure if there's enough foundation there to build onto.
- naravara 5y agoCyberpunk is an explicitly dystopian genre setting so I'm not sure "nostalgic longing" is how I would characterize it so much as searching for a kind of catharsis or fictionalized escape from the things about it people feel parallel their own lives.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoNeither would I. If Neuromancer wrote about 80's Japan corporate culture it is because it was written in the 80's and tried to extrapolate that to the 21st Century. Cyberpunk has only become nostalgic lately.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoPlowpunk anyone? I guess not.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y agoPeople already fetishize agriculture that eschews "best practices".
- jazzyjackson 5y agoFetishize is a strong word, what’s your objection?
- inlikealamb 5y ago
- TacticalCoder 5y agoI removed a comment of mine saying Schuiten was a famous belgian comics drawer ("dessinateur de bande dessinee") and his style was kinda unique (and I love that style)... I removed it because I was thinking of Francois Schuiten, not Luc Schuiten. After some research it turns out apparently these two are brothers!
- shwoopdiwoop 5y agoIt says right in the article that they are brothers and have collaborated on some of his works.
- hiidrew 5y agoAny open world games with this type of aesthetic? I would love to play. Recently read this on the topic, the artist in the post is great: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/drawing-pictures-of-cities https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/drawing-pictures-of-cities
- anthk 5y agoNot open world but Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald had a city which could be accesed from an underwate route in order to emerge in a solarpunk styled "town.
- lubujackson 5y agoConnecting solarpunk to art nouveau is pretty insightful. I think any new movement like this pulls from some historical reference to frame the idea. Having visited Barcelona and seeing Gaudi's influence on the architecture there, I understand how a few notable buildings could actually influence the peoples' mindsets. There has been a ton of advancement in ecological solutions and biomimicry, but tying those changes to design that mirrors nature in an art nouveau way could translate the underlying complexity to something our lizard brains will understand at a glance - it is a powerful abstraction that ties together our innate desire for a safe corner of nature and our social desire for something new and cool.
- ryanjamurphy 5y agoThis looks sleek, but isn’t that a _lot_ of glass? I had read something recently (e.g., https://www.wired.co.uk/article/stop-building-glass-skyscrapers https://www.wired.co.uk/article/stop-building-glass-skyscrap...) suggesting that too much glass was bad for the environment.
- datameta 5y agoIt would be interesting to see a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis of the energy savings from solar heating indoors vs the impact of mining, transporting, and converting the sand into glass (taking into account the environmental impact of deplete certain areas of too much sand).
- guerrilla 5y agoFor more inspiration and positivity: https://solarpunkanarchists.com/ https://solarpunkanarchists.com/
- culebron21 5y agoThe images in the article can be divided in two groups: * ideas from new urbanism to greenify the urban core with its dense streets, to make them a nicer place, which is a good idea. * the old modernist ideas of detached houses, now in "ecological" form, which is a total utopia, exactly as it was stated in the Athens Charter. They also seem to look like Frank Lloyd-Wright's words that "sometime people will live in an entirely rural landscape with houses 100 meters apart from each other and greenery and trees between them" (he hated cities quite a lot) (here's one of his houses, sometimes posted with a motivator text below: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=frank+lloyd+wright+waterfall+house&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=frank+lloyd+wright+waterfall+house...) The first part of these, is generally a good thing, but has to be done moderately. I see some images have curves and round forms, which is not a necessity, but rather an attempt to make a nicely looking bird view, which causes various inconveniences -- like park paths that are never walked by, or cut corners. Curved grass strips are especially a problem: if people walk over them, they have to be protected by fences, or by elevating them -- in this case it 1) will require artificial watering, 2) will produce side pockets, unusable for walking (but hopefully used for benches). Andres Duany said a lot about this in his lectures, and I can only sum it up as greenery in the city is needed, but has to be done cautiously and reassessed critically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO3CaJtSfjg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO3CaJtSfjg The other half of the images are mostly reshaped detached houses or modernist apartment blocks. Same Duany criticizes the detached house concept a lot -- it costs much, it makes people have tons of stuff, drive cars, live in isolated way, unlike the urban dwellers (I followed these ideas when buying apartment, and never regret -- I felt a lot better near a small city center, than before that living on the fringe.) The modernist concept of apartment blocks and large green spaces between them appeared as an answer to extremely dense cities of 19th century, which were hardly livable without our modern tech (tap water, sewer, central heating, electric light and active ventilation). The most promiment responses were Garden City Movement (basically, make towns not more than 60K ppl, put them at some distance with forests and fields between, and connect with railways), and Athens Charter (build cities of large apartment blocks standing apart from each other, no closed perimeter like in traditional cities, have greenery betwee, and make city blocks large to let cars go without intersections). The latter was widely implemented in the Socialist block from East Germany to Vladivostok, and failed in many ways. Jan Gehl saw this development in socio-democratic Denmark and criticized for 1) places devoid of any street retail and other local business, because streets are too wide, which made people commute or drive a car to city center to get services, and 2) de-socialization. In a large apartment block it's hard to meet and get along with neighbors for many purely physical and psychological reasons. The Human Scale documentary sums up Gehl's points: https://vimeo.com/458139267 https://vimeo.com/458139267 ------ I read their manifesto that appeared earlier, and that's fine. The problem is with these pictures: to me they seem simply a fashionable landscape design with lots of trees, or detached houses with strange shapes. The former is just arts, and I don't see it reflecting any new thinking. The latter is new attempt at century-old failed ideas. What would I offer instead? High-speed commute rail in Germany, Netherlands and maybe Scandinavia, made Garden City ideas actually happen. You can work in a large city, but live an a town in 30 km (20 mi), commute in 40 minutes, but near your home you have both, all the great things of a city (cafes, services, meeting friends in the main street) and of countryside (10 minutes to the city edge and hike or bike). Or you can have a business that is entirely in a small town but has easy access to large markets in big cities -- just 1 hour in train.
- chrisweekly 5y agoIn order to build a better future, it's necessary first to imagine it.
- mym1990 5y agoSome of the structures in Singapore(Supertree Grove) feel like a step towards this! Although I don't think they are fully there, I would be absolutely thrilled to see more architecture and design like that.
- aaaxyz 5y agoThe building the Supertree Grove sits on was designed by Moshe Safdie. A lot of his works feature similar green and open spaces (jewel changi airport, eling park)
- q_andrew 5y agoI find solarpunk really interesting. On one hand, it's the most "fresh" aesthetic of futurism we've seen since cyberpunk. On the other hand, most of this architecture isn't environmentally sustainable at all -- the massive amounts of water and energy it takes to keep trees alive on a rooftop is antithetical to an "eco city". The artists appear to be inspired by fad concept renderings for sky-garden towers that were never built: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/renderings-vs-reality-rise-tree-covered-skyscrapers/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/renderings-vs-reality...
- SquibblesRedux 5y agoReplace trees with vines and place them mostly on the south side of the buildings and it may be viable. The trick would be engineering a renewable substrate for the vines to grow on.
- okareaman 5y agoSolarpunk is a continuation and rediscovery of the Techno hippie movement that began in the Bay Area in the late 70's and early 80's. Apple Computer was part of it (while IBM was not.) This era is described fairly accurately in Adam Curtis's "All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace" (a reference to the Richard Brautigan poem) and John Markoff's excellent "What The Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry" Highly recommend them, even if Curtis does go a little off the deep end at times.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago“What the Dormouse Said” is very enlightening, I had never heard of psychedelics’ influence on the professionals of the day, I think it’s about time I read it again.
- okareaman 5y agoKen Kesey was responsible for starting a lot of it after he took LSD and part of CIA experiments at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital and started doing "acid tests" with music by what became the Grateful Dead. There's are some good documentaries on YouTube about this. “Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.” ― Steve Jobs