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chicago MONTIE, TIM T

It’s not about the world of design. It’s about the design of the world. Sustainable, long lasting, healthy, what the world is heading away from every day. What if the direction started to change? The exhibition is called “Massive Change. The Future of Global Design” and it is based on the idea of creating a sustainable state of living.

We have all heard the term “Reduce, reuse, recycle.” What about redesign? There is a way to design buildings that works, but there are other ways. The term green house is growing in familiarity. A house that is efficient even produces oxygen. Plants take in toxic gasses and use them to produce oxygen… they are perfect. How much better can it get than taking something bad and using 100% of it to produce something essential for life? There are buildings such as the Ford International Headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan that have had foliage planted on their roofs to promote clean air.

“Massive Change” compiles many designers, architects, biologists as well as many other artists to design “Sustainable architecture”. In Chicago a building is being constructed by Pacific Garden Mission. PGM is the oldest rescue mission in the country and they are now setting their sights on not only humans, but the world they live in as well. Construction of the new PGM headquarters is underway. The architecture of the building has been designed around the idea of using natural, continuous resources instead of resources which are destructive to use and produce. Instead of electricity purchased from the city and produced by coal burning factories, the building is equipped with thousands of square feet of solar panels. The roof of the building is almost completely covered in high oxygen output grass.

Buildings are not the only concern of the massive change exhibit. Chicago Blue Bikes is a concept that conserves energy by using people power instead of gas, and recycles old bikes instead of buying new ones. Blue Bikes are old bikes from the dump that have been restored to good riding condition as well as being branded with the trademark blue paint. The concept is enabling sustainable mobility through using less fossil fuels, and more efficient energy resources such as electricity.

When I walked into the exhibit I first thought how is this art at all? It’s just a bunch of tree-hugging architects promoting greenness. But after taking a better look at the displays and reading some of the statistics it hit me. Art can’t be put in a box, art is something you do, whether it be helping people, painting, or training dogs. The art I was looking at was the art and design of creating a world whose eyes are open to what it needs and uses. I began to appreciate all I was seeing as I went through the exhibit. Why hasn’t this been done yet? Was the question that came to my mind as I flipped through the hundred page books of statistics, architecture, plans and benefits for all the conceptual structures.

The problem being presented was to design a world we can live in. The answer is in two words, sustainable design. Massive change in the way we live.




groundbreaking, groundbreakers, starting hopefully a new trend.
http://www.pgm.org/nws_move.html

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