An anonymous architect comments on the need for ‘degrowth’ in detailed manifesto

2022-08-15T09:00:00-04:00

Environmentalist blog Treehugger has published an exchange between the author of an anonymous new Twitter manifesto that outlines in 25 points the need to combat the capitalistic notion that endless growth is the only option for modern industrial societies. Patrik Schumacher and others are mentioned as examples of the industry’s bad side, with groups like Architects Declare and thinkers such as Tim Jackson, Jason Hickel, and Open City director Phineas Harper being cited as the clarions of a movement the latter says is more or less inevitable.

"We use 'degrowth' because, as architects, we sometimes get to control the consumption spigot a bit," shares the author and architect, who wished to remain anonymous during their conversation with Lloyd Alter of Treehugger. "Someday architects may be called upon, first and foremost, to make spatial interventions that create value for society and for future generations—more like caretakers or repairmen, and less as heroic form-givers who functio...

Is it time to reconsider the growth-obsessed nature of our society?

2019-10-06T09:00:00-04:00

The architecture profession tends to assume that there is always more to build. We need more infrastructure, more houses and more office space to accommodate economies and societies that are forever expanding. Greedy though it may be, this mindset is supported by the pervasive belief that a society’s success is best measured not in terms of humane measures such as the capacity for care and play but in economic terms such as market expansion.

Mark Minkjan of Failed Architecture interviews Phineas Harper and Maria Smith, two of the curators behind the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2019. The triennale's theme, Enough: The Architecture of Degrowth is focused "proposing alternatives to the unsustainable and unfair paradigm of growth."

Explaining the idea of "degrowth," Smith tells Minkjan, "Degrowth is about is stopping incentivizing extraction. At the moment we’re in a pursuit of economic growth at all costs because we need it in order to manage our private and public debt because that’s the way our current economic system is set up. And because we have to do that, that means that the system encourages consumption, resource extraction and other things that are stupid and environmentally and socially damaging."

Smith continues, "The idea of Degrowth is to create a system that allows many of the more socially and environmentally conscientious projects, that already exist all around us. It’s not like a different and crazy world....

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An anonymous architect comments on the need for ‘degrowth’ in detailed manifesto

Is it time to reconsider the growth-obsessed nature of our society?