What's next? : thinking beyond the box: landscape of exchange and consumer waste as food for cultural change

Abstract

The current state of architecture is pregnant with possibility for its future. As technology and innovation give shape to a malleable landscape of digital media, the world surges onward, pioneered by high-tech industries and everready consumers. International political and commercial forces are colliding and entwining in new ways as globalization increases and borderless commerce gains momentum. As the power struggle over consumer dollars and sociopolitical control has intensified a "one planet" mentality, globalization continues to exhibit our interconnectedness. However, another significant power struggle ferments between the human race and the planet itself and the impact of the former upon the ecological state of the latter.

At the heart of this situation lies the environmental movement of activists and scientists alike, who seek remediation and revolution. The important questions, however, pertain to the world's readiness for and acceptance of a "green revolution"; architecturally, this translates to the commercial and societal acceptance of truly sustainable and ecologically minded design and construction. The irony of the sustainable or "green" movement is that it is not truly sustainable itself - the philosophy and approaches behind current practice have not yet provided the impetus to ensure its staying power. The future of the postmodern ecological movement has the potential to be self-sustaining, drawing on the revolutionary power and the logic of the philosophy behind the very movement itself.