[lifesaviors] Reply to Jeurgen -- re: Palaces For The People
- From: <lionkuntz@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: Palaces4People@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Palaces4Japan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,NovusNow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 18:09:51 -0700 (PDT)
For those whom have not been participating in the most
recent ECOCITY conference, this is the introductory
material on Juergen PAULUSSEN
http://www.ias.unu.edu/proceedings/icibs/ecocity03/papers/paulussen2/#author
Dipl.-Ing. Juergen PAULUSSEN
Sustainable urban development and environmental
planning
Associate Professor
CAS - Chinese Academy of Sciences
RCEES - Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences
DSE - Department of Systems Ecology
18 Shuangqing Road
Beijing 100085
China
========================
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 09:59:36 +0200
> From: "Juergen Paulussen"
> Subject: Re: FTAL issue 16, 101303 -- re: Palaces
> For The People
>
> Dear all,
>
> I see, Lion Kuntz' palaces/ pyramids concept (its
> more than a number
> of
> single ideas and proposals) starts to move and
> attract wider circles.
> That's wonderful. The concept includes so much
> potential and offers a
> wide range of opportunities in realisation, that
> nobody will be able
> to
> determine, what finally will happen. Might be, the
> people who will
> built
> the first pyramids, will lay their main emphasis on
> aspects different
> from that, we mainly discuss.
I don't want to take it as an affront, or as an insult
to me personally, if people use a multiuse solution in
ways I never thought of. For my own self-esteem,
however, I do hope that I have conscienciously
explored a number of probable pathways of future
developments, and then I have addressed some
non-obvious drawbacks before they can fester into
problems on down the line after some timespan.
For that reason, I hope that some focussed discussion
might develop based on the applications and design
parameters of Palaces For The People, as a proposal
already embodied in detailed thought. I was the first
to point out that these are not appropriate to all
dwelling situations in all times and places, in the
very first writing I produced. If others also see that
there are inappropriate situations calling for other
alternative solutions, they do not hurt my feelings.
Especially in the USA, people are programmed to not
like their neighbors too much, and keep a distance
from them with physical and psychological barriers.
Old european cities have tight architecture on narrow
streets and alleys (as seen in "James Bond" movie
chase scenes of cars careening down stepped streets,
that most of us have seen at least once, even if we
never went there ourselves).
If taken to an extreme, the American attitude can
become pathologic: locusts in human shape fanning out
over all the landscapes, devouring all biodiversity
and habitats to make one homogenous stripmall,
ultimately decaying into crackwhores and driveby
gangster turfs. For mental health, Americans need to
self-examine to discover why "They can't get no
satisfaction", no matter how hard they try, no matter
what lifestyle they choose. If the "American angst" is
promulgated through TV and movie exports to be
copycatted around the world, the future is not bright.
Palaces For The People is a habitat and a stage upon
which life can play out. It offers shelter from
increasingly hostile globally warmed weather chaos; it
offers the vital necessities of basic utilities; it
offers nearby employment, with segregation of the
heavier, noisier, dirtier industry away at a distance
and brings home clean, quiet, good-neighbor businesses
to eliminate many unnecessary commutes. Reasonably
compact, it is not in any sense crowded, nor is it
claustrophobic, offering more open-air greenspaces
than any community plan in human history. People can
be together, yet withdraw to varying levels of
personal privacy.
> Due to that, keeping
> discussion open
> for
> new ideas and variations, is as important as keeping
> in mind the core
> ideas and progressing them.
The core ideas have not been fully addressed. I
suggest that this is a good starting place. What's
wrong with the core ideas that they need revision so
soon? What specifically is wrong, and what
specifically needs correction?
> But one sentence in Paul Collier's summary of the
> PALACE concept made
> me think:
> Paul wrote:
> > > To that end, I see
> > > the Palace for the People as a positive
> development.
> > > But the Palace
> > > for the People is not for everyone.
> > >
> > > For those of us who wish to be more independent,
> the
> > > Palace for the
> > > People may not be the best place to live. But
> for
> > > billions of people
> > > on the planet already living in constricted,
> > > unhealthy space, these
> > > Palaces offer a great alternative.
>
> Does this mean: "high density palace are good for
> the poor and
> underprivileged, but for other (us), it's not
> appropriate"? This
> could turn out
> as a question of credibility....
Actually, Paul Collier has made statements remarkably
similar to Jeurgen Paulesson. I think this is a
"phase" people go through trying to fit something
which has too much newness into a familiar pattern
they already know how to deal with.
As I pointed out above, Americans are programmed to
believe they are entitled to new frontiers, wide open
plains, spacious skies, detached houses with patches
of lawn and the right to shoot tresspassers intruding
into their personal aura of space. It will take time,
more than a few weeks or months, for the American
mentality to adjust to the fact that it is a round
globe, well populated, and there are no frontiers or
plains or woods that are not already habitat for
necessary co-species. Americans, like the Chinese and
Russians, believe that superpower status exempts them
from eco-holocaust. Well the duststorms and floods in
China, the 30,000 forest fires this year (2003) in
Russia, and the tornadoes and blackouts in the USA are
all proof positive that eco-compatibility is required
from every earth citizen. Nuclear weapons do not give
anyone a free pass to break nature's laws.
> ... As long as the
> eco-forerunners claim
> for
> them selves other conditions and more "request" of
> flexibility,
> space,
> personal freedom, etc. than for "billions of people
> on the planet
> already living in constricted, unhealthy space", I
> see no chance to
> convince
> them, that our proposals will be appropriate
> solutions to them.
> Because
> these people might be will seek for other
> opportunities to improve
> their live (e.g. more to subrbs). The core is, to
> convince the, that
> in the
> moment, they will be able to improve their housing
> situation, they
> choose "palaces", and not other alternative
> structures, which will
> improve
> their live for the same initial costs, but not reach
> our high goals
> regarding ecological impact, energy, space
> consumption etc.
We are getting close to the intitial engineering test
phase of Palaces For The People new construction
methods. As soon as the tests have confirmed (or
disproved, but I doubt this possibility based on
widespread data) the reliability and strength of the
new technologies, Palaces will begin going up. I
believe I am near a breakthrough in India, which has a
perennial housing shortage, in building a set of these
Palaces. Once the reality of this set of technologies
is erected by non-technical people, and actually being
lived in, delivering services these people have never
experienced before in their lives, arguments against
Palaces will suffer a fatal blow.
As far as lifestyles goes, people all over the world
live in condos and apartments. The average apartment
dweller in a cramped NYC or Tokyo apartment will
quickly evaluate the improvement in their lives by
going to a more spacious palace to live. Most
Americans who pay $US 1,200 to US$ 4,000 per year for
heating, cooling, hot water, pure water, sewerage
services (sometimes the cost is hidden in the rent or
property tax bills) will wise up to the advantages of
many private domiciles under one big roof sharing
utility services.
At this moment in time, the talkers are probably not
the do-ers. The talkers serve a valuable service just
talking up the Palaces For The People proposal and
bringing it to an ever-widening circle of people for
consideration. If enough "do-ers" make themselves
known, than "Global EcoVillages" (GEV Inc.) might
organize the first project in the US, or elsewhere.
http://globalecovillage.com/articles/B_suscomm.htm
http://globalecovillage.com/articles/12_ecovillages4ws.htm
http://globalecovillage.com/articles/07_homeownership.htm
-------
http://globalecovillage.com/dev_team/phil_hawes_01.htm
http://globalecovillage.com/dev_team/phil_hawes_02.htm
1985-1992 Architect, Biosphere 2 Project, Oracle
Arizona. Directed all architecture and design
development for Biosphere 2, a three acre habitat for
ecological systems, including tropical rainforest,
savannah, marsh, ocean, desert, agriculture, and human
habitat biomes
See Photo of BIOSPHERE II made of Octet Trusses:
http://ag.arizona.edu/science_alive/images/bispr202.jpg
-------
Read what a teaching, practicing architect (Phil
Hawes, GEV.Inc.) has said about Palaces:
http://www.ias.unu.edu/proceedings/icibs/ecocity03/SPD-log3.htm#148
"As far as specific projects are concerned, if our
company financing proceeds as we expect, I hope to be
able to integrate with Lion Kuntz¹s People¹s Palace
project, and am considering how this might best be
accomplished. My particular interest, other than his
outstanding work on developing the overall People¹s
Palace concepts, is in the photovoltaic breeder, and
his micro-farming components. I believe that both of
these should be an integral part of any real effort to
create an ecological community, whatever size it may
be."
So, if the talkers stimulate a critical mass of
do-ers, than Palaces will rise from the earth. I have
no problem with the talkers talking and not doing,
because talking preceeds doing. The doers will have
accepted the constraints of a finite world, and
eventually, so will everybody else once they say that
"it ain't so bad after all, living in harmony with
eco-compatibility".
> Therefore, the people who promote a new concept for
> living and
> building, should be the first to move in, giving an
> example for
> others.
Not only would I eagerly move in, it is not that
different from the spaces I have lived in, and am
living in now, except it will be a lot more affordable
and sustainable. In some ways, the new technologies
are downright sexy.
> Otherwise, we (the people who want to change our
> cities, improve the
> conditions for urban life, and "save the world")
> would be as
> incredulous as the
> architects and politicians who promoted and built
the
> high density
> "social quarters" in the fringe of big cities like
> Paris, London,
> Berlin,
> which quickly turned into "problem quarters" and
> "no-go-areas".
There are plenty of no-go zones in the rural and
jungle areas of the world: bandits, maoist guerillas,
headhunters and cannibals. The "no-go-there" people
bring their bad vibes and decay with them, and not all
of it can be blamed on designers ot planners. Good
planning will take the "no-go-there" people into
account, and limit their opportunities of expression
of their pathological lifestyles -- something learned
from the failures of the past.
> Experience from ecocity-development of the last
> decades teaches us,
> that best results are gained, where all
> stakeholders, designers,
> users,
> builders are involved and integrated in the process
> of eco-building -
> at
> least for some key periods of time. Too big social
> distance between
> "user" and "creator" often creates unsufficient,
> single-goal oriented
> "mass quarters". Exclusion of general demand of
> people from design
> gains
> solitaire solutions, which can hardly be used as an
> example for wider
> application.
Let's not take this "democratization too far". I defer
to the engineers and architects. They deal with
gravity and other realities I am not properly equipped
to make all the decision about. They have an
indispensible role.
I have been in planning sessions where stakeholders
asked for unreal requests, would not have been willing
to pay the true costs of their decisions, and just
plain didn't do any preparatory self-education to even
correctly understand the issues they were asked to
decide about. The public doesn't get a vote on the
electrical system specifications; they don't get a
vote on the structural capacities of the materials
needed; they don't get a vote on a lot of the
realities -- JUST LIKE NOW EVERYWHERE. Personalization
issues: dwelling unit facade materials, color schemes,
textures, interior wall layouts, are all open to
considerable flexibility. Believe me: the residents in
Trump Towers, some of the most expensive real estate
in New York City do not get a vote on the plumbing
pipe layouts, or electrical routing, or HVAC materials
specifications, and THEY LIKE IT THAT WAY.
> So besides the aspects of design layout and
> technology, we have even
> to
> consider HOW adress the different groups of our'
> worlds population -
> which could be potential inhabitants and users of
> PALACES/ Ziggurats.
>
> All the best for this time,
>
> Juergen Paulussen
>
> juergen.paulussen@xxxxxx
>
From the Zagros mountains in Iran to the cosmopolitan
city of Beijing, people from 72 nations have been
visiting my website and carrying away ideas. Palaces
are designed to be replicatable: make one and you know
how to make the second and the third. Palaces
technologies are designed to be recyclable: the forms
used on one floor are used on the other floors, than
used next door and next door. Palaces are designed to
be exportable: Once a knowledgebase has been built up,
teams can move from place to place replicating the
work they have learned, substituting local indigenous
materials where appropriate, importing modest amounts
of strategic materials not locally available.
There are no major communications barriers: I use a
computer with a CD-ROM from Japan, a motherboard from
Taiwan, a hard drive from China. My website is 90%
pictures which transend language barriers. Everything
has been simplified down to the point that untrained
unskilled workers can be doing productive building
work with 15 minutes of demonstrations how its done.
I have showed, on public internet accessable website
how China can replace its smoky carbon-based fuels
with clean and join Kyoto Treaty without any
impairment. I have shown how China can house its
population, its entire population, in cities which
need not one stick of lumber or one single steel
rebar, using materials it manufactures and sells cheap
to the world. I have shown India, USA, and 69 other
countries.
I am not seeing any difficulty reaching or addressing
the different groups of our world's population. I have
received valuable feedback from the groups contacted
so far. I acknowledge that I have to restructure the
presentation, put in a table of contents, make it
available on CD-ROM with live links to internet
websites holding confimation data.
Since February, 2003, I have made continuous progress
in adding to the presentation details. It takes 9
months for a baby to be born, so if it takes a bit
longer to prepare the housing for the 4 billion babies
waiting to be born in the near future, I think the
progress is moving as fast as people can assimilate
the ideas.
As always, thanks for your timely input of comments.
by the way: I posted a news item the other day
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Palaces4People/message/103
Date: Thu Oct 9, 2003 11:51 pm
Subject: Today: China Floods News -- 7,000 homes have
been seriously damaged, and some 900 houses have
collapsed
IT would take 8 Palaces to replace those 900 collapsed
house, another 59 Palaces to move those families from
the damaged 7,000 homes. Got any idea who I talk to,
or send the CD-ROM to. I noticed the government was
offering $25 per person in rebuilding assistance...
=====
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Sincerely, Lion Kuntz
Santa Rosa, California, USA
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Palaces4People/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Palaces4Japan/
http://www.ecosyn.us/ecocity/Proposal/Palaces_For_The_People.html
http://www.ecosyn.us/ecocity/Challenges/Asia_Floods/Wet/All_Wet.html
http://www.ecosyn.us/Interesting/
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