Ilteris

Thursday October 5 2006

Project Abstract

I don’t know about you but I was mostly illiterate about the subject when I started this course. It is unbelievable how much I have learned reading just Cradle to Cradle and with the help of collective actions. I think education is vital as it is with everything as with sustainability too. My ideas about the project that I want to create find itself along these boundaries. Questions I am asking to myself:

• How can I build something that raise awareness about how we are ignorant about our living environment?
• How can I educate more people including me and put the information in a more sensible way so that people wouldn’t overwhelmed and contrary to that get interested intentionally?
• There are lots of great ideas in cradle to cradle that are needed to be shared to raise our interests in this subject. Could I find a way to put them in a practice if they are practices, or give people insight about them if they are information?

So starting through those questions I have come up with raw ideas:

• Building visualization systems changable in multiple languages that tells us the daily materials we are using and creating different lists that categorizes their harm etc. (I have found myself most of the time not familiar with the material names, so idea is to make people more educated about materials that are around us so that they can think twice next time. The center point is to make this thing in multiple languages so that people would be more familiar and eager.)
• Building a system following the design guidelines from the book. It doesn’t have to be obviously using alternative power sources etc. but it should highlight the choices in the design and what makes us follow those choices in a way that being shaped in the book: A product doesn’t have to be long-life cycled. We should look at nature and see how it is zero-waste. We should try to be aware of the materials we are using. We should find smart ways to use what we have and not be consumers. (I am thinking to return to book for a list of review of what those design practices are and how much we could apply them for a project like this.) The center point is to make people see that there is ways to build things in smarter ways which eventually make them more sustainable rather than trying to push ourselves to be more sustainable!
• Building a system following the idea of upcycling passport in the book (P.178). A system where we can get information about all of the ingredients in the materials themselves and use this information for the sake of recycle and our own. Kind of barcode where we see where the materials are coming from, how much they are degradable etc.
• I am also interested in using alternative power sources as well. I think it could be great if we come together and make a workshop about how solar panels work and try to put that into action in our circuits. We could benefit from this in the future. Also that would create lots of interests from the rest of the itp as we talked.

Thursday September 17 2006

Seems like I am left the only one to answer.

I wanted to wait until I read the first three chapters of cradle to cradle.

It is so sad to say this, but things are starting to matter to me now. Of course as a nature lover, I tried to avoid throwing away trash to street and being aware of it, being nice to plants and so but when I tried to forward this one step further and discussed what we can do with my friends back in Istanbul, I always stumbled across the counter-argument of there are so many poor people in this country and lots of problems until it comes to sustainability. I can try to justify myself by giving the reason that I am coming from Turkey, a developing country where sustainability is not first priority. When you talk about sustainability or eco-efficiency people laugh at you. Not that they don't agree with me, but most of the time people are trying to find ways to survive in the first hand. I must admit reading through first three chapters of cradle to cradle slapped me in the face. Especially two things; the manifesto of designing things imitating nature as how she runs its business comparing how we try to build products that are only reduced in damage. And secondly, the idea of dumping the world and moving to another planet. A flash is just striked in my head at that point. It is so true that we are not even able to survive in another planet, it is just not natural. This planet created us, how can we expect to survive in another planet. this made me came to the realization of how I was stupid and selfish I was to blind myself. I was always a nature lover, previous years there were so many times I thought about leaving the urban lifestyle I had and went to go some beach where I could deal with soil. Now when I look at this idea, I see how selfish and self-centric it was. I see nature as an espace well yet doing nothing about it to balance its situation thinking it is going to be there forever. It is like having a lover who is waiting for you somewhere else yet when you get bored you can always go and see her but never really care about her. I am sorry for that.

I see this class as a gateway to act in a manner where we should show we can come up with same results of projects with keeping in mind things that we never ever try to bother to think. Things that are important for nature, yet meaning all of us. I am pretty sure that I am going to get away with lots of great information from this class that are going to make me aware and change my approach to lots of things. I am looking forward to doing projects where I can raise voice and make people, yet myself aware and put some solutions to issues we have from a standpoint of not just giving information but step forward to create solutions.

ITP is a good start point.