Den adaptive morfogenesens tid er forbi ved elvestedet Grythengen

Hvorfor det gikk kalt for herr Fossemøllens øyensten var fordi det mekaniske mennesket som vokste fram etter krigen ikke tok hensyn til helheten, men begynte å kaste elementer rundt i landskapet uten først og fremst å tenke på hvordan dette ville styrke Grythengens kulturbærere. Ikke en eneste stein skulle blitt flyttet, ikke en stolpe satt opp, ikke en spiker slått i, uten at man var hundre prosent viss om at dette ville gagne stedets kulturbærere om 1000 år.

"JEG ELSKER DETTE STEDET; FOR MEG ER DET BEGYNNELSEN OG SLUTTEN PÅ ALT, OG ALLE ANDRE STEDER FØLES SOM INGENSTEDS." - Harvest

Nå er plassen så herjet av fremmedelementer uten relasjon til stedet, samt at så godt som alle tidligere stedsrelasjoner er brutt, slik at det å skulle være kulturbærer og identitetsvokter blir en sådan sorg at man risikerer å forgå. Ingen hadde noen som helst rett til å legge en eneste stein til byrden for stedets kulturbærere, og pumpehuset er med sin plassering en voldsom strukturødeleggende transformasjon. For ikke å snakke om alle plastrørene som skal graves ned, for at de subeksurbane skal kunne fortsette å leve uverdige, anti-urbane og anti-rurale liv. En VillageTown ville vært en mye mer human løsning på forurensningsproblematikken og de enorme utfordringer menneskeheten nå står overfor!

Alle Totens eksurbane og subeksurbane kunne fått plass i en VillageTown. Bilen bør forbeholdes bøndene, slik den opprinnelige visjonen var for Henry Ford. Det er fraværet av urbanisme som har ødelagt den norske landsbygda!

To get there at all, the first thing is for people to grasp what the main problem is. The creation of a world that is beautiful and in harmony, adequate for the people who live in it, supporting both the personal and the community, urban life, plant life, animals and rivers and all the world we treasure, can only happen if what takes place in the formation of buildings and towns is a continuous unfolding of the whole. That is the way that nature works, and of course necessarily so. For thousands of years all traditional architecture also went forward like that. Briefly it may be called “adaptive morphogenesis.” It’s an adaptive process which allows the whole to guide the formation of the parts created within in it, so it all fits together comfortably. It allows minut adaptations at many points going forward.

The system of planning, regulation, design, and production that we have inherited from the relatively early part of the 20th century makes all of that impossible. CNU is a strongly motivated and in part highly sensible way of addressing this problem. It has arisen from highly sensible people, architects, who are now in a panic because they see the problem, want to do something about it, don’t really know what to do about it, and so they try to hark back to history and historical forms. Their motive is completely understandable, but their means cannot succeed, because they hope to do this within the same technical means of production that are producing the most far-out and absurd postmodern concoctions. Harmonious order cannot be produced by copying the shapes of the past, although I suppose it might be mildly better than indulging in the very horrific architectural fantasies that are deliberately intended to shock. But at root it is the system of production and the processes of production which are at fault. Until these are changed, architecture cannot get better.

This is a very large undertaking. My main reason for having faith that this insight will gradually become a common insight, and be carried forward in the next few decades, is that both complex systems theory and biology already understand these things in their own ways. But oddly enough, the very large community of architects, planners, and ecologists committed to sustainable architecture, building, and planning have not yet really understood the concept of wholeness. It’s the crux of the well-being of the Earth and also the crux of the well-being of human cultures: and it has always been so. Whether people understand it or not, or are willing to believe it or not, that does explain why I have spent the last 27 years writing these four books. It has taken every ounce of energy I have to put it together in an intellectually comprehensible fashion. - Christopher Alexander

 - The Battle for Ordinary Human Existence in Our Time

Herr Fossemøllens ruindam ved Olterudelva er helt og fullt en del av elva, mens det kommende pumpehuset nedenfor der låven stod helt og fullt ikke er en del av landskapet, og i seg selv er en hån av elvestedet Grythengen, som bugnet over av reint vann i alle bauger og kanter.