Alien Geometry Invades Kigali, Africa

Our generation has willingly chosen to promote and build anxiety-producing buildings, while at the same time destroying what is left of life-enhancing geometries. The media is successful in convincing the rest of the world to import these designs into the remotest regions of the world, and to erase their own architectural traditions. The developing world has been sold the image of anxiety-producing architecture as the key to modernization, and as being essential for social and economic progress. – Nikos A. Salingaros, Twelve Lectures on Architecture, page161

Kigali’s master plan. Illustration: World Architecture News

The “starchitects” and their soldiers (with Le Corbusier as their evil idol) are about to invade the very core of Africa, dropping silent bombs of terror and anxiety onto the African landscape. This is now to be done by altering Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. Their mission is to make the city part of the global monoculture of economy and architecture, reducing Africans to being subservients of corporate laws and structures. To fulfill this process they have to eradicate all traditional African architecture, ripping the heart out of the African soul.

Africans, please revolt against this crime against your heritage and character. Don’t allow yourselves to be enslaved again by white man’s dogmas — this time in the evil shape of Modernism.

Further reading:

• Life and the Geometry of the Environment
• Cognitive Dissonance and Non-adaptive Architecture: Seven Tactics for Denying the Truth 
• Nikos Salingaros on Peer to Peer Urbanism. Indeed a very interesting interview!
• Vil forandre Rwandas hovedstad
• Slik blir de nye WTC-tårnene

This article is published at The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia on April 28, 2011.

Pocket Neighborhoods

Pocket Neighborhoods
Creating Small-Scale Community in a Large-Scale World
By Ross Chapin
Taunton Press, 2011, 224 pp., $30 hardcover

Wow! A whole book about pattern 37, House Cluster. This is fantastic!!!! Read about the book here. Visit the homepage of Pocket Neighborhoods here.

Pocket Neighborhoods are groups of houses or apartments gathered around a shared open space such as a garden, courtyard, or pedestrian street. Courtesy of Taunton Press.

Further reading:

• Pocket Neighborhoods: Small-Scale Living in a Large-Scale World. In Energy Bulletin here.
• GRASS PROPAGANDA FOR CHILDREN

How a once nutritious grain was transformed into something unhealthy to eat: the story of refined white rice

The time we spend with organic rice farmers in the Philippines leads us to think much more about what we eat. It turns out that about half of the food we humans consume comes from just three main grains: wheat, corn, and rice. While we get half of our calories from these cereals, we get considerably less than half of our nutrients.

But the story of the modern grain, we discover, is even more insidious than just this. And so in this entry, we share the story of how a once nutritious grain was transformed into something unhealthy to eat. Our tale includes corporations, technological “modernization,” global trade, and culture.

We focus on rice in this current entry (leaving corn and wheat to future travels).

Read the whole article here.

Industrialized rice as the unhealthy component

Videre lesning:

• Molecular evidence for a single evolutionary origin of domesticated rice

The Future of Architecture

While the corporations and the starchitects (walking hand in hand) try to sell us "freedom" through techno-utopia, using images of anti-nature-architecture as the future of sustainability, like Masdar City, we still have teachers showing us the Timeless Way back to Earth. One of them is David Sheen, the creator of the documentary film First Earth: Uncompromising Ecological Architecture. In the following movie you can see him at his TEDx-Talk in Johannesburg, South Africa, discussing the true future of sustainable architecture. This future is of course timeless, and what can be more timeless than earth, a fundamental part of human biophilia since the down of man.

Further reading:

• Wool & Seaweed Makes Sustainable Brick Stronger. Surely this brick can give excellent moisture regulating properties too. 
• Meco’Press Machine Makes LEGO Building Bricks From Mud. Perrocheau and his small team have designed a hydraulic press that transforms ordinary mud into structural building blocks. Since 2008 the team has distributed the Meco’press in France and Belgium, and they have recently seen an overwhelming interest from organizations looking to build in developing nations. The ingenious press offers a green building material solution that can function within the constraints of devastated areas. 
• Green Home Building
• Earth in Chile

This article is published at The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia on April 21, 2011.

Lena, en spøkelsesby?

Det er vanskelig å forstå hvorfor Østre Toten kommune ønsker å kopiere fadesen til Gjøvik ved å etablere et kjøpesenter i utkanten av sentrum, som drenerer sentrum for livskraft og utarmer lokale kjøpmenn. Den siste i en lang rekke som har måttet trekke inn årene i Gjøvik sentrum er A. Hasle Jernvare, en butikk med historie og sjel. Er det noe man ikke finner fnugg av på et kjøpesenter er det sjel og atmosfære!

Store kjøpesentre er avleggs og i strid med den internasjonale trenden kalt ”New Urbanism”. Jeg vil anbefale kommunen å sette seg inn i de kodene ”New Urbanism” benytter, en god start kan være nettstedet ”New Urban Network” på newurbannetwork.com. Disse er også beskrevet i Nikos A. Salingaros siste bok, med tittelen Twelve Lectures on Architecture.

Vi har også noe å lære av de gamle romerne og deres tabernaer. Her vil jeg vise til min kronikk hos The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia på permaculture.org.au, med tittelen The Ancient Taberna in a Future World. Det er “tabernasentre” some er framtida, ikke kjøpesentre!

Til slutt vil jeg ønske Lena Handelsstands forening lykke til i kampen mot disse planene!

Lena stasjon ved nedlagte Skreiabanen

Innlegget har også vært på trykk som leserbrev i Oppland Arbeiderblad

FN: Bærekraftig landbruk eneste farbare vei!

Etter Pernille Huseby's, politisk redaktør i Nationen, famøse artikkel 29. mars (Les Oikos svar her), er det befriende at til og med FN nå anerkjenner at økologisk og småskala landbruk er den eneste farbare veien framover. 

There is now widespread recognition that a rapid shift from industrial monoculture to sustainable farming is needed to save the climate and guarantee food security for all. - Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

Les artikkelen: Sustainable Agriculture Urgently Needed, UN Agencies Say.

Videre lesning:

• Knowledge that grows on the fields: Bottom-up approaches for agricultural research
• The Soul of Soil: A soil-building guide for master gardeners and farmers
• It Takes a Community of Soil Microbes to Protect Plants from Disease
• A ‘New’ Discovery – Soluble Nitrogen Destroys Soil Carbon
• The Looming Food Crisis and the ‘Food 2030′ Report
• Soil Carbon – Can it Save Agriculture’s Bacon?
• Organic Farming – Can It Feed The World?
• Feeding the world: it’s not about quantity
• The War on Africa’s Family Farmers
• Greenhouse Gases from Forest Soils
• Soil – Our Financial Institution
• The Story of Soil
• Savory Institute

Superblåbær

Det finnes ikke grenser for hva blåbær er godt for, denne superbæra i norske skoger. Vi kan simpelthen ikke få nok blåbær. Enda en artikkel, denne gangen fra Science Daily, bekrefter de mange helsefremmende egenskapene til denne blå universalbæra.

 — The benefits of blueberry consumption have been demonstrated in several nutrition studies, more specifically the cardio-protective benefits derived from their high polyphenol content. Blueberries have shown potential to have a positive effect on everything from aging to metabolic syndrome. Recently, a researcher from Texas Woman's University (TWU) in Denton, TX, examined whether blueberries could play a role in reducing one of the world's greatest health challenges: obesity.

Les hele artikkelen her.

Barn og passiv røyking

Tobakksrøyk som inhaleres (hovedstrømsrøyk) og tobakksrøyk som siver ut i rommet (sidestrømsrøyk) er ulikt sammensatt. Ved passiv røyking utsettes barnet hovedsakelig for stoffene i sidestrømsrøyken. Sidestrømsrøyken dannes ved lavere temperatur enn hovedstrømsrøyken. Konsentrasjonen av noen av de mest skadelige stoffene er høyere i sidestrømsrøyken. Et barn som daglig utsettes for passiv røyking kan bl.a. få i seg betydelige mengder kreftfremkallende stoffer.

Barn som vokser opp i hjem med voksne som røyker utvikler oftere astma enn andre barn. Barn med astma som blir eksponert for røyking, får dessuten hyppigere og sterkere anfall og blir oftere innlagt på sykehus.

Sigarettrøyk får lungene til å fungere dårligere, og gjør barnet mer mottakelig for infeksjoner, som forkjølelse, mellomørebetennelse, og luftveisinfeksjoner som bronkitt, lungebetennelse og bronkiolitt.

Bronkiolitt (betennelse i de minste luftrørgreinene) er den vanligste grunnen til sykehusinnleggelse blant barn i Norge. Væskende mellomørebetennelse er den hyppigste årsaken til kirurgiske inngrep og nedsatt hørsel. Barn utsatt for passiv røyking har høyere risiko for sykehusinnleggelse.

Barn som blir utsatt for passiv røyking kan få økt risiko for lungesykdommer og hjerte- og karsykdommer senere i livet. Barn som blir utsatt for kreftfremkallende stoffer via passiv røyking, kan dessuten ha økt risiko for å utvikle kreft senere i livet. – Alle sitat fra Helsedirektoratet

I tillegg kommer at tobakksrøyk effektivt tilintetgjør de gode luftionene, som er viktige for en rekke  kroppsfunksjoner. Les mer i utredningen “Ionization and Air Quality- A Technological Study”, som kan lasts ned her.

Se også det 18'de bygningningsbiologiske prinsipp: Med en behagelig eller nøytral lukt, uten utgassende toksiner og giftstoffer. Dette må være et opplagt krav til innemiljøet!

Les også denne artikkelen angående hvordan passiv røyking skadar intelligens og læreevne hos barn.

Isolasjon

• Aerogel
• Bomull
• Cellulosefiber
• Fåreull
• Halm
• Hampefiber
• Kokosfiber
• Kork
• Kutterspon
• Lettklinker
• Lettleire
• Linfiber
• Massivtre
• Mineralull
• Never
• Perlitt
• Porebetong
• Skumbetong
• Skumglass
• Torv
• Transparent isolering
• Trefiberisolasjon
• Trefiberplater
• Treullplater
• Vakuumisolasjon
• Vermiculitt

Nude Protest for the Environment

A nude woman using her body to raise awareness of the destruction of the Earth. Photo: Exey Panteleev