At the Crossroads of Sustainability: The Natural Recompositioning of Architecture

It is widely acknowledged that the mantra of sustainability has triggered a fundamental reversal in the core of design practice: If the original purpose of architecture was to protect humans from the destructive actions of nature,today it should protect nature from the damaging actions of humans. But sustainable design is far from being a coherent body of fully totalized ideas:it has a broad spectrum of disputing interpretations that oscillate between the deterministic models of energy control and technological efficiencies, and the moralistic and romantic approaches that attempt to see in nature and natural processes a fundamental way to de-escalate the global urban footprint and its associated patterns of consumption. However, mainstream green design has been evolving by progressively absorbing the narrative of deep ecology. Nature has been being integrated into architecture literally, by inserting vegetation onto buildings; digitally, by bringing environmental data into the design process (climate records, wind streams, sun rotation and air flows are computed, modelled and effectually shape architectures), and transcendentally, by claiming that sustainable architecture nurtures “the existing and evolving connections between spiritual and material consciousness.” The acknowledgement of the inexorable affiliation between architecture and the environment is, of course, not exactly new. What is distinctive today is the reification of the role of nature in architecture as an ideological stance, now totally intertwined with state-of-art data processing and the market-driven tools brought by Natural Capitalism. This paper will examine emblematic “green” buildings produced by leading architects such as Pelli Clarke Pelli, William McDonough, Stefano Boeri, Norman Foster and BIG in the light of Tim Morton’s, Slavoj Zizek and Bruno Latour’s critique of nature. It will illustrate how, despite being able to successfully forge new creative freedoms by exploring hybridizations between the domains of design and science, sustainability’s self-righteous “naturalistic” narrative is enabling a vision of the architect as an “expert manager” focused on producing projects of ecologic “beautification” while assumed to be “saving the world,” effectively depoliticizing the architectural practice. Nevertheless, these examples attest that there is a vast and fertile field of ideas to be explored and in this regard it is important to underline that we are still in the embryonic outset of the engagement of architecture with sustainability

Intervenções psicossociais em comunidades: contribuições da psicanálise Psychosocial interventions in communities: psychoanalyses contributions

Este artigo propõe uma reflexão de cunho teórico-metodológico sobre as formas de intervenção psicossocial em comunidades e as contribuições que a psicanálise freudo-lacaniana pode oferecer a esse campo. Para tanto, nosso ponto de partida será, além de uma revisão bibliográfica sobre o tema na psicologia social comunitária, a nossa experiência profissional e acadêmica. Nosso objetivo é fundamentar uma proposta praxiológica de intervenção com comunidades e para isso utilizaremos alguns conceitos e ideias relevantes pautadas na psicanálise que nos possibilitam refletir sobre a prática interventiva dos psicólogos e também de outros profissionais que atuam na área social. Neste texto dialogamos com autores como Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Zizek e Chantal Mouffe.<br>This article proposes a theoretical-methodological reflection on the forms of psychosocial intervention in communities and the contributions that Freud-Lacanian psychoanalyzes can offer to this field. Therefore we will have a bibliographic revision on the topic according to the Community Social Psychology and our professional and academic experience. However our objective is to found a praxiological proposal of intervention in communities and, to do so, we will use some concepts and relevant ideas based in Psychoanalyses, which enable the reflection on the intervention practices of the psychologist, and also of other professionals who work in the social area. In this text, we dialogue with authors like: Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Zizek e Chantal Mouffe