What persists through time? Benchmarking on the remains from previous civilizations (Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge), I think contemporary sculpture parks will be one of that bizarre residue of contemporary times. In the US creates one can find these esoteric creations are almost in every state from Storm Kind (New York) to DeCordova(Massachusetts). These parks become handy when we need to satisfy our art urges in a socially-distant way in the time of the pandemic. This week I got to finally visit Art Omni (sculpture park next to Hudson, NY). The highlight was the ReActor- a habitable sculpture by architects Alex Schweder + Ward Shelley that rotates based on inhabitants movement.
*On sculpture parks in the US
We tend to think of our buildings as eternal. In anticipation of finishing new flashy architectural marvels, we tend to neglect the maintenance and ignore factoring the erosion of time. This week I have attended a lecture (virtual) on the renovation of the United Nations. It took 6 years and $2 billion to update the building that is only 70 years old. But this renovations also demonstrates how drastically the world has changed. Across all the rooms the layers of nicotine had to be scrubbed (remember, humans, used to smoke inside). All in-build into furniture ashtrays are replaced by electric plugs, allowing visitors to trade cigarettes for laptops. The fluorescent lights that used to be the epitome of modernity were replaced by more efficient and safer LEDs. The new building broke the walls of the offices in favour of open offices that reduced heating and air-conditioning costs by 50% (1). The renovation of UN building is a captivating physical manifestation of shifting values of humans. Our values evolve, and usually for the better.
Further reading: process documented in UNITED NATIONS AT 70: RESTORATION AND RENEWAL | Rizzoli
“Egypt’s largest pyramid took only 20 years to complete. The Parthenon, a simple post-and-lintel building but one possessing perhaps the best-ever proportions required only 15 years. And the astonishing Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, a relatively light structure deriving it’s impact from enormous vaults, did not take even five years to complete. “ In contrast centuries could elapse between the laying of the foundation stone and consecration of many European cathedrals: construction of Notre Dame took nearly two centuries, St Vitus, dominating the Prague Castle, was begun in 1344 and was completed only in 1929. “Materials and Dematerialization” by Vaclav Smil
Are we using more or fewer materials than we did in the past? How much do we use per year? What are the most popular resources that we need? Will we run out of resources? It is baffling to me that in the age of ability to pull any statistic under a couple of seconds I am largely ignorant of the overall fundamentals of contemporary civilization. In the search for answers, I have turned to a brilliant book by Vaclav Smil “Materials and Dematerialization”. To say that I gained a new appreciation for all the materials that I use daily would be an understatement. Here is an interesting fact from our everyday life:
“The car I drive to work is made of around 2,600 pounds of steel, 800 pounds of plastic, and 400 pounds of light metal alloys. The trip from my house to the office is roughly four miles long, all surface streets, which means I travel over some 15,000 tons of concrete each morning.” *
I had no idea that the most important man-made material is concrete, both in terms of the amount we produce each year and the total mass we’ve laid down. Concrete is the foundation (literally) for the massive expansion of urban areas of the past several decades, which has been a big factor in cutting the rate of extreme poverty in half since 1990. And we use so much concrete. China used more cement in the last three years than the US used in the entire 20th century. Let this information be digested. In 100 years U.S. had used 4.5 gigatons of cement. In 3 years China had used 6.6 gigatons of cement.
I am surprised that even though we make more with less, but we are so energy intensively hungry and we consume so much more than our “minimal production” has almost no impact.
As we try to come up with solutions for more sustainable living, it is baffling to realize how little we actually know about our current state of consumption and production.