Categorie: history
It’s time to shine a light on an old technique: shutters. (No, I’m not following in the footsteps of Lowtech Magazine, but sometimes our paths cross).Shutters are as old as building itself, even predating the invention of glass. There was no glass back then, so how do you keep the…
Inspired by that book from the 1860s, I was reminded of my own youth in the 1960s and of the bike I used to ride to the secondary school (HBS), which had been established 100 years earlier. Back then, I thought that bicycles must have always existed. I couldn’t imagine…
How long do buildings last? There’s little scientifically sound to say on the matter, and there are hardly any studies that have fundamentally examined it. Like the question: when does a building lose its primary function as a dwelling when no maintenance is carried out? In other words, when is…
I’m not much into a kind of spiritual approach, at least, as a beta scientist I’m not sure how to deal with that. I’m more into physics, what can we prove (or at least: what we can’t change…). On a fundamental level that is, not within limited system boundaries where…
Last week, I watched the film about Oppenheimer, and that piece of history made me realize that what we are experiencing now is, in fact, a kind of (nuclear) arms race: who can grow the fastest, who can protect themselves the most, to acquire wealth, and who can extract the…
Climate change gets all the attention, but at least as problematic is Biodiversity loss, if not even more dramatic. After all, we ourselves are one of those endangered species…. That there is less attention, Miles Richardson thought, also lies in profiling, and a visualization of the problem that could catch…
Everything used to be better, in former times, the older generations think. The Youngsters don’t know the old days so think it’s all better now, that’s their standard. It’s always a bit more nuanced, of course. But let’s turn it around, question the elder with regard to the younger standard:…
Time for yet another ‘episode’ in my series on ‘money’. I am trying to ‘understand’ things, that’s how this episode regarding money should be read. A rediscovered old research sheds some light in the darkness. Virtually everything today is expressed in money, and everything is also measured in money: even…
Just recently, in May, Jaime Lerner passed away. He more or less invented sustainable urban development. A little tribute. Everything has to be sustainable or circular these days, including the cities. Now, is there a city that has already applied many of these principles, where there is something to learn?…
Or: is this the 1,5 degree economy? As the walls fell, back in 1989, the world was in turmoil, and the perspective on a lot of things changed. Not the least the (declining) fear for a nuclear war of course. But even more this kick-started an unprecedented belief in free…
