We the undersigned represent the architectural students of Europe- we are presently exploring the issue of “sustainable living” in Denmark and we are demanding that the US government change its environmental policy, switch to renewable energy sources and support the Kyoto agreement. We hope you take this seriously and do your best to make the world more sustainable and peaceful.

Well, if he is, then so am I! And I’m proud. I really wanted to write something about this lecture because I was quite appalled that people were so rude, and unwelcoming, and that they thought it was okay to talk and snigger whilst somebody else was talking. For me, sustainability begins with people, and a respect for one another. I am aware this may not be the general view, but if we are ‘saving the planet’, and ‘trying to decrease our ecological footprint’ then who are we doing this for, I suggest that it is for future generations, for people, and so perhaps ‘saving the planet’ should begin with saving our awareness of one another (refer to Heidegger) and showing some respect, in the here and now. I was interested to gather other people’s views on the lecture, unfortunately most opinions seemed to focus upon the lecturer, rather than the content, which is a pity. One comment was that Anton showed the most opposition to what Rolf was saying, that Anton “tried to break down the wall”. I disagree, I think perhaps this was just misunderstanding. I agree with Anton that building a mud house, or a straw bale house is not intrinsically linked with being a hippy, and doing folk dancing. In Europe I think it is perfectly possible to build these houses in a suburban neighbourhood, or in a rural area, miles from anywhere. However Rolf came to talk on eco-villages. Eco-villages by their nature are communities. People who chose to live in communities are making a statement about what they value – this is usually people, (the ‘glue’ of community) and frequently the earth and nature as well. As a result of caring for the people, this warmth gets extended to the environment that sustains the people, and hence these people turn to a vernacular architecture - an architecture that works in harmony with its locality. The architecture they build happens to be ‘sustainable’, but I would suspect that few communities gather to build architecture (apart from crazy architecture-smitten students) but rather to form a network of people. And now I agree with Rolf, spirituality is intrinsic to community, but not in the sense of religion. I have friends who have lived and grown a family at Findhorn, the Scottish community pictured in the lecture, and I am a meditator. These people are not ‘followers’, these centres are not freaky cults. People are free to choose whether and what to participate in, and many people find their individual spirituality expressed in many different ways. The connection of the community comes from the fact that they all do respect one another, and are interested in growth – this is the spirituality, just simple being and letting others be. Now please can we try that next time one of these ‘freaks’ comes to very kindly offer us their knowledge?

Here is a profile of one of our tutors, Michael Prytula, a person who came to share his sustainable experience with EASA people through the “Autonomous structure” workshop. Michael is a full time teacher in Berlin Technical University lecturing about sustainable issues through seminars and in design studios. He heard about EASA003 – Sustainable Living – from our German NC Jost and became interested enough to ask, “Can I do a workshop?” and ended up here with us to tutor his one week workshop. Michael started to answer the question of what an autonomous structure is, by mentioning the German word “Autarkie”, which actually was often used by fascist groups in 1930’s. “Autarkie”, meaning “physically independent” is a keyword of Michael’s workshop and doesn’t have a direct translation in English. The word we use in English for it is “autonomy” which in German means “being self deciding and master of your own”. Clearing this point we’ll go on with the word autonomous in our article. The aim of the workshop and an autonomous structure is about decentralizing of infrastructure and to improve the city, suburbs and landscape. Michael is considering designing cell structures that imitate the principle of their function, as if in a town of eco-system. He is talking about copying the principles of nature. To him the “concept for sustainable city” should present results. The needs for this in such a city can be taken in two main points: first as “resource productivity” which is mainly about recycling, and circulating systems and the second is “resource efficiency” which is about the benefits received from them. About the present situation, Michael says “People are getting better and better but sustainable living is not as high as it could be and must improve a lot. Education is needed for this”. He pauses to contemplate the question of what an example of a sustainable city could be today, and says that the examples differ a lot. “Indians can have quite a poor consuming pattern. There it is a closed system. Friberg on the other hand can be mentioned with its transportation, and here in Denmark a lot of bikes are used for transportation which is also pretty sustainable.” Coming back to EASA003, we asked Michael his opinion of how EASA is progressing about the sustainable living issue and he said “workshops are disappointing, as I see. There’s so much to do, so much to do after. Participants don’t have a long-term perspective or maybe political and social experience, because they are young. With this they are free and open-minded. People are sincere here, but more branches should have come together: geologists, biologists, ecologists, maybe economists. Something to publish would be good to reach more people and to get responses in all countries.” Lastly we asked him “if you had only one wish what would that be?” Michael replied “making people happy” and we asked whether he is succeeding and finally he said he is quite good with his life, with his girlfriend, he is now in Denmark, with nice people, the sun is shining…

welcome to our first online steps of recording .. that was my initial approach for this article to let you know what happens in easa003 in denmark .. but right now, duty calls and i have to journalisticly approach danish beaches, the surprisingly warm water and those danish natural beauties. Paraply will inform you on the everything going on here, though and we will try to post all Umbrellas / Paraplys online as well for your reading pleasure .. meanwhile enjoy pictures of this years EASA on www.freigeist.info/easa003 ... enjoy .. you know we do here !

wwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaayyyyyyyhhhhhhhaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy

we are here 450 crazy people on for work, party, making, messing, dancing, drinking, loving???

umbrella is (y)our "communication tool"

use it, tell each other and the world what amazing, funny, crazy, odd, life changing things are going on here in denmark

what´s the objective of this UMBRELLA? to be as creative as possible, develop new ways of communicating to ourselves and the world what exactly we are doing here

"sustainable living" what is it? we will discover some new stuff over these upcoming days. tell us things as they happen. we will do our best to tell that to the world.

does anybody know when 'tam tam' will be online? id like to read the sunbrella articles before i forgot everything... may someone post a link to the 'tam tam' or 'mama' site.

thx

would be great to have all the stories here...

jerome?