Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.10.2007, Side 7

12 | Reykjavík Grapevine | Issue 16 2007 | Article
Olof Kolte is a Swedish designer and environmental-
ist. He recently gave a lecture at the Sjónlist 2007 Art
and Design Awards conference in Akureyri, where
he explained his opinion that design, rather than so-
phisticated technology, can help achieve sustainabil-
ity in the modern world. A Grapevine journalist sat
down with Kolte to learn how his concerns about
radical climate change, uncontrolled consumption
of non-renewable resources and urban sprawl make
him compelled to communicate this message to
people.
You are a teacher, and a civil engineer, and an
artist, and a designer... How did you come to
think about sustainability issues?
I think I came across the term as such for the first
time when I was studying at the Royal College of
Art in London. We did a project there called, “A
journey into sustainable furniture design,” and had
a lot of guest lecturers. The one who gave the great-
est impression was Edwin Datchefski, he made a
workshop with us. At that time I really enjoyed it but
never thought much about it before I started teach-
ing a course in packaging design at Lund University.
I was given no instructions on how I was supposed
to teach it, so I went to study trips with my students;
you know, Lund is called the Mecca of packaging,
we have a lot of packaging industries there. Once I
became familiar with this industry, what struck me
most was that we, as consumers, don’t realise its
scale. But once you are in a factory, you realise how
much material is being used for something seem-
ingly so trivial. And that was the beginning of my
interest.
I started to read and I realised that it was not
only the packaging industry, but rather the whole
pattern of human activities that is affected. In the
future, we need to re-learn how to develop prod-
ucts and services with limited natural resources in
mind. Today, most natural resources are traded as
commodities, if you can pay the price for it, use it
or/and process it, and sell the product on the mar-
ket. The consequences and the bill for the affect on
the eco-system are picked up by society.
Many destructive activities, use of ending natu-
ral resources or misuse of renewable resources, are
sanctioned by nations or international agreements,
many times under the blessing of “free trade”. But
very few people seem to care that those resources
are limited. You begin to understand that most of
what we’ve been doing is really destructive. Howev-
er, what is even more important is that not only are
most of the activities destructive per se, they have
been expanded to a global scale.
But don’t you think that the solutions you’re
suggesting are good enough for the developed
Western community, but may not be suited for
the developing world? Third-world countries
often cannot afford expensive solutions, be it
technology or design, and in a way they are
forced to pollute…
You know, it has been said that “third-world poverty
is a luxury we can no longer afford.” It is true that
in these countries people are left with no choice:
environmental issues are the last thing one thinks
about if you are struggling to feed your family. It’s
difficult to tackle this challenge since the distribu-
tion of assets on the planet is quite unfair, to say
the least. We in “the West” are extremely bad role
models, and we are behaving totally irresponsible
in that we are selling the new rising nations our old
technology.
At your lecture, you spoke about the Internet
as the “driving force in the explosion of pro-
ductivity” in the modern world. Is it a good or
an evil from the sustainability standpoint?
Back in history, a written word was a means of any
activity’s organisation. You can well imagine that at
that time writing systems were used to regulate the
division of a harvest, or to transfer messages to peo-
ple, or to announce upcoming events. You could
have passed the information to people; you could
have educated them, or enabled them, to make use
of those opportunities they had not been aware
of otherwise. But simply writing has never been as
much influential as the Internet: it’s an extremely
powerful means of communication. When used in
an efficient way, it can encompass an incredible
mass of information.
There is a famous quote from Bill Gates, one of
pioneers in this field, who believed that “with the
Internet, we would be able to work at home and
would not have to travel that much.” However, the
development of the Internet has paved the way for
low-cost airlines and thus exploded the number of
journeys by air; so instead of reducing the amount
of travel it increased it. Online shopping generates
a lot of extra packaging and thus lots of waste; just
think that we are only at the very beginning! On the
other hand, email is a good aspect as it saves lots
of paper used in the traditional mail. Overall, when
you introduce something new, it can be used in dif-
ferent ways; everything has its side effects. History
teaches us that when we introduce new technol-
ogy to solve one problem, it creates 10 new, so its
use has to be selective in order to avoid it. I know
it’s difficult to reverse the use of a technology, if
people have gotten used to it. They will be upset,
but it nonetheless needs to be done.
But it’s difficult to refuse just like this, almost
impossible, I would say. I remember the same thing
you’ve said about internal combustion engines,
that life can be good without them. However, we
are so very dependent on them that if we stop us-
ing them overnight the whole economic system
will collapse. Would you say it should be a gradual
change or a drastic jump from one condition into
another?
I would say we need a shift in the working of
every planning authority; they play a key role in
this development. In the way we plan the society,
we determine what kind of transport systems we
use. We need to plan densely, and with great variety
so that you won’t need to use a car. The necessity of
the individual automobile should be reduced, and
wise ecological planning could help us here. Most
of what has been built since 1930s is rather poor in
its quality. Before World War II, they did not plan the
cities for the individual automobile as the system
of transportation, so now we have to correct it, tear
some parts of the cities apart and construct anew.
But what about the architectural value then?
The downtowns of many European capitals,
like Prague, are masterpieces of architecture
and a priceless cultural heritage of mankind. I
simply refuse to understand how one can tear
this beauty apart.
No, European city centres are fairly well planned.
Have you heard about urban sprawl? It is a term
for low-dense, poorly planned construction of new
buildings around our towns. Big parts of Reykjavík
are planned like this. There is no way that you can
introduce a cost-efficient public transportation sys-
tem in this kind of urbanisation. We need to build
with high density if we want to cater for good infra-
structure and preserve soil. We will need farmland
close to cities. We will have to produce food locally.
The American author James Howard Kunstler has
said that “the age of the three-thousand mile Cae-
sar salad is over.” We need to re-establish regional
economic interdependencies, as regional networks
have been totally destroyed by hypermarkets and
big-scale retail chains. In this time in history, there
is no excuse for letting big corporations operate on
the simple logic of generating “cash, full stop” deter-
mine the fate of the human kind.
So how are you going to make them listen?
I guess it’s about education, everything comes back
to it. First, you need to inform people, and then you
can only hope that they, based on this information,
will start to act. You must then use your power as a
citizen, professional, political creature to influence
the development. We all have to be prepared to put
our vote for someone who we think will create this
change, and perhaps not for the simple solutions
offered by short-term thinking political opportun-
ists. Unfortunately, most of the politicians today are
of this kind.
We want to be optimistic, and this feature sits
deep inside the human character. Generally, we
should be prepared to stop using destructive tech-
nology such as the internal combustion engine,
and scale down all of our activities. Afterwards, we
need to encourage developing countries not to
follow our path and jump over the industrial age
based on fossil fuel. This can help scale down the
environmental impact dramatically and perhaps
save us.
And will it bring us hope?
Let’s hope that we will see the starting point of
some intelligent thinking!
Text by Alena Krasovskaya
Can We Do This Indefinitely?
“In the future, we need to
re-learn how to develop
products and services
with limited natural re-
sources in mind.”
“Have you heard about urban sprawl? It is a term
for low-dense, poorly planned construction of new
buildings around our towns. Big parts of Reykjavík
are planned like this.” Olof Kolte explains Reykjavík
city planning. Photo by GAS
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