The architecture of degrowth is a method of designing that doesn’t align architecture with resource consumption and any one nation’s GDP growth but utilizes practices of zero waste, regenerative design, and community planning to navigate and design our cities as we face mounting economic and environmental challenges. This concept was highlighted during the 2019 Oslo Architecture Triennale whose theme was on degrowth and reached growing relevance with the 2021 Pritzker Prize winners, Lacaton + Vassal. Since then, it has seen use within architecture firms, a growing body of literary and cultural work, as well as implementation within movements such as inclusive urbanism and the circular economy which have spurred wider spread usage and testing of its potential both as an urban scheme and alternative economic strategy.
Enough! Architecture for Degrowth
Entitled, “Enough: The Architecture of Degrowth,” The Oslo Architecture Triennale of 2019 took place at a series of venues in the Norwegian capital to see how architecture could respond to the times climate emergency and social division. Degrowth looks to solve this through being an economic model not structured on continual growth, as is seen in today’s neoliberal capitalist economy, but how redesigning our economic models for reduced total energy and material use could work to solve these problems and improve people’s lives through a more fair distribution of resources (Maria Smith et al., 2019).
Degrowth doesn’t denote a single design strategy or aesthetic, but there are a wide range of crossovers that became apparent at the triennale, such as sourcing material first—before design; using recycled materials for bespoke solutions; using alternative forms of fuel; finding ways to use less concrete; developing zero-carbon infrastructure; design buildings that leave no trace; sharing resources without compromise; generating social activity around sharing economies; using natural, biodegradable materials; and finding sustainable forms of tourism (Amy Frearson, 2019).
Waste is Shit! Compost is Degrowth
Striking and successful projects at the Triennale position contradictory ideas in connection with each other to illustrate the inventive nature of degrowth design strategies. This can be seen in the project, “Power Plant(s)!” by Public Works and students at the Oslo School of Architecture. In the project, a waste-to-energy system is employed to convert compost to heat which warms a bench to demonstrate a heating solution that can offer a fossil fuel alternative, Public Works exclaims, “If you can heat a bench, you can heat a house” (Lizzie Crook, 2019). The compost pile, measuring 2 meters in diameter and 2 meters in height can sustain 60-70 degrees Celsius for up to 18 months. At the end of which time, the compost can be utilized for fertilizer and new organic waste can be inputted into the system. This project exhibits the Triennale’s goal of degrowth through downscaling production and consumption, while simultaneously bringing awareness to the unsustainable amount of waste humans produce (Public Works, 2019).
Degrowth’s Public Image Making: Lacaton + Vassal
Evidence of this as a dominant mindset can be read as permeating the mainstream. Degrowth and its tenets of sharing and cooperation can be seen in the work of Lacaton + Vassal, the 2021 Pritzker Prize winner whose practice focuses on private and social housing, which improve by starting with the existing, without ever demolishing anything…no longer replacing, but instead adding, superposing, paying attention to what already exists, and by trusting the inhabitants. (Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, 2021)
Lacaton + Vassal style isn’t focused on inventive forms but it becomes a result of the economic use of materials and construction materials which enable even modest projects to have a liminal and artistic view that elevates modest interventions into refined formal gestures. This use of architecture focuses on making spaces more habitable and aims to improve the well-being of its occupants—rather than using the architecture as a mode of value speculation or wealth accumulation for property owners.
Utilizing bio-climactic design principles, Lacaton + Vassal design “18 Dwellings” in Rixheim, France as an economical, low-energy usage building that supports the aging-in-place population of its occupants. This is done through the inventive use of transformable winter gardens which provide an expandable and adaptable footprint that may be redesigned based on the occupants’ needs. The winter gardens additionally act as a semi-public space that bleeds between dwelling units to contribute to a community of sharing among the residences.
Urban Practices of Degrowth
More than representing an architectural or urban practice, degrowth represents a political agenda, which when coupled with community involvement can radically redesign our built environment. This can be seen in the housing policy in Barcelona which following the 2008 financial crisis had calls for austerity, but its community backlash brought forward projects of degrowth and communal empowerment which focus on processes of the makeshift city, anti-poverty politics, and inter-city solidarity which exhibit small scale, bottom-up projects. These often became realized as communal dinners or urban farms which transformed public spaces (Martínez Alonso, 2022).
Biodiversity of Degrowth
TAKK, a Barcelona-based firm, exhibits this awareness of place and need for degrowth as their work in response to this evolving public policy and community engagement of Barcelona focuses on public projects which are temporary structures. TAKK’s work calls attention to the growing climate uncertainty and works to connect the community with these uncertainties. This can be seen in the Elisava Fall Pavilion which brings attention to the need for ordinary vegetation to sustain and care for soil and biodiversity within cities (Mireia Luzarraga and Alejandro Muino, n.d.).
The installation is a mobile hill constructed of an extruded waffle structure which is infilled with dirt to support a biodiverse arrangement of grasses which, in theory, can roam the city to support the sequestration of CO2 and expand on the city’s ability to support more than humans as it becomes a haven for interspecies cooperation and build the urban environment as an accepting space for all occupants (KoozArch, n.d.).
Radical Futures of Degrowth
Degrowth is radically seen in the work of Zosia Dzierzawska and Charlotte Malterre-Barthes’s graphic novel “Architecture Without Extraction” in the November 2021 edition of the Architectural Review. The novel discusses care, eco-feminism, inclusive urbanism, and the circular economy. In a world where forward-thinking policies have halted resource extraction, we must care for our buildings and take a fundamentally different approach, focusing on labor as a form of love and a continual process of understanding and learning about our buildings. This novel illustrates how utilizing a degrowth mindset doesn’t inhibit us, but requires us to retool processes and allows us to become a stronger more connected community (Zosia Dzierzawska and Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, 2021).
Conclusion
Rather than looking at degrowth as an attack on economic growth, we can look at degrowth as an opportunity to redesign systems with greater circularity and efficiency so that valuable commodities like energy and resources can be preserved, and at the same time, utilize our existing wealth of built environments. Collectively, we can amend, reuse, and infill to promote stronger communities and cooperative lifestyles.
References:
Amy Frearson (2019) 10 ideas for how architecture could support a degrowth economy. Available at: https://www.dezeen.com/2019/11/19/degrowth-architecture-oslo-architecture-triennale-2019/ (accessed 28 February 2024).
Annar Bjrgil (2019) Power Plant(s) Header. Available at: https://www.dezeen.com/2019/10/01/public-works-power-plants-waste-to-energy-oslo-triennale/.
Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal (2021) 2021 Ceremony Acceptance Speech Lacaton and Vassal. The Pritzker Prize. Available at: https://www.pritzkerprize.com/sites/default/files/inline-files/2021_Ceremony%20Acceptance%20Speech_Lacaton%20and%20Vassal.pdf.
Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability (n.d.) Degrowth, Well-being and Justice. Available at: https://www.bcnuej.org/degrowth-well-being-and-justice/ (accessed 28 February 2024).
KoozArch (n.d.) Interspecies Fall Pavilion – KoozArch. Available at: https://www.koozarch.com/archipelago/interspecies-fall-pavilion (accessed 3 March 2024).
Lizzie Crook (2019) Public Works builds waste-to-energy Power Plant(s)! to showcase fossil fuel alternative. Available at: https://www.dezeen.com/2019/10/01/public-works-power-plants-waste-to-energy-oslo-triennale/ (accessed 3 March 2024).
Maria Smith, Matthew Dalziel, Cecilie Sachs Olsen, et al. (2019) 2019. Available at: https://www.oslotriennale.no/archive/2019 (accessed 28 February 2024).
Martínez Alonso L (2022) Barcelona’s housing policy under austerity urbanism: a contribution to the debate on degrowth and urban planning. Local Environment 27(4). Taylor & Francis Ltd: 487–501.
Mireia Luzarraga and Alejandro Muino (n.d.) ELISAVA Fall Pavilion – takk’s archive. Available at: https://takksarchive.cargo.site/ELISAVA-Fall-Pavilion (accessed 28 February 2024).
Philippe Ruault (2021a) 18 logements, Rixheim – Lacaton Vassal 19. Available at: https://www.lacatonvassal.com/index.php?idp=113.
Philippe Ruault (2021b) 18 logements, Rixheim – Lacaton Vassal 40. Available at: https://www.lacatonvassal.com/index.php?idp=113.
Public Works (2019) public works projects – power plant(s)! Available at: https://www.publicworksgroup.net/projects/plant-power-oslo/ (accessed 3 March 2024).
Zosia Dzierzawska and Charlotte Malterre-Barthes (2021) Architecture Without Extraction | zozozosia. Available at: https://www.zozozosia.com/portfolios/architecture-without-extraction/ (accessed 3 March 2024).
