Saturday, September 13, 2008

Project 3: A Sustainable School

While looking for inspiration on the net i found this rather interesting piece:

Aboriginals   

A second view of the soul of Almere is given by Johan Bouwmeester, inhabitant and civil servant at the municipality. He saw the location of Almere for the first time 30 years ago, when it was still an empty side. For him Almere is like a dream, growing layer after layer in the time, a succession of land and water, and all the dreams and fears of the inhabitants. The soul is the relation between people and networks, the sum of expectations and aspirations of people.

Every city is a promise, especially Almere, People of Almere are dreamers. It is a city where you can smell the human potential. Even at the start, amidst the frame of the buildings and rudimentary roads, you could feel the energy.

In Almere nature and culture are interwoven, more than anywhere else. In this city, constructed on a new spot, it is an act of culture to put brick after brick. It is the same energy which Johan encountered in the fast growing city Gabarone in Botswana. It grew from 500 inhabitants in 1968 to 80.000 in 1988 and 220.000 now, with the same feeling of human potential as Almere.

When making a map of the soul of the city, it is not about a factual map with roads etc, a one dimensional map. One should need a map as the aboriginals do. They not only put roads on the map, but also history, the reflections of past encounters. 
Basically Johan tells us: the soul of the city is my soul, and my soul is the soul of my city.


This image was could be incorporated into the planning of our school


Information sourced from:http://www.erasmuspc.com/index.php?id=18324&type=article

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