The School of Architecture at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm is a forum for post-graduate education in architecture and urban studies. The school dates back to the end of the 18th century and is the oldest institution for architectural studies in Sweden. Today, the school concerns itself with current issues relevant for the general public and investigates how these are connected to an architectural and urban discourse. It provides one-year courses and one of these courses deals with RESOURCES.

The course that started in September 2007 had the theme “Beyond Oil – Shanghai” and the 18 students were architects, urban planners, landscape architects, and a cinematographer, a designer, a graphic designer and a industrial designer. They have been working for one year with the project:

“Post-oil has been the major plot-device in our story about the city. China and Shanghai have been the setting. We have tried to imagine what life will be like in Shanghai in a post-oil future – 2030.”

President of ASPO International, Kjell Aleklett, gave an opening lecture about Peak Oil, and after the lecture the students were quite depressed when they thought about the future to come. They were encouraged to look at Peak Oil as an opportunity and in the “SYN CITY” study they use Peak Oil as an opportunity. The final exam was today.

The student report of “Beyond Oil – Shanghai” can now be downloaded from www.peakoil.net. http://www.peakoil.net/files/Resources72dpi.pdf [1]

The course starting in September 2008, Resources 2008, will look at Los Angeles beyond oil and application should be postmarked 9th of June, www.kkh.se.

Below you find the teachers introduction:

Contact information:
Henrietta Palmer, Professor of Architecture
Royal University of Fine Arts, Dept. of Architecture
Post box 16315
103 26 Stockholm, Sweden
E-mail: mthrshp1@mac.com

BEYOND OIL – SHANGHAI

BEYOND OIL – WHAT’S THAT?

The catch-word of the day is Sustainability. It’s been used so much lately that it has become legitimate to preface any discussion about it by stating that the term itself has become depleted. On the other hand, if we set limitations on our future that are specific and concrete, sustainability becomes something other than a diffuse goal. Suddenly it is not just a distant somewhere or a sometime – but instead a Something that is generated en passant, in the process of attempting to solve an acute problem at hand.

The proposition that the world’s oil supply will end could be an exciting premise for a Hollywood production. Powerful men with furrowed brows and their heads in their hands, a nation under threat, a couple of young idealistic kids mustered by a wily curmudgeon that together really get to the bottom of things and not merely save their little town, but the entire future of the nation. All’s well that ends well. Yes, but the end of oil is not just a bracing plot-device. The fact that oil will end one fine day is and will continue to be the inescapable fact that will force us to soon act. It sets the framework that will inform how we will live differently than we do today. Sure, but we’re talking about the future, right? Maybe, but when will it begin?

If you look around the signs are abundant – the price of raw-oil is now well past the mythical limit of 100 dollars a barrel. In fact, in the US they are already talking about 200 dollars. Corn and wheat prices are rising at an alarming rate because of the oil-based fertilizers they are dependent upon. War has become an everyday fact in the oil producing regions of the world. Oil-thirsty countries such as China are going into petrol-partnerships with dictatorships that the western world has turned its back on. Experts are pointing to charts that show how production is decreasing all over the planet. If not on its way to total extinction, at the very least oil is becoming increasingly economically and politically inaccessible. The only thing that permits us to continue being lulled in our gas-driven cradle is the price of air tickets to Thailand that seem to just get cheaper and cheaper. We jump onboard, intoxicated by the everyday luxury of spending a week on the other side of the globe. Why not? We can afford it.

If it weren’t for the sake of climate change, we would just kick back. After all, we’ve got a subway system, district heating and well-insulated walls. But the fact is that we are all now affected by the consequences of a fossil-based lifestyle, just to differing degrees. Even though some scientists calculate that we can burn all of the remaining oil without sacrificing our climate goals, if coal is added to the equation, the sum becomes quite another.

China’s economy is growing at an unprecedented rate. It is also a nation built on coal. At the same time, we are all participating in this economic miracle with nearly each purchase we make. Soon enough, we will be surrounded by everything from toys to medicines, household appliances to street pavers from China. Unwittingly or not, it’s our zeal for ever-cheaper fleece-jackets and coffeemakers that has deported production to China. It’s time to admit that China’s coal and oil consumption is a direct result of our everyday choices.

One could accept the consequences of our beyond-oil future and end up in a far place from the one described by optimistic municipalities in Sweden today. One could end up in a fragmented, disintegrated, sluggish and disease stricken landscape made obsolete by the absence of necessary fuel. This is just what the American journalist James Kunstler has proposed will ultimately plague the US as oil inevitably runs out. Perhaps the depletion of oil will give rise to new innovations and economic ventures that have been lying dormant, waiting for this paradigm-shift. If we look back, we can see that each shift in energy-dependence, from slavery to wood and on to coal and later to oil has actually meant more power to more people. A democratization of access – an empowerment and liberation for an increasingly productive society. Our days have become less labor-intensive, our travel has gotten faster and cheaper and our nights have become as bright as the day. Oil has meant more time for thinking and talking and has permitted us to develop culturally and intellectually.

A look at the last decades of architectural history shows a correlation between low oil prices and joyful experimentation in human habitation. Visions from the sixties of carnival-like, moving and ephemeral structures populated by scantily-clad and playful individuals seem to spring from a society awash in limitless oil. A few years later, rising prices during the oil crisis create a poignant backdrop to the works of the Italian architectural group Superstudio, whose urban allegories critically reflect on an expanding consumer society. Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome, built for the World Expo in 1972, became the quintessential image of a protective shell intended for an impending environmental disaster.

Will the absence of oil lead to dystopia, or will liberation from our oil dependency mean a subsequent intellectual emancipation? What mental and physical spaces are formed when energy changes shape? Could liberation from our oil-dependency in fact be a relief and lead to a release of creative energy? Whatever conclusions one can draw from the city’s relationship to its energy source, we would like to think that the city offers the unique opportunity for us to thrive beyond oil. Despite the fact that today’s urban environment is predicated on oil, its physical density, its concentration of people and resultant creative base, as well as all of the synergies these entail, all may provide the platform from which we could make a jump, hopefully without larger sacrifices.

Post-oil has been the major plot-device in our story about the city. China and Shanghai have been the setting. We have tried to imagine what life will be like in Shanghai in a post-oil future – 2030. That’s how close the future is. The radical changes in a world running on empty affect everyone, rich and poor alike. If you’re used to flying nonstop, start getting acquainted with your neighborhood. A lifestyle characterized by dense and small living conditions and one in which social ties to the community and the family are essential will dominate our future, despite buying power. Our urban environments can play an important role, not merely in the effective production, distribution and intelligent reuse of all that surplus energy being produced, but by developing patterns and building structures that provide the necessary setting for all of our players – whatever their role. If we make the wrong moves, or continue as we are, we will end up at a dead end, with food production and social spaces that will be guarded and only accessible to a chosen few. If we play our cards right, however, our built environment can become not only a more resource efficient, but even a more forgiving, adaptable and enabling place with the necessary preparedness for changes in production, transport, density and social spaces. Because change is negotiation and we are the negotiators. If we really want a society beyond-oil in which we all find our place, then we have to create a new space. After all, the only certainty is that change is on its way.

May 2008

Henrietta Palmer, professor of architecture and Michael Dudley, architect and teacher for Recources.07 at the Royal University College of Fine Arts, Stockholm