Principle 03: OBTAIN A YIELD
"Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the work that you are doing." - David Holmgren
For this principle, Holmgren says that "you can't work on an empty stomach," ensuring that we get immediate rewards to sustain ourselves. He adds that the designed systems should ensure the survival of the community without compromising their future and that productivity should be measured in terms of the real products from the effort that was invested.Beyond the fair and necessary monetary payment we receive for our work, our performance and productivity as architects should be measurable in relation to all the positive externalities that our projects are generating.An architecture project has the ability to greatly influence the context in which it operates, and we can't lose the opportunity to identify and develop its potential benefits to the greatest extent possible. A project can't be considered sustainable if it only fills our pockets but does not "surrender" positively in other ways, or worse, if it harms its environment.Nuestro rendimiento y productividad como arquitectos debería poder medirse en relación a todas aquellas externalidades positivas que estén generando nuestros proyectos. Image © José Tomás Franco
Principle 04: APPLY SELF-REGULATION & ACCEPT FEEDBACK
"We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well." - David Holmgren
This principle is represented by the planet Earth, with the idea of showing the most visible "example of a self-regulating ‘organism’ which is subject to feedback controls, like global warming." The proverb used to describe it suggests that this negative feedback usually takes time to emerge, and the impact of our actions are not immediately visible.
In the case of architecture, we are generally prepared to plan our designs for the present, but not to think too much about what will happen with them in the future. It makes sense to do it that way, because our work needs to fit a user and a context in particular, with needs and requirements that are relevant today. How can we rid ourselves of an unpredictable and unfavorable future?The key is just to "self-regulate" what we propose, in order to discourage, prevent or rethink the design answers (and/or related activities) that at least today, we can identify as inappropriate
La clave está en 'autorregular' lo que proyectamos, con el fin de desalentar todas aquellas respuestas de diseño que al menos hoy, si podemos identificar como inapropiadas. Image © José Tomás Franco