Architecture’s Response to the Global Oil Crisis
Last night Montreal hosted ‘Nuit Blanche‘ a sort all-night winter party that wraps up the Montreal High-Lights Festival. The ‘festival’ itself is really just a glossed-up bundle of disjointed cultural events that would be going on festival or no festival, but it still manages to turn into a pretty good exercise in city-wide cohesion. When you’ve got stuff going on all night, free shuttle buses, communal breakfasts and disco dancing at City Hall, you’re obviously heading in the right direction.
Since I’m interested in the future, the environment, oil and the end times, I decided to head down to the Canadian Centre for Architecture to check out a program that they were offering that included DJs, an outdoor bar made of ice and exibits on the looming global oil problems and a look back at the energy crisis of 1973. It was pretty fun to wander around the exhibit at two in the morning reading about a series of experiments in off-the-grid living that took place in the late 70s.
I’d never heard about the “New Alchemy Institute“, for example, who from 1971 to 1991 conducted a series of experiments whose aim was to discover new sustainable living techniques. They used fish and rabbits and worms. A quote from New Alchemy co-founder John Todd:
We asked ourselves the question: Is it possible to grow the food needs of a small group of people in a small space without harming the environment and without enormous recourse to external sources of energy and material? Could we design a system that is self-sustainable?
We’ve been in trouble before when it comes to expensive energy and the effects hit the Western world hard and fast. We started to put our heads together to work towards practical solutions and then we totally stepped on our dicks, forgot our lessons and were suddenly building McMansions to house our boxy SUVs. A truly huge wtf? moment in human history.
You can catch the “1973: Sorry, Out of Gas — Architecture’s Response to the Global Oil Crisis” exhibit in Montreal until April 20th.
An unprecedented exploration of the architectural experimentation following the 1973 oil crisis, when the value of oil increased exponentially and triggered economic, political, and social upheaval across the world. Sparked by the combination of reduced oil production and drastically increased prices, the oil crisis marked the end of a period of constant growth in Western countries following the Second World War. Along with social and economic adjustments came the understanding that unlimited development based on unrestricted oil at low prices was no longer feasible. Taking its title from familiar signs at gas stations throughout North America during those years, 1973: Sorry, Out of Gas features over 350 objects including architectural drawings, photographs, books and pamphlets, archival television footage, and historical artefacts to map the global response to the shortage and its relevance to architecture today.
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