We inhabit a vulnerable planet. The devastation caused by natural disasters such as the southern Asian tsunami; Hurricanes Katrina and Ike; and the earthquakes in Chinas Sichuan province; Haiti; and Chilemdash;as well as the ongoing depletion and degradation of the worlds natural resources caused by a burgeoning human populationmdash;have made it clear that "business as usual" is no longer sustainable. We need to find ways to improve how we live on this planet while minimizing our impact on it. Design for a Vulnerable Planet sounds a call for designers and planners to go beyond traditional concepts of sustainability toward innovative new design that fosters regeneration and resilience.Drawing on his own and others experiences across three continents; Frederick Steiner advocates design practice grounded in ecology and democracy and informed by critical regionalism and reflection. He begins by establishing the foundation for a more ecological approach to planning and design; adopting a broad view of ecology as encompassing human and natural; urban and wild environments. Steiner explores precedents for human ecological design provided by architect Paul Cret; landscape architect Ian McHarg; and developer George Mitchell while discussing their planning for the University of Texas campus; the Lake Austin watershed; and The Woodlands. Steiner then focuses on emerging Texas urbanism and extends his discussion to broader considerations beyond the Lone Star State; including regionalism; urbanism; and landscape in China and Italy. He also examines the lessons to be learned from human and natural disasters such as 9/11; Hurricane Katrina; and the BP oil spill. Finally; Steiner offers a blueprint for designing with nature to help heal the planets vulnerabilities.
#1245875 in eBooks 2008-02-08 2008-02-08File Name: B008AFFBBA
Review
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful. Hegel and Bergson Revisited by LacanBy Etienne RPThanks to Umberto Ecos best selling novel The Name of the Rose (and the movie based on it). everybody knows about the second book of Aristotles Poetics. in which the philosopher discussed comedy and laughter. and which is unfortunately lost. From the antiquity onward. philosophers who address the subject of comedy and try to pin it down with concepts and definitions face an impossible task. Everything and its contrary seem to hold true when speaking about comedy. yet the nature of the comical constantly escapes efforts to circumvent it with categories and statements. The proof of comedy is in laughter. not in the ratiocinations of philosophers.Aristotles missing book notwithstanding. there are however a few canonical texts that provide milestones to the philosophers journey into comedys territory. and Alenka Zupancic revisits them in order to provide her own interpretation of the comical. The first such milestone is provided by Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit. in which comedy is analyzed as the most spiritual work of art. coming after Homers epics and Sophocles tragedy. in a section devoted to religion.Hegels focus on Aristophanes and Greek theatre plays contrasts with the authors own cultural references. which draw more on the Marx Brothers and Monty Python. not to mention George W. Bushs Bushisms and the film Borat. But the two philosophers meet in their taste for the abstract and the dialectical. Zupancic finds it highly revealing that Hegel discusses comedy and art in the context of religion. and that his passage on comedy immediately precedes his discussion on the mystery of Incarnation in Christianity. Following Lacan. who found Hegels Phenomenology hilarious. Zupancic sees the Passion of the Christ as the ultimate comedy. which shows the concrete labor of the universal itself. or the subject as the absolute Being which has absorbed the abstract substance. In her own. deliberatively provocative terms. "Jesus is the God that has slipped on a banana peel".Hegel meets Lacan in situating comedy on the ground of true materialism. in what the author labels a "physics of the infinite" as opposed to the metaphysics of finitude that acknowledges human limitation and the absence of a transcendent Beyond. If humans were "only human" and life "only life". there would be no comedy. and not much life to speak of. The truth is that "the human equation doesnt add up". and what is human exists only in a kind of excess over itself. The infinite Beyond is included in the world and in the human as "the heterogeneous element on account of which a man is never simply and only a man". "Object a" is the Lacanian name for this leak or flaw in human finitude. It is the comical surplus-object. the "something in himself more than himself" that Alcibiades ascribes to Socrates in Platos Symposium and which is the object-cause of the subjects desire.The second text revisited by Zupancic is Henri Bergsons essay on laughter. Bergsons famous definition of the comical as something mechanical incrusted upon the living is grounded in his philosophy of life impulse (elan vital) as the pure elasticity of everlasting movement. Yet yhis dualism. which perpetuates the opposition between matter and spirit. body and soul. and so on. overlooks the possibility of this duality already being a retroactive effect of the comical. not simply its elementary starting point. It is the noncoincidence of life with itself that takes the form of a relationship between two poles. and it is this relationship that can occasionally strike us as mechanical.This allows Zupancic to offer her own conceptualization of the comical: it emerges from the structural dynamics whereby One splits into two. yet these two betray a singular connection and unity. quite different from the unity of the One with which we started. In Lacans own word. "Witz restores to the essentially unsatisfied demand its jouissance. and it does so in double (although identical) aspect of surprise and pleasure--the pleasure in surprise and the surprise in pleasure." In comedy. not only do we not get what we asked for. on top of that (and not instead) we get something we havent even asked for. but that we had somehow been expecting all along. This is why the previous reviews title about Zupancic and Lacan tells the joke of the joke. repeating the structure of Groucho Marxs famous line: "He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot. but dont let that fool you. He really is an idiot."0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Painting the moment of the jokeBy g.p.g.Ive never given enough thought to what it is that makes me laugh at a good joke and Zupancic describes this moment perfectly.15 of 19 people found the following review helpful. Doesnt look like Lacan. doesnt sound like Lacan. but dont let Zupancic fool you. she is not Lacan!By Lost LacanianThe last person to do something interesting with Lacan was a French psychoanalyst named Jacques Lacan. What I mean by that is that either a contemporary author simply provides commentary on Lacans work or they do something so interesting with his conceptual apparatus that the end product is something wholly original. something wholly their own. This new book by Alenka Zupancic achieves the latter. In The Odd One In. Zupancic uses the likes of Hegel. Freud. Lacan. Deleuze. and Bergson to come up with a theory of comedy. Now. by comedy. Zupancic will warn you. what is at stake is not what is funny. Although comedies can indeed make you laugh. what is truly comic is not bound up in tickling your funny bone. Rather. it is the otherside of the tragic. If the tragic names a way for relating to some fundamental Trauma. then. comedy names another way of relating--tragedys otherside. For Zupancic. comedy takes place when One splits into Two. but instead of completely decomposing into to completely different ones. it is held together by some surplus object that was produced by the splitting action itself. The result is a One that is a One + one. Comedy happens when that One cannot be itself but tries nonetheless. So. while John Stewart is merely funny. Stephen Colbert is funnier; but the truly comic is Bill OReilly because only Pappa Bear tries to be himself. It is a well known fact that Aristotle. in his Poetics. makes reference to a missing book on comedy. That companion book was made famous by Umberto Eco who wrote a book whose plot turns on that lost book being found. But the joke is really on Eco because. like a Classical version of Andy Kaufman. Aristotle never wrote that book and he puts you on a wild goose chase in search of it. The founding gesture of comedy is that absent book. But. as you will find out when you read Zupancics book. comedy means that at the end of this wild goose chase. you--to your own surprise--find what you were looking for. Zupancic doesnt look like Lacan. Zupancic doesnt sound like Lacan. but dont let Zupancic fool you. she is not Lacan!
