Taking the Country's Side

Are metropolises really the “manifest destiny” of humankind? Is the environmental predicament calling for more concentration and incorporation? Or is it conducive to some kind of urban exodus? By and large, what might be the principles and ethics of design in such a condition? These are some of the issues that this book addresses.

Providing a rearview mirror onto the parallel evolutions of agriculture, architecture and urbanism in the past centuries, its core hypothesis is that permaculture, which drew on vernacular and agrarian practices, and was framed 40 years ago as a design approach to the building and maintenance of resilient agro systems in times of energy descent, could deeply inspire architecture and landscape design today, and lead them into a new — and much urgently needed — “poetics of reason”.