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Converted from paper version of the Broad Ripple Gazette (v03n22)
Green Broad Ripple - What is Green - An Overview - by Cortellini
posted: Nov. 03, 2006

Green Broad Ripple header

What is Green - An Overview
Thinking Green compels us, here at the dawn of this new millennium, to assess our relationship, as human beings, to technology - a term used here to include industry. The Industrial Revolution, which began at the dawn of the 18th century with Thomas Newcomen's invention of the steam-driven pump, completely altered societies throughout the world. The enormous impact of the changes brought to us by this dynamic has affected all aspects of our lives, our psyche, our self-perceptions, our relationship to nature, and our expectations for the future. Technology has not only brought many marvelous benefits to our everyday lives, but also, to some minds, elevated our species to a higher level of evolution. Technological Man is higher on the evolutionary scale than Agrarian Man.
Yet the ills of a technological society became apparent almost as soon as the first steam engine, fired by coal, began to severely pollute the atmosphere. It is an understatement to say that the rapid switching from agrarian rural life to urban slum life, with factory grime-choked air and open sewers festering with disease; did not make for a happy circumstance for the average peasant. These conditions, in fact, gave birth to the Arts and Crafts Movement and a style of design and architecture to which Broad Ripple, today, can rightly lay a modest claim.
The Arts and Crafts Movement, as the Industrial Revolution, was born in England and migrated to America where it flourished from roughly 1880 to 1920. The movement was a revolt against the industrialization of life. The founders and proponents of the movement saw factory work as dehumanizing and unfulfilling and the manufactured object lacking in the beauty and intrinsic value of the unique hand made object. They asked ". . . what would become of a people so caught up in the quick production and consumption of mere things?" They brought into question whether progress was worth the price. They made a call ". . . to integrate labor and art, lend beauty to everyday acts and objects, and seek coherence, unity, and simplicity in all aspects of life, for all people."
These are wonderfully Green concepts from a century ago. Most are still poetically relevant today. Yet today, it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine a way that we can return to an agrarian way of life devoid of technology even as we come face to face with the realization that our technological impact is degrading the biosphere at such an alarming rate that instead of elevating us to the next level of evolution, Technology may well be leading us to our extinction in the not too distant future.
A New Day is Dawning! This was declared by Ray Anderson in his keynote speech at Greenbuild 2005 and supported by a growing international momentum toward Green. Green today is the embrace of this New Day Dawning. In a New Day Dawning, Industry will not disappear but rather begin to apply its genius to repairing the environmental damage of the past and invent new technologies to assist us in lightening the heavy footprint we currently leave on the Earth - "the rarest and most precious of objects in the known universe." In a New Day Dawning our human hearts will reawaken to the twin virtues of compassion and respect and apply them to each other and the other two million or so species that make up the web of life - a web of which we are a part and absolutely and utterly dependent. I believe that this not only will happen but has already begun to happen. It is casually called Green.
A New Day IS Dawning!



Cortellini is a licensed architect in the states of Indiana and Arizona. He holds a BFA from Indiana University Herron School of Art. He has taught architectural technology at the college level at several universities and has pursued independent artistic endeavors. His architectural practice has focused on residential and small commercial projects. He has recently committed his practice to designing Green buildings, is a member of the US Green Building Council and is a LEED Accredited Professional. Send questions/comments to cortellini@BroadRippleGazette.com




cortellini@broadripplegazette.com
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