rheomode

a research practice led by dr jon goodbun, working at the intersection of architecture, technology, art and ecological pedagogy. based in athens and london

most of my published papers can be found at https://rca.academia.edu/JonGoodbun

x/insta: @jongoodbun email: jon.goodbun@rca.ac.uk

  • Ecological Planning in Therapy: Steps to an Eco-Surrealist Manifesto

    Learning from the Double Bind of Design and Planning

    Schedule for an event on June 5, 2026, at Cafe Klinge, detailing various sessions including opening remarks, discussions on planning boundaries, methodologies, and a keynote speech.

    My talk developed the idea of eco-surrealism as a way of thinking about ecological design, learning and imagination under conditions of crisis. The paper begins from a familiar problem: modern design culture has often been shaped by conscious purpose, technical optimisation and the fantasy of control. Yet the ecological crises we face are not simply technical problems waiting for better solutions. They are symptoms of deeper patterns of perception, habit and organisation. They reveal how ‘purpose’ itself can become pathological – even well intentioned purpose of say ‘ecological planning’ – when it becomes too narrow, too instrumental, or too detached from the wider systems on which it depends.

    This becomes especially clear when we ask what it means to plan under conditions of uncertainty. Climate change, social instability, resource stress and ecological degradation do not present designers with a single predictable future. They produce branching and unstable futures, in which any intervention may have unforeseen effects, delayed consequences or contradictory outcomes at different scales. The task of design is therefore not simply to optimise a solution for one assumed future, but to work carefully across multiple possible futures. Scenario thinking becomes important here, not as a corporate forecasting technique, but as an ecological and imaginative worlding or geopoietic practice: a way of holding open different possibilities, testing assumptions, and learning how present actions might resonate within changing circumstances.

    Drawing on Gregory Bateson, the paper asks what it would mean to design from within these double binds rather than pretending to stand outside them. Bateson’s work helps us understand ecological crisis as a crisis of learning: a failure to perceive the ‘pattern which connects’, and a tendency to confuse parts with wholes, maps with territories, and short-term fixes with systemic wisdom. His account of levels of learning is central here. Ecological design cannot remain at the level of problem-solving alone. It must also question the frames through which problems are recognised, the habits through which solutions are imagined, and the forms of life that design helps to reproduce.

    The ‘surrealist’ dimension of the paper does not mean escapism or irrationality. Rather, it names the importance of chance, dream, play, juxtaposition and non-instrumental practice in breaking open hardened patterns of thought. Historical surrealism sought to disturb the habits of bourgeois reason and reveal other orders of association beneath everyday life. Eco-surrealism suggests new forms of totemistic empathy, and works with our extended ecological unconscious. It asks how design might become more receptive to the unexpected, the more-than-human, and the forms of intelligence that exceed conscious planning.

    In this sense, eco-surrealism is also a critique of the impoverishment produced by private property, instrumental reason and capitalist forms of abstraction. Marx’s remark that private property has made us ‘so stupid and one-sided’ becomes newly ecological: we have been trained to perceive the world primarily as resource, commodity or object of management. Against this, eco-surrealism seeks practices that reawaken and transform perception, empathy and responsiveness. It does not reject technique or planning, but places them within a wider ecology of signs, affects, atmospheres, relations and unknowns.

    The paper connects these theoretical concerns to my recent work on urban heat, air pollution and evaporative cooling in Athens. The Towers of Winds project explores how architectural prototypes might operate not simply as technical devices, but as public, pedagogical and sensory infrastructures. Heat and pollution are not only measurable environmental conditions; they are also signs through which urban inequalities, atmospheric dependencies and collective vulnerabilities become perceptible. Citizen sensing, public installation, film and experimental making can therefore become part of a broader ecological learning process.

    Eco-surrealism, then, is not a style. It is a proposal for a different mode of ecological imagination and perception: one that combines critical theory, systems thinking, experimental design, scenario thinking and poetic practice. It suggests that in a time of climate emergency, we need not only better instruments, but stranger and wiser forms of attention.

  • Documentary Film Dialogue in English and Greek

    This page shares the English and Greek text from the documentary film on Urban Evaporative Cooling  and the Ecological Semiotics of Heat and Pollution in Athens developed for the Towers of Winds research project, presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2025, which can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/2Enli5oPkP0?si=FhK390z1kpvaRW2O

    The project takes Athens as a case study for exploring how networks of evaporative cooling structures might provide new forms of shared cool air, public comfort, environmental sensing and ecological learning in the heated and polluted streets of the city. It brings together architectural design research, passive cooling, citizen science, pollution monitoring, and questions around the social form of climate-adaptation technologies.

    We are publishing the text bilingually because the project is rooted in Athens and is intended as a dialogue with local communities, municipal actors, researchers, designers, environmental groups and cultural organisations. The work is not only about technical cooling performance, but also about how people come to sense, understand and act within the ecological conditions of the city: heat, humidity, air movement, pollution, energy poverty, public space and shared urban futures.

    The full film text follows in English and Greek.

    Urban Evaporative Cooling  and the Ecological Semiotics of Heat and Pollution in Athens

    Αστική Εξάτμιση Ψύξης και η Οικολογική Σημειωτική της Θερμότητας και της Ρύπανσης στην Αθήνα

    Introduction/ Εισαγωγή

    Future Scenarios/ Μελλοντικά Σενάρια

    Eco-Mental Systems/ Οικο-Νοητικά Συστήματα

    What is Evaporative Cooling/ Τι είναι η Ψύξη με Εξάτμιση

    New Towers of Winds Tests 2024/ Δοκιμές Νέων Πύργων Ανέμων 2024

    New Towers of Winds Future Plans/ Μελλοντικά Σχέδια Νέων Πύργων Ανέμων

    Pollution in Athens/ Ρύπανση στην Αθήνα

    Ecological Semiotics of Pollution in Athens/ Οικολογική Σημειωτική της Ρύπανσης στην Αθήνα

    Gentle Action, Sensing and Observation/ Ήπια Δράση, Αισθητήρες και Παρατήρηση

    Holistic and Open Source/ Ολιστική και Ανοιχτού Κώδικα

    Social Form of Technology/ Κοινωνική Μορφή Τεχνολογίας

    Documentary Dialogue subtitle text:

    Jon Goodbun  0:17  

    So basically, this project takes Athens as a case study site to explore the potential for experimental networks of evaporative cooling structures, varying in height from 5 meters to 25 meters, to provide a new commons, a new resource of cool and clean air to what are currently the polluted and heated streets of Athens. In the summer of 2024 we tested our first prototypes at the Latraac Skate Bar in Athens, and we achieved cooling of 10 degrees Celsius within 15 minutes. This project is responding, in particular, to a document which was produced by the Municipality of Athens called the ‘Athens Resilience Strategy for 2030’ and in that, amongst other things, they called for the need for the city to provide guaranteed spaces of cool air, given the very serious challenges which the city is going to be facing in the coming years

    Jon Goodbun 0:17

    Ουσιαστικά, λοιπόν, αυτό το έργο λαμβάνει την Αθήνα ως χώρο μελέτης περίπτωσης για να διερευνήσει τις δυνατότητες δικτύων δομών ψύξης με εξάτμιση, με ύψος που κυμαίνεται από 5 έως 25 μέτρα, για να παρέχει ένα νέο κοινόχρηστο χώρο, μια νέα πηγή δροσερού και καθαρού αέρα στους μολυσμένους και καυτούς δρόμους της Αθήνας. Το καλοκαίρι του 2024 δοκιμάσαμε τα πρώτα μας πρωτότυπα στο Latraac Skate Bar στην Αθήνα και πετύχαμε ψύξη 10 βαθμών Κελσίου μέσα σε 15 λεπτά. Αυτό το έργο ανταποκρίνεται, ειδικότερα, σε ένα έγγραφο που εκδόθηκε από τον Δήμο Αθηναίων με τίτλο «Στρατηγική Ανθεκτικότητας της Αθήνας για το 2030» και, μεταξύ άλλων, ζητά την ανάγκη η πόλη να παρέχει εγγυημένους χώρους δροσερού αέρα, δεδομένων των πολύ σοβαρών προκλήσεων που θα αντιμετωπίσει η πόλη τα επόμενα χρόνια.

    Eleni Myrivili  1:34  

    The idea that nature can really play an incredibly important role in cooling our cities was something that came out very clearly in the Resilience Strategy 2030, and it was.. kind of clear that Athens was one of the most densely built cities, and densely populated… we had 16,000 (residents) per square kilometer. I mean, Kypseli is one of the densest neighborhoods in Europe. So this creates, of course, conditions for more heat and more pollution. So what happens in these types of conditions is that we have a lot of heat absorbed by the different hard surfaces during the day and released during the night. And also we have a lot of heat that’s being released into the atmosphere by cars and air conditioners. It is really a death trap for the people. And so we needed to figure out different ways of creating initiatives and designs that change these outcomes of heating the city more, and rather figuring out solutions for creating coolness in our city, so that our city becomes more livable.

    Eleni Myrivili 1:34

    Η ιδέα ότι η φύση μπορεί πραγματικά να διαδραματίσει έναν απίστευτα σημαντικό ρόλο στην ψύξη των πόλεών μας ήταν κάτι που προέκυψε πολύ ξεκάθαρα στη Στρατηγική Ανθεκτικότητας 2030, και ήταν… κάπως σαφές ότι η Αθήνα ήταν μια από τις πιο πυκνοδομημένες και πυκνοκατοικημένες πόλεις… είχαμε 16.000 (κατοίκους) ανά τετραγωνικό χιλιόμετρο. Θέλω να πω, η Κυψέλη είναι μια από τις πιο πυκνοκατοικημένες γειτονιές στην Ευρώπη. Αυτό δημιουργεί, φυσικά, συνθήκες για περισσότερη θερμότητα και περισσότερη ρύπανση. Αυτό που συμβαίνει σε αυτές τις συνθήκες είναι ότι έχουμε πολλή θερμότητα που απορροφάται από τις διάφορες σκληρές επιφάνειες κατά τη διάρκεια της ημέρας και απελευθερώνεται κατά τη διάρκεια της νύχτας. Και επίσης έχουμε πολλή θερμότητα που απελευθερώνεται στην ατμόσφαιρα από τα αυτοκίνητα και τα κλιματιστικά. Είναι πραγματικά μια παγίδα θανάτου για τους ανθρώπους. Και έτσι έπρεπε να βρούμε διαφορετικούς τρόπους για να δημιουργήσουμε πρωτοβουλίες και σχέδια που αλλάζουν αυτά τα αποτελέσματα της μεγαλύτερης θέρμανσης της πόλης, και μάλλον να βρούμε λύσεις για τη δημιουργία δροσιάς στην πόλη μας, έτσι ώστε η πόλη μας να γίνει πιο βιώσιμη.

    Jon Goodbun  3:00  

    Athens is basically facing existential threats in the near future from heat and pollution. In practically any future scenario study that you do for the city, there are two phenomena playing themselves out: the ‘Urban Heat Island’ effect, which comes from the thermal mass of the city, which is characterized by large amounts of exposed concrete. These basically heat up over the course of the summer, producing temperature differentials already of 7, 8, sometimes 10 degrees Celsius between the city and what that landscape would otherwise be. In addition, Athens also suffers from what’s known as the ‘Urban Pollution Island’ effect, which is the build up of pollutants close to street level. This is exacerbated by what’s known as the ‘Temperature Inversion Phenomena’ which traps hot polluted air down at street level. Both the urban heat island effect and the urban pollution Island effect amplify each other, but in addition, they are both further amplified by climate change. And climate change for this region is causing further increases in general temperature and more importantly, as we’re already starting to see, it’s predicted to both increase the intensity and the frequency of heat waves, which have the potential to take the city into basically non-livable conditions.

    Jon Goodbun 3:00

    Η Αθήνα αντιμετωπίζει ουσιαστικά υπαρξιακές απειλές στο εγγύς μέλλον από τη θερμότητα και τη ρύπανση. Σε σχεδόν κάθε μελέτη μελλοντικών σεναρίων για την πόλη, υπάρχουν δύο φαινόμενα που εκδηλώνονται: το φαινόμενο της «Αστικής Θερμικής Νήσου», το οποίο προέρχεται από τη θερμική μάζα της πόλης, η οποία χαρακτηρίζεται από μεγάλες ποσότητες εκτεθειμένου σκυροδέματος. Αυτά ουσιαστικά θερμαίνονται κατά τη διάρκεια του καλοκαιριού, παράγοντας διαφορές θερμοκρασίας ήδη 7, 8, μερικές φορές 10 βαθμών Κελσίου μεταξύ της πόλης και αυτού που θα ήταν φυσιολογικά το τοπίο. Επιπλέον, η Αθήνα υποφέρει επίσης από αυτό που είναι γνωστό ως το φαινόμενο της «Αστικής Νήσου Ρύπανσης», το οποίο είναι η συσσώρευση ρύπων κοντά στο επίπεδο του δρόμου. Αυτό επιδεινώνεται από αυτό που είναι γνωστό ως «Φαινόμενο Αντιστροφής Θερμοκρασίας», το οποίο παγιδεύει τον ζεστό μολυσμένο αέρα στο επίπεδο του δρόμου. Τόσο το φαινόμενο της αστικής θερμικής νησίδας όσο και το φαινόμενο της αστικής νησίδας ρύπανσης αλληλοενισχύονται, αλλά επιπλέον, και τα δύο ενισχύονται περαιτέρω από την κλιματική αλλαγή. Και η κλιματική αλλαγή σε αυτήν την περιοχή προκαλεί περαιτέρω αυξήσεις στη γενική θερμοκρασία και, το πιο σημαντικό, όπως ήδη αρχίζουμε να βλέπουμε, προβλέπεται να αυξήσει τόσο την ένταση όσο και τη συχνότητα των καυσώνων, τα οποία έχουν τη δυνατότητα να οδηγήσουν την πόλη σε ουσιαστικά μη βιώσιμες συνθήκες.

    Jon Goodbun  4:57  

    Thinking about this project in terms of ‘ecological semiotics’, basically, is a way to take what are potentially quite technical framings of heat and pollution, and actually identifies that these actually have much more wide ranging effects upon how the city works as a system, and actually how humans experience the city as an extension of themselves. Now for me, this project is one of two parallel research projects that I’ve been engaged in in recent years, one around heat and pollution in Athens, but one which has been looking at the work of the cybernetic anthropologist Gregory Bateson, and a particular framing that he gave to how we should think about ecological systems. He suggested that all complex ecological systems, such as forests or lakes, but also cities and human social systems are actually characterized as.. can be thought of as, always mental systems, always cognitive systems in some ways, and which we’re actually a part of. So for Bateson, he actually criticized Sigmund Freud, the psychologist, for only thinking about our unconscious as being our unconscious within our physical brains and our bodies. Bateson said actually, our unconscious is much bigger than that, it’s not only inside… actually our ecological environments are – really are – our unconscious! And he suggested that if we drive our extended minds, that is to say, our environments insane, through things such as heat and pollution, then we are actually slowly damaging ourselves as well. And he suggested a couple of ways in which we can start to understand our environments as as eco-mental systems, and that is through understanding that that air flows, chemicals, heat, not only have a quantitative aspect, but always has a qualitative, semiotic aspect. And so one of the things that we’re very much trying to do in this project is to think through the challenges in both of those terms.

    Jon Goodbun 4:57

    Το να σκεφτόμαστε αυτό το έργο με όρους «οικολογικής σημειωτικής», ουσιαστικά, είναι ένας τρόπος να δούμε αυτά που είναι ενδεχομένως αρκετά τεχνικά πλαίσια της θερμότητας και της ρύπανσης και να εντοπίσουμε ότι αυτά έχουν στην πραγματικότητα πολύ πιο ευρείες επιπτώσεις στον τρόπο που λειτουργεί η πόλη ως σύστημα και στον τρόπο που οι άνθρωποι βιώνουν την πόλη ως επέκταση του εαυτού τους. Τώρα, για μένα, αυτό το έργο είναι ένα από τα δύο παράλληλα ερευνητικά έργα στα οποία έχω ασχοληθεί τα τελευταία χρόνια, το ένα γύρω από τη θερμότητα και τη ρύπανση στην Αθήνα, αλλά το άλλο εξετάζει το έργο του κυβερνητιστή ανθρωπολόγου Gregory Bateson και ένα συγκεκριμένο πλαίσιο που έδωσε στο πώς πρέπει να σκεφτόμαστε τα οικολογικά συστήματα. Υποστήριξε ότι όλα τα σύνθετα οικολογικά συστήματα, όπως τα δάση ή οι λίμνες, αλλά και οι πόλεις και τα ανθρώπινα κοινωνικά συστήματα χαρακτηρίζονται στην πραγματικότητα ως… μπορούν να θεωρηθούν, πάντα νοητικά συστήματα, πάντα γνωστικά συστήματα κατά κάποιο τρόπο, και των οποίων είμαστε στην πραγματικότητα μέρος. Έτσι, ο Bateson, επέκρινε τον Sigmund Freud, τον ψυχολόγο, επειδή σκεφτόταν το ασυνείδητό μας μόνο ως το ασυνείδητό μας μέσα στο φυσικό μας εγκέφαλο και το σώμα μας. Ο Bateson είπε στην πραγματικότητα ότι το ασυνείδητό μας είναι πολύ μεγαλύτερο από αυτό, δεν είναι μόνο μέσα… στην πραγματικότητα τα οικολογικά μας περιβάλλοντα είναι – πραγματικά είναι – το ασυνείδητό μας! Και πρότεινε ότι αν οδηγήσουμε το εκτεταμένο μυαλό μας, δηλαδή το περιβάλλον μας, σε κατάσταση τρέλας, μέσω πραγμάτων όπως η θερμότητα και η ρύπανση, τότε σιγά σιγά καταστρέφουμε και τους εαυτούς μας. Και πρότεινε μερικούς τρόπους με τους οποίους μπορούμε να αρχίσουμε να κατανοούμε το περιβάλλον μας ως οικο-νοητικά συστήματα, και αυτός είναι μέσω της κατανόησης ότι οι ροές του αέρα, οι χημικές ουσίες, η θερμότητα, όχι μόνο έχουν μια ποσοτική πτυχή, αλλά έχουν πάντα μια ποιοτική, σημειωτική πτυχή. Έτσι, ένα από τα πράγματα που προσπαθούμε να κάνουμε σε αυτό το έργο είναι να σκεφτούμε τις προκλήσεις και με τους δύο αυτούς όρους.

    Eleni Myrivili  7:37  

    We want Athens to be beautiful and vibrant, and we don’t want the public spaces to empty out of people, because nobody can walk in the streets. So we have to figure out how to bring more nature, but we also have to figure out how other types of solutions, maybe that have to do with shading, or maybe that have to do with moving the air around, or having to do with evaporation, bringing water elements more in the surface, or other kinds of more innovative solutions are really, really, really crucial for cities like Athens. So you know, this idea of the tower that creates movement of air and with a little bit of water and evaporation actually can create a totally different sense of comfort on the ground, is something that I hear with great pleasure, and I’m very happy about it being tried out!

    Eleni Myrivili 7:37

    Θέλουμε η Αθήνα να είναι όμορφη και ζωντανή, και δεν θέλουμε οι δημόσιοι χώροι να αδειάσουν από ανθρώπους, επειδή κανείς δεν μπορεί να περπατήσει στους δρόμους. Πρέπει λοιπόν να βρούμε πώς να φέρουμε περισσότερη φύση, αλλά πρέπει επίσης να βρούμε άλλους τύπους λύσεων, ίσως που έχουν να κάνουν με τη σκίαση, ή ίσως που έχουν να κάνουν με την κίνηση του αέρα, ή που έχουν να κάνουν με την εξάτμιση, φέρνοντας περισσότερα στοιχεία νερού στην επιφάνεια, ή άλλα είδη πιο καινοτόμων λύσεων, είναι πραγματικά, πραγματικά, πραγματικά κρίσιμες για πόλεις όπως η Αθήνα. Ξέρετε, λοιπόν, αυτή η ιδέα του πύργου που δημιουργεί κίνηση του αέρα και με λίγο νερό και εξάτμιση μπορεί στην πραγματικότητα να δημιουργήσει μια εντελώς διαφορετική αίσθηση άνεσης στο έδαφος, είναι κάτι που ακούω με μεγάλη χαρά και χαίρομαι πολύ που δοκιμάζεται!

    Jon Goodbun  8:34  

    So in this research project, we’re exploring the potential for evaporative cooling, that is to say zero-energy, water-based installations conceived as urban evaporative cooling (air conditioning), as a new kind of collective equipment that can provide both cooled and clean air to the streets of Athens, but which is actually also a means for engaging in ecological dialogues with the eco-mental systems of the city.

    Jon Goodbun 8:34

    Έτσι, σε αυτό το ερευνητικό έργο, διερευνούμε τις δυνατότητες για εξατμιστική ψύξη, δηλαδή εγκαταστάσεις μηδενικής ενέργειας με βάση το νερό, που σχεδιάστηκαν ως αστική εξατμιστική ψύξη (κλιματισμός), ως ένα νέο είδος συλλογικού εξοπλισμού που μπορεί να παρέχει τόσο ψυχρό όσο και καθαρό αέρα στους δρόμους της Αθήνας, αλλά που στην πραγματικότητα αποτελεί και ένα μέσο για την εμπλοκή σε οικολογικούς διαλόγους με τα οικολογικά συστήματα της πόλης.

    Rosa Schiano-Phan 3  9:03  

    So natural cooling, or passive cooling, is a form of cooling that doesn’t require active systems or energy. So in this sense, passive evaporative cooling comes from a physical phenomena that implies the evaporation of water. And in this process, specifically the water as a liquid, changes state into vapor, so from liquid state to gaseous state, and this is also known as adiabatic cooling, is a process that happens without additional energy added to the system or to the environment, and therefore what we have is the latent, so-called latent heat that is extracted, from the surrounding environment, the surrounding air, lowering its temperature. So essentially, this is what passive evaporative cooling is.

    Rosa Schiano-Phan 3 9:03

    Έτσι, η φυσική ψύξη, ή παθητική ψύξη, είναι μια μορφή ψύξης που δεν απαιτεί ενεργά συστήματα ή ενέργεια. Έτσι, με αυτή την έννοια, η παθητική ψύξη με εξάτμιση προέρχεται από ένα φυσικό φαινόμενο που υποδηλώνει την εξάτμιση του νερού. Και σε αυτή τη διαδικασία, συγκεκριμένα το νερό ως υγρό, αλλάζει κατάσταση σε ατμό, δηλαδή από υγρή κατάσταση σε αέρια κατάσταση, και αυτό είναι επίσης γνωστό ως αδιαβατική ψύξη, είναι μια διαδικασία που συμβαίνει χωρίς να προστίθεται επιπλέον ενέργεια στο σύστημα ή στο περιβάλλον, και επομένως αυτό που έχουμε είναι η λανθάνουσα, η λεγόμενη λανθάνουσα θερμότητα που εξάγεται από το περιβάλλον, τον περιβάλλοντα αέρα, μειώνοντας τη θερμοκρασία του. Ουσιαστικά, λοιπόν, αυτό είναι η παθητική ψύξη με εξάτμιση.

    Jon Goodbun  10:22  

    How are we using evaporative cooling? Well, basically, by reimagining both some old vernacular techniques as well as drawing upon new research in the field, some of it directly done by colleagues in this team, last summer, in the summer of 2024 we tested some prototypes in Athens using downdraft evaporative cooling. The principles are very simple, essentially, an enclosed volume of air within a fabric tower is cooled through the misting of water at the top of the tower, the water mist evaporates, taking heat out of the air, the air starts to drop. We generated last summer, a temperature drop of around 10 degrees Celsius, with a pleasant breeze….. it’s slowly falling… so you’ve got the temperature slowly falling and the humidity slowly rising, as you’d expect.

    Jon Goodbun 10:22

    Πώς χρησιμοποιούμε την ψύξη με εξάτμιση; Βασικά, επαναπροσδιορίζοντας τόσο κάποιες παλιές τεχνικές όσο και αξιοποιώντας νέες έρευνες στον τομέα, μερικές από τις οποίες έγιναν από συναδέλφους αυτής της ομάδας, το περασμένο καλοκαίρι, το καλοκαίρι του 2024, δοκιμάσαμε μερικά πρωτότυπα στην Αθήνα χρησιμοποιώντας ψύξη με εξάτμιση προς τα κάτω. Οι αρχές είναι πολύ απλές, ουσιαστικά, ένας κλειστός όγκος αέρα μέσα σε έναν υφασμάτινο πύργο ψύχεται μέσω του ψεκασμού νερού στην κορυφή του πύργου, η ομίχλη νερού εξατμίζεται, αφαιρώντας θερμότητα από τον αέρα και ο αέρας αρχίζει να πέφτει. Το περασμένο καλοκαίρι, δημιουργήσαμε μια πτώση θερμοκρασίας περίπου 10 βαθμών Κελσίου, με ένα ευχάριστο αεράκι…..να πέφτει αργά… έτσι η θερμοκρασία πέφτει αργά και η υγρασία αυξάνεται αργά, όπως θα περίμενε κανείς.

    Zachos Varfis  11:26  

    It looked interesting, and it worked, and I think people were really engaged by it and curious about it. I think it also helped that we did communicate it a bit, like what it was and what it did… but I don’t think it could have gone better than it did in terms of how people responded to it. We left it up for longer, and it worked, and everyone was curious about it, so I think it accomplished its mission in just about every way.

    Zachos Varfis 11:26

    Φαινόταν ενδιαφέρον και λειτούργησε, και νομίζω ότι ο κόσμος ενδιαφέρθηκε πραγματικά και έδειξε περιέργεια γι’ αυτό. Νομίζω επίσης ότι βοήθησε το γεγονός ότι το επικοινωνήσαμε λίγο, όπως τι ήταν και τι έκανε… αλλά δεν νομίζω ότι θα μπορούσε να έχει πάει καλύτερα από ό,τι πήγε όσον αφορά την ανταπόκριση του κόσμου σε αυτό. Το αφήσαμε για περισσότερο χρόνο και λειτούργησε, και όλοι ήταν περίεργοι γι’ αυτό, οπότε νομίζω ότι πέτυχε την αποστολή του με σχεδόν κάθε τρόπο.

    Jon Goodbun  11:52  

    So following from tests we did last summer, we’re now planning a series of further iterations over the next three years, testing towers at the smaller size, at around five to seven meters high, again at Latraac, but also at some other partner sites. But also to test some much larger structures around 25 meters high. These we’re conceiving as very much a kind of open-ended design research experiment. So how we work together with local manufacturers and local skill sets, both around fabrics, but also structural fabrication is important, and colleagues, Flora and Aran have been doing work exploring different ways in which we might test different structural solutions, but also deploy different kinds of fabric possibilities. Importantly, the 25 meter high towers have the potential not only to cool large amounts of air, but also to draw down air from above the worst pollution levels in Athens which we know is situated close to ground level, close to street level, often held in place by the temperature inversion phenomena.

    Jon Goodbun 11:52

    Έτσι, σε συνέχεια των δοκιμών που πραγματοποιήσαμε το περασμένο καλοκαίρι, σχεδιάζουμε τώρα μια σειρά από περαιτέρω δοκιμών στα επόμενα τρία χρόνια, δοκιμάζοντας πύργους σε μικρότερο μέγεθος, ύψους περίπου πέντε έως επτά μέτρων, πάλι στο Latraac, αλλά και σε ορισμένες άλλες τοποθεσίες συνεργατών. Ακόμα θα δοκιμάσουμε μερικές πολύ μεγαλύτερες κατασκευές ύψους περίπου 25 μέτρων. Αυτές τις θεωρούμε ως ένα είδος ανοιχτού τέλους πειραματικής έρευνας και σχεδιασμού. Επομένως, ο τρόπος με τον οποίο συνεργαζόμαστε με τους τοπικούς κατασκευαστές και τα τοπικά σύνολα δεξιοτήτων, τόσο γύρω από τα υφάσματα όσο και γύρω από την κατασκευή των δομών, είναι σημαντικός, και οι συνάδελφοί μας, η Flora και ο Aran, έχουν εργαστεί διερευνώντας διαφορετικούς τρόπους με τους οποίους θα μπορούσαμε να δοκιμάσουμε διαφορετικές δομικές λύσεις, αλλά και να αναπτύξουμε διαφορετικά είδη δυνατοτήτων υφασμάτων. Είναι σημαντικό ότι οι πύργοι ύψους 25 μέτρων έχουν τη δυνατότητα όχι μόνο να ψύχουν μεγάλες ποσότητες αέρα, αλλά και να απορροφούν αέρα από τα χειρότερα επίπεδα ρύπανσης στην Αθήνα, τα οποία γνωρίζουμε ότι βρίσκονται κοντά στο επίπεδο του εδάφους, κοντά στο επίπεδο του δρόμου, και συχνά συγκρατούνται από τα φαινόμενα αντιστροφής της θερμοκρασίας.

    Aran Chadwick  13:31  

    What we wanted to do was something that’s a little more accessible in terms of the type of structure and the type of fabrication that you’d need. And I think through the conversations we had that we identified two different scales. There was a scale that works in a city, a city wide scale that might sit in a public square and might be 30 meters plus high. And then there was this more of a domestic scale, where it would sit in someone’s courtyard, or on someone’s roof terrace to to generate some local cooling. And I think for both of them, it was, it was a question of, you know, doing enough development work to establish the feasibility in terms of the cost. Because clearly, if these things are, you know, crazy expensive, it’s going to limit the the opportunity. So, so the goal has got to be to make it as accessible and affordable as possible, particularly the small scale one.

    Aran Chadwick 13:31

    Αυτό που θέλαμε να κάνουμε ήταν κάτι που να είναι λίγο πιο προσιτό όσον αφορά τον τύπο της δομής και τον τύπο κατασκευής που θα χρειαζόταν. Και νομίζω ότι μέσα από τις συζητήσεις που είχαμε εντοπίσαμε δύο διαφορετικές κλίμακες. Υπήρχε μια κλίμακα που λειτουργεί σε μια πόλη, μια κλίμακα σε πόλης που θα μπορούσε να βρίσκεται σε μια δημόσια πλατεία και να έχει ύψος πάνω από 30 μέτρα. Και μετά υπήρχε αυτή η πιο οικιακή κλίμακα, όπου θα βρισκόταν στην αυλή κάποιου ή στην ταράτσα κάποιου για να παράγει κάποια τοπική ψύξη. Και νομίζω ότι και για τα δύο, ήταν, ήταν θέμα, ξέρετε, να γίνει αρκετή αναπτυξιακή εργασία για να διαπιστωθεί η σκοπιμότητα όσον αφορά το κόστος. Γιατί σαφώς, αν αυτά τα πράγματα είναι, ξέρετε, απίστευτα ακριβά, θα περιοριστεί η ευκαιρία. Έτσι, ο στόχος πρέπει να είναι να γίνει όσο το δυνατόν πιο προσιτό και οικονομικά προσιτό, ιδιαίτερα το μικρής κλίμακας.

    Flora McLean  14:32  

    And looking at the drawings that you sent of this desired, quite feminine form in a way, the tower would take on. And then I found a Paco Rabanne dress, similar to these sort of faceted.. what often would be squares, but could easily be triangles.

    Flora McLean 14:32

    Και κοιτάζοντας τα σχέδια που μου έστειλες με αυτή την επιθυμητή, κατά κάποιο τρόπο αρκετά θηλυκή μορφή, ο πύργος θα έπαιρνε τη μορφή του. Και μετά βρήκα ένα φόρεμα Paco Rabanne, παρόμοιο με αυτά τα πολύπλευρα… που συχνά ήταν τετράγωνα, αλλά εύκολα μπορούσαν να είναι και τρίγωνα.

    Aran Chadwick  14:52  

    So I think, what we’re interested in, particularly, again, for the smaller, more domestic things, is trying to find a way that people can source the materials locally themselves. And it’s things that they are familiar with, so, using a few bamboo poles or maybe it could be timber from your local merchant, and then, you know, with the development with the fabrics that Flora has been doing at the RCA. Again, these things are things that anybody can source and assemble themselves, keeping it as lightweight as possible, so that you don’t need expensive equipment to to assemble these things. It can be done by a couple of people.

    Aran Chadwick 14:52

    Νομίζω λοιπόν ότι αυτό που μας ενδιαφέρει, ιδιαίτερα, πάλι, για τα μικρότερα, πιο οικιακά πράγματα, είναι να προσπαθήσουμε να βρούμε έναν τρόπο ώστε οι άνθρωποι να μπορούν να προμηθεύονται τα υλικά μόνοι τους τοπικά. Και είναι πράγματα με τα οποία είναι εξοικειωμένοι, όπως η χρήση μερικών μπαμπού στύλων ή ίσως ξυλείας από τον τοπικό σας έμπορο, και στη συνέχεια, ξέρετε, με την ανάπτυξη των υφασμάτων που κατασκευάζει η Flora στο RCA. Και πάλι, αυτά τα πράγματα είναι πράγματα που ο καθένας μπορεί να προμηθευτεί και να συναρμολογήσει μόνος του, διατηρώντας τα όσο το δυνατόν πιο ελαφριά, ώστε να μην χρειάζεται ακριβό εξοπλισμό για να τα συναρμολογήσει. Μπορεί να γίνει από δύο άτομα.

    Flora McLean  15:42  

    … the idea that we could have arteries in a knitted in a circular manner to create this super-structure that essentially could be covered with yarn, which is canvas, and that becomes the membrane, without having to have the membrane. But then we did also some experiments with the denim, and we coated it in a thermo-chromatic ink, so, you know, people could visibly see the color change.

    Flora McLean 15:42

    … η ιδέα ότι θα μπορούσαμε να έχουμε αρτηρίες πλεγμένες κυκλικά για να δημιουργήσουμε αυτή την υπερ-δομή που ουσιαστικά θα μπορούσε να καλυφθεί με νήμα, που είναι καμβάς, και αυτό γίνεται η μεμβράνη, χωρίς να χρειάζεται να έχουμε τη μεμβράνη. Αλλά στη συνέχεια κάναμε και κάποια πειράματα με το τζιν και το επικαλύψαμε με θερμοχρωματικό μελάνι, ώστε, ξέρετε, οι άνθρωποι να μπορούν να δουν ορατά την αλλαγή χρώματος.

    Juan Vallejo  16:24  

    We wanted to test the hypothesis in which the tall towers, when strategically placed or located across the urban layout, we can not only deliver significant volumes of coal air on the surroundings, but also bring down clean air to mitigate pollution levels in Athens. The polluted air remains at lower levels underneath the air canopy, which is usually sits over the Athenian Basin. And this is a really interesting landscape in which three mountain ranges are surrounding the city, defining some sort of an oval shape lowland where the city stands. And this created a temperature inversion phenomena, a volume of warm air trapped at pedestrian level. And the interesting thing of this is for us to know how the air moves in between buildings. And this is for us an opportunity, by using these computational tools to understand what is still unknown, precisely, which is how the air moves in between buildings, and how the towers and the downdraft air movement that we are creating with them, could significantly impact the air distribution and air movement.

    Juan Vallejo 16:24

    Θέλαμε να δοκιμάσουμε την υπόθεση ότι οι ψηλοί πύργοι, όταν τοποθετούνται στρατηγικά ή βρίσκονται σε όλη την αστική διάταξη, μπορούν όχι μόνο να μεταφέρουν σημαντικούς όγκους άνθρακα στον περιβάλλοντα χώρο, αλλά και να μειώσουν τον καθαρό αέρα για να μετριάσουν τα επίπεδα ρύπανσης στην Αθήνα. Ο μολυσμένος αέρας παραμένει σε χαμηλότερα επίπεδα κάτω από το ατμοσφαιρικό θόλο, το οποίο συνήθως βρίσκεται πάνω από το Λεκανοπέδιο της Αθήνας. Και αυτό είναι ένα πραγματικά ενδιαφέρον τοπίο στο οποίο τρεις οροσειρές περιβάλλουν την πόλη, ορίζοντας ένα είδος οβάλ πεδιάδας όπου βρίσκεται η πόλη. Και αυτό δημιούργησε ένα φαινόμενο αντιστροφής θερμοκρασίας, έναν όγκο θερμού αέρα παγιδευμένο στο επίπεδο των πεζών. Και το ενδιαφέρον σε αυτό είναι να γνωρίζουμε πώς κινείται ο αέρας μεταξύ των κτιρίων. Και αυτή είναι μια ευκαιρία για εμάς, χρησιμοποιώντας αυτά τα υπολογιστικά εργαλεία, να κατανοήσουμε αυτό που είναι ακόμα άγνωστο, δηλαδή πώς ακριβώς κινείται ο αέρας μεταξύ των κτιρίων και πώς οι πύργοι και η καθοδική κίνηση του αέρα που δημιουργούμε μαζί τους, θα μπορούσαν να επηρεάσουν σημαντικά την κατανομή του αέρα και την κίνηση του αέρα.

    Jon Goodbun  17:44  

    We imagine the communities or the user groups that might test these towers have different characters: so for the smaller towers we want to develop solutions which could be positioned permanently in some situations, or can be easily mounted and dismounted by one or two people. The larger towers have a different potentiality. They might be adopted by key stakeholders in the city who have ownership of key parts of urban space, but importantly, they might be deployed by the municipality as an emergency infrastructure, which gets deployed in public spaces during extreme heat wave events. The larger towers, and in particular, if we have a small network of them in certain areas, actually provide, according to the computational fluid dynamics models, would provide clean and cool air, not just to their very immediate surroundings, but actually the models suggest to entire neighborhoods. One model suggested that four of the 25 meter high towers would actually provide cooler and cleaner air to several square kilometers.

    Jon Goodbun 17:44

    Φανταζόμαστε ότι οι κοινότητες ή οι ομάδες χρηστών που ενδέχεται να δοκιμάσουν αυτούς τους πύργους έχουν διαφορετικά χαρακτηριστικά: έτσι, για τους μικρότερους πύργους θέλουμε να αναπτύξουμε λύσεις που θα μπορούσαν να τοποθετηθούν μόνιμα σε ορισμένες περιπτώσεις ή να μπορούν εύκολα να τοποθετηθούν και να αποσυναρμολογηθούν από ένα ή δύο άτομα. Οι μεγαλύτεροι πύργοι έχουν διαφορετικές δυνατότητες. Θα μπορούσαν να χρησιμοποιηθούν από ενδιαφερόμενους φορείς της πόλη που έχουν διαχειρίζονται βασικά τμήματα του αστικού χώρου, αλλά το σημαντικό είναι ότι θα μπορούσαν να αναπτυχθούν από τον δήμο ως υποδομή έκτακτης ανάγκης, η οποία αναπτύσσεται σε δημόσιους χώρους κατά τη διάρκεια ακραίων καυσώνων. Οι μεγαλύτεροι πύργοι, και ειδικότερα, εάν έχουμε ένα μικρό δίκτυο από αυτούς σε ορισμένες περιοχές, στην πραγματικότητα παρέχουν, σύμφωνα με τα υπολογιστικά μοντέλα ρευστοδυναμικής, καθαρό και δροσερό αέρα, όχι μόνο στο πολύ άμεσο περιβάλλον τους, αλλά στην πραγματικότητα τα μοντέλα προτείνονται για ολόκληρες γειτονιές. Ένα μοντέλο αποτελούμενο από τέσσερις πύργους ύψους 25 μέτρων θα παρέχει στην πραγματικότητα πιο δροσερό και καθαρότερο αέρα σε αρκετά τετραγωνικά χιλιόμετρα.

    Jon Goodbun  19:12  

    So one of the interesting reasons for taking on this ecological semiotics approach becomes particularly clear when we look at pollution, because actually, when we examine the polluted airs of Athens, it’s full of particles, and those particles have very different stories to tell, which give us a very clear idea and sense of the extended body of Athena, and the troubled eco-mental systems of Athena. So the particles in the air include, for example, dust which is frequently brought over from the increasing desertification of the Sahara and Sahel regions in Africa. This dust is increasingly polluted with toxins from industry and wars in the region. We’re seeing more locally, climate change has meant that forest fires in the local region are becoming more frequent and more intense. This means frequently Athens is covered in smoke from local fires, which has then the double effect of also removing the lungs of Athena. Three years ago, the fires on Evia were allowed to burn themselves out, reducing huge amounts of air-cleaning forest. And actually these processes then intensify, as the removal of the forests removes the ways in which forests help to produce rain, thereby increasing the likelihood of further fires. Then, as we move into the city more closely, the intense motor vehicle traffic produces the usual range of pollutants from that. And then fuel poverty in significant parts of the Athenian population, means that wood and other rubbish is burnt for heating in the winter, but even just for cooking in the summer. So we have this complicated mix of particles that have very different stories to tell. And part of the project here is in establishing these these routes for dialogue, so that the cooling devices themselves also become pollution monitoring devices, but we also imagine a parallel project of citizen science engagements with local communities, for example, working with schools to build pollution sensors that can then be taken to the houses and flats and balconies of Athens to try to give us a better idea of how these airs and particles are moving around, and to try to establish both a greater local awareness of this, and the ways in which people can protect themselves from it, but also to establish the potential for bigger solidarities to emerge between Athens, the regions around Athens, but even with with the desertification in areas of Africa and so on: this is one extended ecological system.

    ​​Jon Goodbun 19:12

    Έτσι, ένας από τους ενδιαφέροντες λόγους για την υιοθέτηση αυτής της οικολογικής σημειωτικής προσέγγισης γίνεται ιδιαίτερα σαφής όταν εξετάζουμε τη ρύπανση, επειδή στην πραγματικότητα, όταν εξετάζουμε τον μολυσμένο αέρα της Αθήνας, είναι γεμάτος σωματίδια, και αυτά τα σωματίδια έχουν πολύ διαφορετικές ιστορίες να διηγηθούν, οι οποίες μας δίνουν μια πολύ σαφή ιδέα και αίσθηση του εκτεταμένου σώματος της Αθηνάς και των προβληματικών οικο-νοητικών συστημάτων της Αθηνάς. Έτσι, τα σωματίδια στον αέρα περιλαμβάνουν, για παράδειγμα, σκόνη που συχνά μεταφέρεται από την αυξανόμενη ερημοποίηση των περιοχών Σαχάρας και Σαχέλ στην Αφρική. Αυτή η σκόνη μολύνεται ολοένα και περισσότερο με τοξίνες από τη βιομηχανία και τους πολέμους στην περιοχή. Βλέπουμε περισσότερα τοπικά, η κλιματική αλλαγή έχει ως αποτέλεσμα οι δασικές πυρκαγιές στην τοπική περιοχή να γίνονται πιο συχνές και πιο έντονες. Αυτό σημαίνει ότι συχνά η Αθήνα καλύπτεται από καπνό από τοπικές πυρκαγιές, κάτι που έχει στη συνέχεια το διπλό αποτέλεσμα της αφαίρεσης και των πνευμόνων της Αθηνάς. Πριν από τρία χρόνια, οι πυρκαγιές στην Εύβοια αφέθηκαν να σβήσουν μόνες τους, μειώνοντας τεράστιες ποσότητες δασών που καθαρίζουν τον αέρα. Και στην πραγματικότητα αυτές οι διαδικασίες εντείνονται, καθώς η αφαίρεση των δασών αφαιρεί τους τρόπους με τους οποίους τα δάση βοηθούν στην παραγωγή βροχής, αυξάνοντας έτσι την πιθανότητα περαιτέρω πυρκαγιών. Στη συνέχεια, καθώς πλησιάζουμε πιο κοντά στην πόλη, η έντονη κυκλοφορία οχημάτων παράγει το συνηθισμένο εύρος ρύπων από αυτό. Και στη συνέχεια, η ενεργειακή φτώχεια σε σημαντικά τμήματα του αθηναϊκού πληθυσμού σημαίνει ότι τα ξύλα και άλλα σκουπίδια καίγονται για θέρμανση τον χειμώνα, αλλά ακόμη και μόνο για μαγείρεμα το καλοκαίρι. Έτσι, έχουμε αυτό το περίπλοκο μείγμα σωματιδίων που έχουν πολύ διαφορετικές ιστορίες να πουν. Και μέρος του έργου εδώ είναι η δημιουργία αυτών των οδών διαλόγου, έτσι ώστε οι ίδιες οι συσκευές ψύξης να γίνουν επίσης συσκευές παρακολούθησης της ρύπανσης, αλλά φανταζόμαστε επίσης ένα παράλληλο έργο εμπλοκής της επιστήμης των πολιτών με τις τοπικές κοινότητες, για παράδειγμα, συνεργασία με σχολεία για την κατασκευή αισθητήρων ρύπανσης που μπορούν στη συνέχεια να μεταφερθούν στα σπίτια, τα διαμερίσματα και τα μπαλκόνια της Αθήνας, για να προσπαθήσουμε να μας δώσουμε μια καλύτερη ιδέα για το πώς κινούνται αυτοί οι ατμοσφαιρικοί ρύποι και τα σωματίδια, και να προσπαθήσουμε να δημιουργήσουμε τόσο μια μεγαλύτερη τοπική ευαισθητοποίηση σχετικά με αυτό, όσο και τους τρόπους με τους οποίους οι άνθρωποι μπορούν να προστατευτούν από αυτό, αλλά και να δημιουργήσουμε τις δυνατότητες για μεγαλύτερη αλληλεγγύη μεταξύ της Αθήνας, των περιοχών γύρω από την Αθήνα, αλλά ακόμη και με την ερημοποίηση σε περιοχές της Αφρικής και ούτω καθεξής: αυτό είναι ένα εκτεταμένο οικολογικό σύστημα.

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    Jon Goodbun  22:45  

    Obviously, no amount of evaporative cooling towers can solve these problems. These are very large, significant problems that Athens and cities around the world are facing. However, these kinds of devices can help, and they can help local communities and municipalities manage some of the dangers. But they also have other possibilities, which is to help to establish a greater understanding of how the ecologies of the city are working, and to build up an increased ecological sensitivity, or an ecological aesthetics, we might say, around our sensitivities to heat and pollution, and one of the wider, if you like, semiotics… of building our bodily sensitivities… one of the roles that these kinds of projects can play is trying to build up a greater social awareness of what we’re talking about, when we talk about wet bulb temperatures, and dry bulb temperatures, and relative humidity, and what that feels like, because that’s actually a set of skills that we’re all going to need to learn in the future.

    Jon Goodbun 22:45

    Προφανώς, καμία ποσότητα πύργων ψύξης με εξάτμιση δεν μπορεί να λύσει αυτά τα προβλήματα. Πρόκειται για πολύ μεγάλα, σημαντικά προβλήματα που αντιμετωπίζει η Αθήνα και οι πόλεις σε όλο τον κόσμο. Ωστόσο, αυτού του είδους οι συσκευές μπορούν να βοηθήσουν, και να βοηθήσουν τις τοπικές κοινότητες και τους δήμους να διαχειριστούν ορισμένους από τους κινδύνους. Αλλά έχουν και άλλες δυνατότητες, οι οποίες είναι να βοηθήσουν στην καλύτερη κατανόηση του πώς λειτουργούν οι οικολογίες της πόλης και να οικοδομήσουν μια αυξημένη οικολογική ευαισθησία, ή μια οικολογική αισθητική, θα μπορούσαμε να πούμε, γύρω από τις ευαισθησίες μας στη θερμότητα και τη ρύπανση, και μια από τις ευρύτερες, αν θέλετε, σημειωτικές… της οικοδόμησης των σωματικών μας ευαισθησιών… ένας από τους ρόλους που μπορούν να διαδραματίσουν αυτά τα είδη έργων είναι η προσπάθεια να οικοδομηθεί μια μεγαλύτερη κοινωνική επίγνωση για το τι εννοούμε, όταν μιλάμε για θερμοκρασίες υγρού βολβού, και θερμοκρασίες ξηρού βολβού, και σχετική υγρασία, και πώς αισθανόμαστε με αυτό, γιατί αυτό είναι στην πραγματικότητα ένα σύνολο δεξιοτήτων που όλοι θα χρειαστεί να μάθουμε στο μέλλον.

    Jon Goodbun  24:15  

    Importantly, this is a significantly publicly funded project, and that shapes again our methods, away from trying to design an air-cooling commodity, or thinking about it as some kind of technological solution, but is rather helping to describe a wider project, or a wider set of problems. And we’re seeing the deliverables of this as primarily open-source material. So we’ll be producing a series of collective commons guidelines so that people can conduct their own experiments, and we’ll be developing a kit of parts for people to potentially use in their own experiments. For these reasons, what we’re calling the ‘social form of the technology’ becomes a very important question for us. Environmental activists have long argued, for example, that a wind farm owned by a multinational energy company should not be thought of as a green or sustainable technology. Actually there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with wind farms, but a permaculture experiment having a small wind farm is one thing, and an energy company setting up extractive relationships across large landscapes is something very different. And in fact, many of our allies in Athens are actually involved in protests against some highly problematic, highly unecological wind farm projects that are happening in and across Greece. So the social forms that technologies take, the ways in which they enfold energetic, material, social flows and relations of all kinds, speaks directly to how we think about cities and ecologies as eco-mental systems, and this addresses directly the curator’s call for architectural and design research into intelligences of all kinds: social, natural and artificial. So this project, therefore, is not simply a research project into evaporative cooling, but it’s a research project into the potential social forms of evaporative cooling.

    Jon Goodbun 24:15

    Είναι σημαντικό ότι πρόκειται για ένα έργο με σημαντική δημόσια χρηματοδότηση, το οποίο διαμορφώνει εκ νέου τις μεθόδους μας, μακριά από την προσπάθεια σχεδιασμού ενός προϊόντος ψύξης αέρα ή τη θεώρησή του ως κάποιο είδος τεχνολογικής λύσης, αλλά μάλλον βοηθά στην περιγραφή ενός ευρύτερου έργου ή ενός ευρύτερου συνόλου προβλημάτων. Και βλέπουμε τα παραδοτέα αυτού ως υλικό κυρίως ανοιχτού κώδικα. Έτσι, θα δημιουργήσουμε μια σειρά από συλλογικές κατευθυντήριες γραμμές για τα κοινά, ώστε οι άνθρωποι να μπορούν να διεξάγουν τα δικά τους πειράματα, και θα αναπτύξουμε ένα κιτ εξαρτημάτων για να τα χρησιμοποιήσουν οι άνθρωποι ενδεχομένως στα δικά τους πειράματα. Για αυτούς τους λόγους, αυτό που ονομάζουμε «κοινωνική μορφή της τεχνολογίας» γίνεται ένα πολύ σημαντικό ερώτημα για εμάς. Οι περιβαλλοντικοί ακτιβιστές υποστηρίζουν εδώ και καιρό, για παράδειγμα, ότι ένα αιολικό πάρκο που ανήκει σε μια πολυεθνική εταιρεία ενέργειας δεν πρέπει να θεωρείται ως μια πράσινη ή βιώσιμη τεχνολογία. Στην πραγματικότητα, δεν υπάρχει τίποτα θεμελιωδώς κακό με τα αιολικά πάρκα, αλλά ένα πείραμα περμακουλτούρας που έχει ένα μικρό αιολικό πάρκο είναι ένα πράγμα, και μια εταιρεία ενέργειας που δημιουργεί εξορυκτικές σχέσεις σε μεγάλες εκτάσεις είναι κάτι πολύ διαφορετικό. Και στην πραγματικότητα, πολλοί από τους συμμάχους μας στην Αθήνα συμμετέχουν σε διαμαρτυρίες κατά ορισμένων εξαιρετικά προβληματικών, εξαιρετικά αντιοικολογικών έργων αιολικών πάρκων που λαμβάνουν χώρα εντός της Ελλάδας. Έτσι, οι κοινωνικές μορφές που λαμβάνουν οι τεχνολογίες, οι τρόποι με τους οποίους ενσωματώνουν ενεργειακές, υλικές, κοινωνικές ροές και σχέσεις κάθε είδους, μιλούν άμεσα για το πώς σκεφτόμαστε τις πόλεις και τις οικολογίες ως οικο-νοητικά συστήματα, και αυτό απευθύνεται άμεσα στην έκκληση του επιμελητή για αρχιτεκτονική και σχεδιαστική έρευνα σε νοημοσύνη κάθε είδους: κοινωνική, φυσική και τεχνητή. Επομένως, αυτό το έργο δεν είναι απλώς ένα ερευνητικό έργο για την ψύξη με εξάτμιση, αλλά είναι ένα ερευνητικό έργο για τις πιθανές κοινωνικές μορφές ψύξης με εξάτμιση.

  • The Phenomena is a Trickster

    It is a curious honour to host what I believe is the first event on UFOs – or UAPs – Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena – at the Royal College of Art in London today.

    In fact the first two events. The morning started with a presentation to the emerging RCA _SPACE group while in the afternoon I led a seminar with the MA Environmental Architecture students.

    This was the poster text for the events:

    _
    SPACE Research Seminars 2026


    We operate at the intersection of art and aerospace, working towards the democratization of space exploration by asserting the role of the arts beyond terrestrial sites and traditions.

    The _SPACE Research Group plans to hold 3 research seminars at the RCA across the academic term 2025-26. Below are details of the first.


    18 March 2026 UAP Studies Day: The Phenomena is a Trickster
    18 March 2026, 11am-1pm Room: STE003


    RCA _SPACE Group meeting: UAP Studies Briefing: The Phenomena is a Trickster


    Dr Jon Goodbun will give a briefing on the emerging field of UAP (formerly UFO!) Studies, and the politics, rabbit holes and significant recent developments in the global ‘disclosure’ movement. He will also give an introduction to his own research interests in the field, and a scoping of a possible wider RCA project on the entire UAP field, including studies of media, new materials research, and in relation to more speculative research elsewhere such as electro-gravitics and zero-point and plasma fusion energy research, non-local consciousness studies and the implications for science and technology studies, and indigenous knowledge studies.

    Goodbun draws on his ongoing work with Gregory Bateson’s ecological cybernetics – particularly Bateson’s insistence that mind is not contained within the skull, but is immanent within ecological systems of all kinds, which constitute ‘eco-mental systems’: circuits of perception, communication, and feedback that our ‘selves’ emerge from, empathise with, plug into and extend through. From this perspective, UFO and UAP reports can be read as environmental registers as much as “objects”: events entangled with sensing systems, media infrastructures, attention economies, and the atmospheres (literal and cultural) in which observation takes place. Goodbun takes his recent work on Bateson’s ‘ecological aesthetics’ methods to engage UAP material, thinking across perception, pattern, non-human intelligence, and the politics of the “real.”

    2pm Room: DAR801
    MA Environmental Architecture seminar: The Ecological Aesthetics of UAP/UFOs.

    Jon Goodbun will lead his usual weekly seminar for the MA Environmental Architecture students, this week presenting a seminar on The Environmental Architectures of UAP. (This seminar may be open to any interested members of the RCA Space group.)

    We will ask: What becomes possible when the discourse around UFOs, and the broader category of UAP: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, is approached not primarily as a question of physical fact (“are they real?”), but as a question of semiotic meaning and value: ecological, political, cybernetic, aesthetic, and epistemological. We ask: What kinds of environments—material, institutional, psychic, atmospheric—produce the conditions under which “the phenomenon” appears, is experienced, is recorded, is narrated, and then typically, is ridiculed, stigmatised and denied?

    The fact is, both the phenomena, and the legitimacy of overwhelming
    quantities of testimony from ‘experiencers’ and witnesses from around the planet, are real. However, the meaning of the frequent high strangeness of the phenomena, is exceptionally obscure. The pre-eminent ufologist Jaques Vallée (who was played by Francois Truffaut in Speilberg’s Close Encounters), has repeatedly observed that “the phenomena is absurd,” and directly connects contemporary phenomena to folk stories such as fairies, nature spirits, duendes and jinn from around the planet: “The Phenomena is a Trickster.”

    Independent researchers in the field have amassed and archived recordings, testimony and historical material from cultures around the planet, and they typically argue that the evidence shows that the phenomena, whatever it is, has been with us on Earth for many thousands of years at a minimum. But what is it? What is our relationship to it? What, if anything, does it want? Around these questions has grown a rich and diverse weave of competing and complimentary narratives, cosmologies and worldbuilding speculations. Into this web of genuine testimony there has also of course also been inserted all kinds of deliberate fabulations and misinformation of various kinds. But even these deliberate fictions constitute some kind of data, and even demand a certain kind of research.

    There are patterns which connect the phenomena that are currently being reported from our atmospheres and ocean, and indeed from orbital space. One hypothesis proposed to explain some data, is that our upper atmospheres sustains ecologies that we are barely aware of, possibly including plasma-based life forms resembling jellyfish, orbs and other organic forms. Many researchers argue that the evidence suggests that we have been in some way (this can cover many hypotheses!) sharing the planet for millennia with other, complex and technological intelligences. One popular observation is that the oceans of our planet are still largely unmapped and may be hiding a great deal. Of course, there is the possibility – most commonly imagined in popular science fiction – that we are visited by entities from beyond our planet and solar system. However it is worth noting that the ‘ET in a spaceship’ is generally seen in the UAP field as far too simple an explanation for a= lot of the phenomena, and there are many who argue that perhaps it is not so much other planets we are interacting with, as other Earths. In the UAP field, the ‘pluriversal’ and ‘many-worlds’ thesis – which many of us have taken from South American anthropology and worked with as an epistemology – is instead proposed as an ontological reality. Perhaps we need to imagine an ecology of Earths, loosely connected inter dimensionally or inter-temporaly, some hypotheses seem to imply.

    Finally, we need to confront how to think about the overwhelming and constantly growing evidence and testimony that the USA and other governments not only have conducted extensive classified research into the phenomena and know a great deal more than they are letting on, but in addition, they have recovered multiple non-human origin craft. Some craft are said to have been recovered from archeological sites. Some are said to be so large that buildings have been built over them. Alarmingly, multiple military witnesses claim that the US has used weapons to bring craft down. Others have been described as ‘gifts.’ The range of US military whistleblowers from the so-called ‘legacy’ programmes is by now quite remarkable and covering all ranks from Admirals down. The claims made, on record to the US Congress, are equally astonishing, including (disputed) suggestions of success in retro-engineering recovered technologies by the military contractors who have been given the recovered craft, including most commonly Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. It is for example, regularly suggested that some of these contractors have been sitting on clean free energy technology (and plasma based cold fusion tech startups are now starting to emerge) which could have eliminated fossil fuel use decades ago.

    Of course it is possible that ALL of this military testimony is an elaborate CIA disinformation programme (some of it certainly is), but at this point, this would be worthy of study in itself, and would constitute, amongst other things, one of the most extraordinary works of artifice of all time. (It is also worth noting that given the wider crisis of legitimation engulfing the US government and military post- Epstein and post-Iran, there are strong rumours that President Trump will initiate some kind of UAP disclosure as distraction in the coming months.)

    Thus we will address the field’s hazards head-on: misinformation and sensationalism, US-centrism, racialised mythologies, and the labour realities of militarised knowledge (NDAs, whistleblowing, and worker precarity). We will situate these questions alongside the emerging institutional and research landscape — including novel institutions such as the Sol Foundation, and their convening of policy and research conversations around UAP. Without endorsing any single explanatory frame, we will map competing narratives—statesecrecy and “disclosure” claims, private-sector compartmentalisation, and the blurred border between military R&D, corporate IP, and public knowledge—as a way to ask how authority and evidence are produced and withheld. We will close by asking what a non-military, demilitarised research programme into anomalous phenomena might look like—and what responsibilities architectural and environmental thought might carry when “the heavens” are treated as an inhabited, contested, co-evolving and semiotic medium and a commons, rather than empty space awaiting enclosure, privatization and militarization.

  • Sol Foundation Symposium Italy

    It was a fascinating pleasure to attend the third Sol Foundation symposium in Baveno, Italy which ran October 24-27 2025. The Sol Foundation is led by the anthropologist Peter Skafish – who translated Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s classic ‘Cannibal Metaphysics’ which has been a constant on our MA Environmental Architecture reading lists – and Stanford Professor Garry Nolan, a world leading cancer research specialist. The Sol Foundation was established to bring the field of UFO and UAP studies into the academic mainstream, as evidence of the reality of the phenomena becomes ever more overwhelming, and as the global Disclosure Movement – which calls upon governments around the world to release currently classified files on the subject – continues to grow.

    The symposium brought together world-leading researchers in the field and an impressive array of whistleblowers from government and military, and experiencers of all kinds.

    My own research in the field continues to grow. Many experiencers of the phenomena report receiving ecological messages or experiences of some kind, and I am working on a cybernetic Batesonian interpretation of the environmental architectures and ecological aesthetics of UFO/UAP. The politics surrounding the field are also rich and complex, with the military-industrial-entertainment complex deeply implicated in cover-ups, dis-information and all kinds of complex involvements.

    The dialogue between Peter Skafish and US military whistleblower Jeff Nuccitelli closed the event, and brings together the complexity of the field.

  • Αστική Εξάτμιση Ψύξης και η Οικολογική Σημειωτική της Θερμότητας και της Ρύπανσης στην Αθήνα

    Here is the edit of the documentary film ‘Urban Evaporative Cooling and the Ecological Semiotics of Heat and Pollution in Athens’ made for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 with Greek subtitles

  • Evaporative Cooling in Athens at Venice Architecture Biennale 2025

    An exhibition installation featuring a wooden display with images and texts on panels, illuminated in a dimly lit room with a brick wall background. One panel shows a person working on a structure, while another displays a colorful city scene and text overlay.

    Although I wasn’t happy initially with the difference between my proposed layout and the actual installation (screens too low, drawing too small, cramped space blah blah ..), I made my peace with it, and even liked it by the end :)As @godofredo_enes reviewed: ‘it’s not bad!’

    It is nice to note that Phineas Harper favourably mentioned us and our fellow travellers Vessel in his review https://artreview.com/venice-architecture-biennale-2025-review-a-tech-bro-fever-dream-phineas-harper/


    The two films we made are wonderful (thanks again to @linnphyllisseeger and @gemmariggsfilm) and we’ll be exhibiting them again this summer at Rheomode Athens (and maybe in London), and will make them available online very soon (at www.towersofwinds.org and here). Thanks to the team Aran Chadwick (Atelier One), Flora McLean (RCA Fashion), Rosa Schiano-Phan and Juan Vallejo (University of Westminster) and Dimitra Vlami (Rheomode Athens) and the support of Royal College of Art (esp Adrian Lahoud and the School of Architecture) and many friends and allies inc @jamesbridle and @latraacskatecafe @enacting_eco_aesthetics and many others #labiennaledivenezia

  • Three new papers on Gregory Bateson and eco-mental systems

    Hopefully I will have time to finish three new (or mostly new) papers for the final deliverable from our Bateson research project (https://www.enactingecologicalaesthetics.com), which will I think be a significant new collective contribution positioning some of Gregory Bateson’s thinking in relation to contemporary questions regarding the challenges facing ecological design, strategy and planning in an era of extreme socio-ecological uncertainty. The abstracts of my three papers:

    Goodbun – Bateson Book Chapters

    Gregory Bateson and the Political

    This paper below has evolved out of an introductory paper of the same name, written for a dialogue panel led by the author with Phillip Gudemmi and Fred Turner, hosted by Systemic Design Association at the RSD11 conference in 2022, and which can be found online. The original paper was thus written before the start of the research project which this book is a product of. However, this paper provided a significant framing for some research questions that were taken on, including a repositioning of Gregory Bateson, not as the a-political figure that he is so often presented and received as, but instead, as someone rather more complex, who moved through a series of distinct situated practices which had significant political aspects. 

    I argue in this paper that there are two periods of quite significant political engagement, where Bateson directly reflected upon, and made real contributions to, significant strategic and meta-political (not a-political) questions (many of which contain significance for design and planning today). The approximate chronology I proposed defines a younger period from the mid thirties until the end of the war in 1945, and a second period which really gets going with his participation in the Dialectics of Liberation Congress in 1967, until his death in 1980. 

    Importantly, this paper also brought into focus as a new area of Bateson research, the significance of his reflection upon the ‘lack of a theory of action’ found in the widely overlooked and then out-of-print paper from what was considered to be his ‘failed’ 1969 Wenner Gren symposium on the ‘The Moral and Aesthetic Structure of Human Adaptation’. I use the framing of ‘-action’ to name the three distinct periods outlined above: Naive Action, Actionless-Action, and Wise Action.

    In this revised and extended paper, I have expanded upon some of the key contributions of the paper noted above, and I have removed some sections – such as the cross reading with Felix Guattari’s work – which whilst relevant, are now dealt with in another chapter in this book.

    The Two Orders of the Three Ecologies – 

    An Introduction to Gregory Bateson and the Double Binds of Design 

    In this paper I try to answer the question: Why should we read Bateson today? I give an overview of both Bateson’s own trajectory, and his influence upon many of the environmental humanities thinkers who are so important to us today. Noting that Bateson is both everywhere yet strangely absent, I suggest that it is perhaps his critical extensions and revisions to all three of the great intellectual patriarchs of western modernity: Marx, Darwin and Freud, which has made him both easy and difficult to consume. Building on arguments introduced in ‘GB and the Political’, I further unpack Bateson’s position by exploring what I call his ‘Three Ecologies’ period, in particular through a reading of his 1969 paper ‘Pathologies of Epistemology’, and the cosmology of ‘eco-mental systems’ which he proposes therein. I suggest that the call to action (!) to the therapist community that he concludes the paper with, was heard by at least one activist-therapist – Felix Guattari – and I spend some time in a close parallel reading of Bateson’s and Guattari’s three ecologies. I ask, with Bateson and Guattari, how ‘selves’ are produced transversally across three systemic ‘types’ or ‘scales’ – individual organisms, social organisations, and environmental worlds – and how these must all be understood in relation to a quite different ecological dualism that Bateson reveals, between the material-energetic and the informational-semiotic (hence ‘the two orders of the three ecologies’). I conclude with Bateson that some kind of ‘ecological therapy’ is needed (for both ecological disciplines, the ecosystems that are their subject matter, and anyone with goals to act in such contexts), and I wonder in passing if this might also be a way of reimagining what ‘design’ is? In closing, I suggest that ‘Surrealism,’ which historically positioned itself as a synthesis of Marx and Freud, might provide the basis for a new ecological project across the two orders of the three ecologies: an ecological surrealism, this time based in a Batesonian rather than Freudian unconscious. 

    The Ecological Aesthetics of Empathy and Alienation

    ‘So by ‘aesthetics’ I mean responsiveness to the pattern which connects. The pattern which connects is a meta-pattern. It is a pattern of patterns. It is that meta-pattern which defines the vast generalisation that indeed it is patterns which connect.’ 

    Gregory Bateson

    ‘The senses become theoreticians in their immediate practice’

    Karl Marx

    Building upon my conclusions in ‘The Two Orders of the Three Ecologies’, in this paper I suggest that we can indeed define a Batesonian ‘ecological aesthetic’, but that this is not a style guide, or a design tool or anything like that. Rather, it takes as its basis a totemistic/animistic empathy or mimetic metaphor, as the core semiotic process of acting-perceiving organisms engaging with a world which is always their unconscious. As such, a Batesonian ecological aesthetic is also the basis of what we might call a Batesonian science – or a Batesonian re-imagining of the project of science.

    For Bateson, the concept of empathy was key to the ethico-aesthetic practice of perceiving patterns that connect. This in turn was central to the possibility of learning how to act-with-wisdom within ecological and systemic complexity. It is not clear to what extent Bateson knew the etymology and history of the word ‘empathy’, but in this paper I explore that history, and the surprising connections between the concept of empathy and firstly, the concept of space in a particular tradition of architectural aesthetics, and some recent returns to that, via the neuroscience of spatial perception. Secondly, between Marxian conceptions of alienation and mimesis.

    I use these readings to approach three very different case studies. Firstly, with the help of one of Bateson’s favourite references – Carl Jung – I consider the ecological aesthetics of the phenomena of UFO/UAPs. Secondly, I find some empathy building tools in some of the props and diagrams that Bateson used in his teaching practice. Finally, I consider the implications of an ecological aesthetics of totemistic empathy with damaged eco-mental systems in relation to a particular situated design research project on Urban Evaporative Cooling and the Ecological Semiotics of Heat and Pollution in Athens.

  • Towers of Winds at Venice Biennale 2025

    We’re busy nearing completion of material for our small installation of two film pieces in dialogue – one channelling the eco-mental systems of Athena by Linn Phyllis Seeger, and the other a documentary of our research-in-progress by Gemma Riggs – for the Venice Biennale 2025 curated by Carlo Ratti on the theme Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective

    Infographic explaining urban evaporative cooling and the ecological semiotics of heat and pollution in Athens, illustrating air quality improvements and how the system functions.

  • Steps Around a Theory of Action: Notes on Seven Bateson Conferences

    I’m really happy to see the online publication of a joint piece that I’ve been collaborating on with the ‘archive team’ (myself, Dulmini Perera, Simon Sadler and Ben Sweeting) from our ‘Enacting Gregory Bateson’s Ecological Aesthetics in Architecture and Design’ AHRC-DFG funded research project (which also includes Joanna Boehnert and Marie Davidova). This piece was conceived and led by Dulmini, who also worked with Leonie Link, Florian Tudzierez, and later Paola Ferrari and Stefanie Huthoefer on the associated interactive graphic component. See: https://www.enactingecologicalaesthetics.com/batesons-cosmos/

    The piece draws upon previously unpublished archival material around a series of conferences that Gregoray Bateson was involved in through the late 60s and early 70s and provides a series of framings which help to make this period of Bateson’s thinking available to us today, as we continue to confront the practical and political questions around the possible forms (social, political, spatial) of human adaptation within a context of multi-scalar ecological complexity.

    Dulmini gives an introductory text to the project. I contribute short texts concerning two conferences, the 1967 Dialectics of Liberation Congress, and the 1968 Conscious Purpose and Human Adaptation. There then follows a series of brilliant short texts by Ben Sweeting, Dulmini Perera and Simon Sadler.

    Digital graphic depicting the title 'Gregory Bateson's Cosmos c. 1968' with a timeline and reference to various Bateson conferences, illustrating key dates and associated texts.
    Screenshot

  • ‘Urban Evaporative Cooling and the Ecological Semiotics of Heat and Pollution in Athens’ research-in-progress to be exhibited at Venice Biennale 2025

    Very happy to announce, after several months of discussions, that our work on evaporative cooling, heat and pollution in Athens, will be exhibited at this year’s Venice Biennale.

    The curator Carlo Ratti has set the theme Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective., which connects well with the ‘eco-mental’ and semiotic framing I have given our broader urban evaporative cooling research…

    The curators asked if it was possible to construct a full scale tower, which would have been amazing, but which would not have worked well without complete reimagining, as Venice is already evaporatively cooled by the canals and lagoon!

    Instead, we are enjoying working on a two screen film installation piece which will be presented in the ‘Artificial Intelligens’ section, in the Corderie building of the Arsenale, in one of the curator Carlo Ratti’s main curated spaces on ‘Intelligens’.

    The core project team is myself as Project Lead and P-I (at both RCA and Rheomode, where Dimitra Vlami is helping to project manage), Aran Chadwick from Atelier One structural engineers, Flora McLean, also from RCA (Fashion and textiles), and Rosa Schiano-Phan and Juan Vallejo from University of Westminster. In addition we are working collaboratively with the filmmakers Gemma Riggs and Linn Phyllis Seeger on producing material for the installation and online.

    Many thanks to the Royal College of Art – both the Research Office and the School of Architecture in particular – for supporting this project, and to the University of Westminster and Atelier One for additional support.

    Many thanks also to the support of local allies such as Latraac Skate Bar and Urban Garden and Zachos Varfis, artist-writer James Bridle, the Municipality of Athen Heat Officer Elissavet Bargianni and UN Habitat Heat Officer Eleni Myrivili.

    Filmed at Latraac Athens during pre-prototype testing July 2024