Event Reports

The need to move away from fossil fuel powered transport is now well established, and cities are often seen as the places par excellence where sociotechnical transitions towards sustainable, low-energy mobility are in the making. Yet, exactly why some cities are more successful in moving towards lower energy consumption than others remains only partly understood. This presentation will argue…

The use of smartphones to access the Internet while on the move is a common aspect of everyday, personal mobility in the twenty-first century. Transit, weather, and social media applications (apps) engage individuals’ attention during commutes, but the energy demands needed to power computing devices leads many users to employ creative, informal actions around charging batteries in…

Hilmar, who is visiting DEMAND for three months, introduced a series of ideas about the relation between materials, practices, architecture and cultural heritage. At first sight, these issues are only tangentially relevant to DEMAND, but the more he talked the more connections we saw. Some of these have to do with concepts of nature, culture and built forms. For example, methods of defining…

Do houses make us act in certain ways? What practical momentum do they exert on those who own or occupy them? To what extent do houses – as complex material configurations – prefigure practices? Mikko and Jenny have been thinking about these questions with the help of some interviews with people who have moved into existing houses and had to learn how to live in and with them.   The…

Walt Patterson talked about his forthcoming book, some ideas from which are available here: http://www.waltpatterson.org/beyondfire.pdf   He began by distinguishing between forms of energy production that do, or do not involve fire – and which do or do not involve the consumption/burning of resources like wood, coal, oil etc, and all the problems and emissions that ensue.  This…