Back to Nature
In 1933 at an ICI lab in Norwich, England ,two scientists,
Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson, accidentally created polythene. In 1965, a Swedish engineer patented
the one piece shopping bag. Today
500 billion disposable plastic bags are used worldwide each year, usually for
an average time of 12 minutes before being discarded. In 1997 Charles Moore, a sailor and
researcher, found the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest of several floating
garbage ‘islands’ on our oceans. The world was shocked.
In 2018 UNEP established the Global Plastics Platform to
reduce plastic pollution. However, with a market worth expected to be $654.38
Billion by 2020, the focus is less on elimination, but on redesign to include
re use and compostability.
Overall consumer wastage has led to a growing movement for
“upcycling” or creative reuse where discarded materials and objects are
transformed into new products. It is something commonly practiced in countries
like Pakistan where eg, old airline food trolleys become filigree stainless
steel decoration on trucks and buses.
The real impetus in western societies is said to have
emerged from Assemblage Art, where found objects were incorporated into art
works. Picasso, inspired by African Art, was one of the first to use found
objects, along with Marcel Duchamp and later joseph Cornell, Robert Rauschenberg
and Louise Nevelson. Assemblage soon became a mainstream art technique along
with carving, modelling and painting.
Art has also been the one industry which has consistently
addressed nature – either as a subject matter or through its uses of natural
materials. Return to natural materials has
travelled from the domain of crafts into
the mainstream. In architecture, basket
making inspired Frei Otto in the 70s, to design the flexible grid shell
structure. Increasingly architects are looking to natural materials and ancient
construction methods. Fibres, bamboo, coconut trunks and adobe are some of the
materials making a comeback in modern design aesthetics.
In 1977, the Sculptor David Nash started his living Ash tree
dome . 22 Ash trees planted in a circle were trained to form a living dome. The
tree-shaping system named Botany Building, is new in the developed world but
has an ancient history such as the living Ficus root bridges of Indonesia and
India.
Natural fibre products from basketry to shoes and furniture
are found all over the world. Pakistan is fortunate to be in the cusp of
tradition and modernity. Reeds, grasses, and cane are formed to make functional or exquisitely ornamental
baskets, furniture in daily use across
Pakistan. The water cooler has not completely replaced the matka and surhai.
Adobe houses are still built in villages. Handwoven and hand embroidered textiles
are still valued. We need to
ensure these become part of our future and not just our past.
While traditional products feed well into revivalist
fashions, and are easily adapted by designers for modern tastes, language is
quietly losing its connection to nature. Urdu idioms that linked us to nature
are rarely used such as humay aam khanay
hain gutliyan nahin ginni ( we want to eat mangoes, not count the seeds). We
call colours maroon, purple, grey and
shocking pink instead of kathai, jamni, surmai and tarboozi.
The British journalist, George Monbiot, writes “Words encode
values that are subconsciously triggered when we hear them”. Critical of the vocabulary of environmental scientists, he
suggests we would feel more connected to nature if we said “places of natural wonder” instead of “protected
areas”.
Nature is not just a holiday destination, but a teacher that
is always with us. As Albert Einstein has said “Look deep into nature, and then
you will understand everything better”.
Durriya Kazi
April 2, 2019
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