Call me a junior high boy, but the fact that the Zurich-based Shahneshin Foundation is giving Shrinkage Awards makes me giggle. Who are they going to give them out to? SUV drivers? Polar bears?
The woefully inefficient (some might say shrunken) website attempts to explain “shrinkage” thusly:
Shrinkage, so-to-say the Second Renaissance, calls upon community to re-think and reassess the daily thoughts, attitudes and decisions, which go beyond the social responsibility, sustainability, green movement, and so-forth.
And thusly:
Despite all the arguments from sprawl[ers] – shrinkage is inevitable. If we consider sprawl in its extended sense we note that shrinkage is partially caused by sprawl and post-sprawl conditions such as leapfrog or scattered development, commercial strip development, and large expanses of single-use development. If nothing else, the concept of shrinkage can help us to see how much the design culture itself is an environ, in which we behave in often unexamined ways, based on unspoken assumptions, and unanticipated consequences.
And thusly:
It is imperative for policy planners, decision makers, marketers, designers and of course ordinary people to adjust their mindset and to call for radical change: culture of shrinkage. That means we should consider abandoning the sprawl-culture and replace it with shrinkage-culture.
Got that?
The deadline for submitting a poster “to promote and divulgate the shrinkage culture” has been extended (if you know what I mean) until September 29. So go forth and multiply. Or something.
