Noor Debets
Several months ago I was selected to join the course Engineering for Sustainable Development. According to the description, the course offered complexity, tension and dilemma’s that come with sustainable practices. To indulge in such end results, however, commitment was required. Thus, for six weeks I wrote columns, followed various workshops and researched the current Texelaars’ lifestyle. In total, I consistently worked for 16 hrs/week on the Texel Project.
This process culminated in a visit to the beautiful island of Texel itself, last week. During this so called Bubble week we (a group of 30 international and multidisciplinary TU students) intensively worked together, sharing our thoughts and research data we had acquired over the previous weeks. It was our responsibility to analyse the (im)possibilities of a sustainable future of the island and to design two pathways of transition to sustainable futures. These could give us insight about the intricate relation between engineering, environment and society.
As clear as is this goal was at the start of Bubble week, halfway through, with only 2 days to go, it seemed more vague than ever. Both teachers and students envisioned themselves living in Texel in the year 2065. On the one hand, we (the students) came up with middle-of-the-road ideas for promoting sustainable lifestyles. Think of magazines, festivals and (online) platforms. These can be summarized as fairly predictable, though relevant and straight-forward. To the contrary, our teachers tried to convince us of floating houses, flying people, virtual holidays – truly creative stuff.
Thus, Wednesday night, our fun night out, was cancelled and we had a crisis meeting. We were struggling with the predictions of the future Texel. A big mistake, for we were not supposed to predict, but to explore what may take place in the future. A plausible future - imaginary - and not a truly probable future.
It appeared that we’d totally forgotten about the fact that things change more quickly than we thought it would. Current boundaries are not the same as future ones. These unexpected things should be taken into account. When that contingency is respected, planning for the (distant) future becomes a more creative process, freed from our engineering, strict and dominant ways of thinking. Yes, it was about multiple crazy pathways and system thinking and not about the linear, one-to-one approach… It took time to get everyone to adopt the same line on matters but, as the evening progressed, a general consensus was reached.
The result? In a way we did, we tackled the problem. We got our creative brains in a cross-fertilizing frenzy, (like Lennon's Imagine told us “It’s easy if you try”) suddenly producing fantastic ideas all over: Why not design a flood in 2031? Why shouldn’t we mention a virtual crisis and lets built a floating university! And so it was.
Thus, at last, the course description was right. The Bubble week on Texel was complex, tense, we had to overcome dilemma’s and create new ways of tackling our conditioned and institutionalized minds. 10 weeks ago I had never heard of it, by now I can proudly present our striking Pathways towards a more sustainable future!