Housing is one of the greatest adaptive challenges we currently face as a species. It’s also a key solution to many other complexities around population, community, civic engagement, and the ecological crisis. Navigating our current global political landscape often feels like patching up a sinking ship, where the tools we use to mend it often reproduce the status quo that created the holes in the first place. In terms of housing, this looks like the expansion of repetitive, car-centric suburban developments that damage the earth and force us to spend more time in our cars commuting than in community.

Prachi Rampuria and Soham De share another vision for what place making can be — one that calls for the building of a new ship to address today’s challenges with tomorrow’s solutions. They are co-founders of EcoResponsive Environments, an award-winning urban design and architectural practice based in London. Their work envisions the development of ecologically stable buildings, neighborhoods and settlements that are responsive to human needs for safe and just spaces to thrive, while also supporting our planet long-term.

In this conversation, Andy, Prachi, and Soham imagine a world where through ecoresponsive design, we have the potential to create more sustainable, equitable, and vibrant communities for all.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published"Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years From Now" by Matthew Olzmann

Most likely, you think we hated the elephant,

the golden toad, the thylacine and all variations

of whale harpooned or hacked into extinction.

It must seem like we sought to leave you nothing

but benzene, mercury, the stomachs

of seagulls rippled with jet fuel and plastic.

You probably doubt that we were capable of joy,

but I assure you we were.

We still had the night sky back then,

and like our ancestors, we admired

its illuminated doodles

of scorpion outlines and upside-down ladles.

Absolutely, there were some forests left!

Absolutely, we still had some lakes!

I’m saying, it wasn’t all lead paint and sulfur dioxide.

There were bees back then, and they pollinated

a euphoria of flowers so we might

contemplate the great mysteries and finally ask,

“Hey guys, what’s transcendence?”

And then all the bees were dead.

Show Notes:

• https://www.ecoresponsiveenvironments.com/

• “Ecoresponsive Environments: A Framework for Settlement Design” by Ian Bentley, Sue McGlynn, Soham De & Prachi Rampuria

• #148 It Makes a Village (with Jonathan Smales)

Connect with Andy:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjcahill/

• Instagram: instagram.com/wonderdomepodcast​

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