The architecture profession tends to assume that there is always more to build. We need more infrastructure, more houses and more office space to accommodate economies and societies that are forever expanding. Greedy though it may be, this mindset is supported by the pervasive belief that a society’s success is best measured not in terms of humane measures such as the capacity for care and play but in economic terms such as market expansion. — Failed Architecture

Mark Minkjan of Failed Architecture interviews Phineas Harper and Maria Smith, two of the curators behind the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2019. The triennale's theme, Enough: The Architecture of Degrowth is focused "proposing alternatives to the unsustainable and unfair paradigm of growth."

Explaining the idea of "degrowth," Smith tells Minkjan, "Degrowth is about is stopping incentivizing extraction. At the moment we’re in a pursuit of economic growth at all costs because we need it in order to manage our private and public debt because that’s the way our current economic system is set up. And because we have to do that, that means that the system encourages consumption, resource extraction and other things that are stupid and environmentally and socially damaging."

Smith continues, "The idea of Degrowth is to create a system that allows many of the more socially and environmentally conscientious projects, that already exist all around us. It’s not like a different and crazy world. It’s just that they struggle to be commercially viable under our current economic system, but if we could free ourselves from this incessant, necessary growth then a lot of those really culturally rich projects could flourish."



