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<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Derek Wrigley is very alive to the problems of peak oil
and climate change. This talk will be of interest to those who are looking at
domestic comfort after the end of cheap oil.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><STRONG></STRONG></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><STRONG>Public talk:</STRONG> <STRONG>The integrated solar
house and the future of suburbia</STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><STRONG>By:</STRONG> Derek Wrigley, architect and author
of "Making Your Home Sustainable"</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><STRONG>Date:</STRONG> Wednesday 17 May 2006</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><STRONG>Time:</STRONG> 7:30 pm to 9:00pm</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><STRONG>Venue</STRONG>: The Emeritus Faculty rooms,
Building 3T ANU campus</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><STRONG>Map showing venue:</STRONG> <A
href="http://campusmap.anu.edu.au/displaymap.asp?grid=cd32">http://campusmap.anu.edu.au/displaymap.asp?grid=cd32</A><BR><BR>Derek
has provided the following synopsis of his talk:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>We have been willingly seduced into becoming an effluent
society and the physical state of the world now requires a lot of urgent
rethinking of what we have all taken for granted – particularly in the design of
housing. <BR><BR>Global warming and the resultant climate changes will soon give
us no choice but to explore the use of our only free source of energy – the sun
– and to use its several manifestations in more beneficial ways. 200 years of
Australian architecture has tended to think of the sun as its enemy rather than
its friend and this will almost certainly have to be reversed.<BR><BR>The
housing industry has so far ignored many of the findings of building science
research and we are going along an illogical road of smaller block sizes with
anti-solar orientations (which prevent the building of solar effective houses),
larger houses (despite the decreasing size of families), increasing use of
energy (and pollution), enormous mortgages (which have reached the limits of
affordability) and technology being tentatively stuck on to houses in a
disintegrated way. Something has to give.<BR><BR>The bureaucratic rhetoric of
'sustainable growth' is somewhat oxy<I>moronic</I> in a finite world and
impossible to achieve, but housing development on the ground and the wants of
society are going in the opposite direction, yet continue to be approved.
<BR><BR>The looming oil crisis + climate change will almost certainly force a
rethink toward self-reliance in house design as well as re-orientation of our
personal mindsets and lifestyles.<BR><BR>Schumacher's small and beautiful
'appropriate technology' of the 1960s, needs to be resurrected toward
<I>self-reliant</I> house design, requiring us to think more simply and to
choose more wisely.<BR><BR>Better house design need not cost the
Earth.<BR>-----------------------------------------------------------------<BR>Keith
Thomas<BR>Nature and Society Forum<BR>(02) 6288 0760 (Weekday mornings
only); 0412 487 625
(Mobile)<BR>-----------------------------------------------------------------<BR><BR></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>