TOTALITARIANISM

AGAINST

CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate change. The assignment of my generation, our chance to become part of history? With this project I react to the empty radicalism of the climate movement and romanticize about climate change as a greater goal. Through speculative architecture I research and imagine a vision of the future, a utopia.

With my design of a new parliament building I visualize a totalitarian government and a society capable of successfully achieving our climate goals.

Due to the COVID-19 disease the debate about targeted government action has become all the more relevant, what at first seemed highly unlikely could actually soon be very likely indeed.

MINGUS TEN CATE

@mingustencate

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1: Context 

The assignment of my generation: Reduce global emissions down to zero in the next 30 years to stabilize global temperatures at no more than 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, and thereby limiting the destructive effects of the climate crisis and avoid reaching the tipping point. The rejection of targeted government action has delayed, or even prevented, an adequate response to the global climate crisis. The only realistic path to the radical changes necessary to successfully achieve our climate goals would consist of a total mobilization aimed at rapidly cutting carbon dioxide emissions. 

Then why are we not mobilizing? Our current environmental movement only embraces small-scale, decentralized, bottom-up solutions in contrast to the centralized, state-led and technocratic solutions that a rapid transition on this scale would require. As all utopian visions, realizing the radically different society that successfully achieves zero emissions in 2050 is authoritarian in its essence. None of it will be possible without the necessary political consensus and public opinion or without abandoning our western democratic and liberal views. 

2: Utopia 

The project visualizes and speculates about the society that successfully achieves our climate goals, with the political movement at the center of the narrative. The mobilization and rapid transition to a low-carbon society have reduced our global emissions to net zero and saved the environment from further ecological degradation and humanity from further suffering of climate hazards

The eco-fascism movement and their ecological ideologies have united the many at the expense of the few and successfully established the totalitarian government that enabled the mobilization and radical changes of society. 

3: Building 

Binnenhof, the parliamentarian building of the Dutch government was the result of continuous architectural and programmatic transformation since the 13th century, its endless restoration and incremental changes reflecting the unwillingness of previous democratic governments to make significant changes.

To establish their right to rule, mark the beginning of a new era and manifest their ideologies in the physical realm of society, they demolished, recycled and rebuild the Binnenhof. The new Binnenhof reflects the ideologies and politics of its occupants, sustainable and authoritarian to its core. Its program surrounding a massive forest at the center of the site, symbolically protecting nature from those who harm it, society.