Revisiting the architectural folly in the age of the Anthropocene

Abstract

Based on the significant environmental impact of buildings and our constant exposure to the built environment, architects have the opportunity--and privilege--not only to expose the conditions of the current ecological crisis, but also provide solutions. The folly, an architectural feature that has been reinterpreted over the past few centuries, is a productive element for encouraging a new ecological mindset. By revisiting the folly through the lens of contemporary ecological and philosophical discourse, we may use it as a physical and rhetorical catalyst for reshaping environmental attitudes.

The labeling of a new era--the Anthropocene--in which humans have irreversibly affected the geological landscape, was designated in an attempt to reinforce the effects of our consumptive industrial actions and bring environmental concerns to the forefront of our collective consciousness. Suggestions for an ecological remedy fall between a technological-fix mentality (a blind faith in technological advances for solutions to our problems), and an attitudinal approach, which pushes for a fundamental lifestyle shift in order to prevent further environmental damage. Our solutions, inevitably, must embrace both new technologies as well as a new ecological worldview, demanding an understanding of the historically fraught relationship between man's technologies and the natural world.