INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL PRYTULA

Here is a profile of one of our tutors, Michael Prytula, a person who came to share his sustainable experience with EASA people through the “Autonomous structure” workshop. Michael is a full time teacher in Berlin Technical University lecturing about sustainable issues through seminars and in design studios. He heard about EASA003 – Sustainable Living – from our German NC Jost and became interested enough to ask, “Can I do a workshop?” and ended up here with us to tutor his one week workshop.
Michael started to answer the question of what an autonomous structure is, by mentioning the German word “Autarkie”, which actually was often used by fascist groups in 1930’s. “Autarkie”, meaning “physically independent” is a keyword of Michael’s workshop and doesn’t have a direct translation in English. The word we use in English for it is “autonomy” which in German means “being self deciding and master of your own”. Clearing this point we’ll go on with the word autonomous in our article. The aim of the workshop and an autonomous structure is about decentralizing of infrastructure and to improve the city, suburbs and landscape. Michael is considering designing cell structures that imitate the principle of their function, as if in a town of eco-system. He is talking about copying the principles of nature. To him the “concept for sustainable city” should present results. The needs for this in such a city can be taken in two main points: first as “resource productivity” which is mainly about recycling, and circulating systems and the second is “resource efficiency” which is about the benefits received from them.
About the present situation, Michael says “People are getting better and better but sustainable living is not as high as it could be and must improve a lot. Education is needed for this”. He pauses to contemplate the question of what an example of a sustainable city could be today, and says that the examples differ a lot. “Indians can have quite a poor consuming pattern. There it is a closed system. Friberg on the other hand can be mentioned with its transportation, and here in Denmark a lot of bikes are used for transportation which is also pretty sustainable.”
Coming back to EASA003, we asked Michael his opinion of how EASA is progressing about the sustainable living issue and he said “workshops are disappointing, as I see. There’s so much to do, so much to do after. Participants don’t have a long-term perspective or maybe political and social experience, because they are young. With this they are free and open-minded. People are sincere here, but more branches should have come together: geologists, biologists, ecologists, maybe economists. Something to publish would be good to reach more people and to get responses in all countries.”
Lastly we asked him “if you had only one wish what would that be?” Michael replied “making people happy” and we asked whether he is succeeding and finally he said he is quite good with his life, with his girlfriend, he is now in Denmark, with nice people, the sun is shining…


posted by lucy cartlidge
Thu, 31 Jul 2003 14:31:42 GMT