Yona - Architecture

COMMUNICATION CENTRE OF SCIENTIFIC
KNOWLEDGE FOR SELF-RELIANCE
Under the auspices of the United Nation University
with the participation of the International Council of Scientific Unions
LAO TSE TOLD :
IT IS RIGHT
TO GIVE FISH TO THE
HUNGRY
.

IT IS BETTER
TO TEACH THEM
HOW TO CATCH FISH.

ENVIRONMENT
AND
SELF-RELIANCE
Yona Friedman & Eda Schaur
Communication Centre ofScientific
Knowledge for Self-Reliance
33 BD Garibaldi, 75015 Paris, France

BUT
WHAT TO DO
WHEN MANY MILLIONS
ARE HUNGRY?

IT IS BEST
TO TEACH THEM
HOW TO PRODUCE THEIR
FOOD THEMSELVES.

CONTENTS
I.

Introduction

II.

You and Your Environment .................................. 1
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

III.

Grow More Trees ............................................71
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

IV.

Your Environment is Important for You .............. 2
It is your Own World You Pollute .................... 10
Don’t Live With Garbage ................................ 20
Environment and Poverty................................. 24
Weed into Wealth............................................ 32
Waste into Food .............................................42
Grow Your Own Fuel for Cooking .................. 48
Urban Waste : a Valuable Resource ................. 56

What is Agro-Forestry? .................................. 72
Agro-Forestry : Which Forests? ...................... 78
Agro-Forestry : Which Crops? ........................ 85
What Care Does a Woodland Farm Need? ..... 89
Farming in ‘Three Storeys” ............................. 95Growing Trees with Little Rain ....................... 102

Wasteland Into Farmland ............................... 109
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Wasteland Into Good Land ........................... 110
Washing the Salty Land ................................. 120
Self-Forming Terraces on Slopes ................... 126
Catching the Run-Off Water .......................... 132
Crops that NeedLittle Water ........................ 144

INTRODUCTION
Communication for Self-Reliance
Today we find ourselves in a multifaceted, global crisis that touches every
aspect of our lives: our health and livelihood, the quality of our environment and our social relationships, our economy, technology, our politics our very survival on this planet. The nations of the world have stockpiled
more than50,000 nuclear warheads, enough to destroy the world several
times over, and the arms race continues at an undiminished pace. While
worldwide military spending is more than one billion dollars a day, more
than fifteen million people die of starvation annually - thirty two every
minute, most of them children. Developing countries spend more than
three times on armaments as on healthcare.Thirty-five percent of humanity lacks safe drinking water, while nearly half of its scientists and engineers are engaged in the technology of making weapons. Economists are
obsessed with building economies based on unlimited growth, while our
finite resources are rapidly dwindling, industrial corporations dump toxic
wastes somewhere else, rather than neutralizing them, without caring that
there isno ‘sink’ on mother earth. Modern medicine often endangers our
health. The scourge of HIV/AIDS is threatening to wipe out entire nations
in Africa and Asia.

While the world’s ten percent rich, corner and control over eighty
percent of the world’s resources, the poor are left to fend for themselves in
shanties and ghettos. Diseased and ill fed, the poor in the Third World —
deprived of any‘social security net’ have been pushed to the very brink
of survival. Amidst mounting foodstocks, the poor still starve to death, as
governments often have no mechanism to even dispense ‘charity’.
It is in the context of this grim social scenario that the work of
Yona Friedman —a French architect and humanist of international repute,
becomes so relevant. Friedman was born in Budapest,...