Artikel over ecokathedraal in Owaze <terug naar website www.stichtingtijd.nl>
The ecocathedral
A center for our future urban society
Today's urban surroundings are a prefabricated environment. In them, people are observers, not participants. They exist disconnected from space and time. Within such a limited urban ecosystem, how can a natural system develop:
a complex set of surroundings in which time is given space and in which space is given time?
This is the key issue proposed in this essay.
Such a development would mean a fundamental change that would be directly opposed to the current structures of politics, money and regulations. According to Le Roy, these natural structures could be created by involving available energy and by the interaction of humans, plants and animals. We could call these structures 'eco-cathedrals'. Le Roy bases his vision on new scientific insights. The Chaos Theory, for example, proposes that complex systems develop by means of self-organisation by giving free reign to the time factor. The more complex
a system, the more autonomy can develop, and the more autonomy that is given, the higher the degree of order that is possible. He sees complexity as the opposite of diversity.
Thirty years ago, he started his experiment known as the Ecokathedraal in the Dutch town of Mildam, a project that was open-ended in terms of time. At the basis of this experiment was the three-fold question posed by Nobel Prize winner, Ilya Prigogine: Ilya Prigogine: "What can nature do, what can living humans do, and what are living organisms capable of" Le Roy wondered what a single person could do and then set about to find out by doing something himself. On a four-hectare site, he started planting in a completely random manner. The signing of a contract with the municipal government was foliowed by having road workers dump their residual materials at the site for several years. Le Roy processed this material by hand without any outside assistance.
The result was the building of assorted structures, low walls, pathways and towers that due to their ingenious construction could serve as purification plants for acid rain. His Ecokathedraal demonstrates the potential of human energy interacting with the forces of nature.
Employing all the potential available from all human beings would provide a mega-source of clean energy. Using such a method, a new habitat could take shape in which everyone could participate creatively in building a living environment without a ground plan and without the boundaries of private property. Following his ideas would mean a revolution in designing urban space.
For the time being, Le Roy advocates a double city: an alternative system as weil as the existing one. Within this double city, the available energy of people must not be seen as tampering with the market. His ideas have met with much positive response elsewhere in Europe, especially in Germany and Switzerland, in recent decades. To date, however, all the very enthusiastic experiments launched in urban spaces have been prematurely abandoned.
According to Le Roy, political systems will never allow creative potential applied to space and time to be really carried out in full. To change such a situation would require radical decisions to be made by politicians, industry and consumers, enmeshed as they are in the regulations of the current consumer society.
Today's urban surroundings are a prefabricated environment. In them, people are observers, not participants. They exist disconnected from space and time. Within such a limited urban ecosystem, how can a natural system develop:
a complex set of surroundings in which time is given space and in which space is given time?
This is the key issue proposed in this essay. 
Thirty years ago, he started his experiment known as the Ecokathedraal in the Dutch town of Mildam, a project that was open-ended in terms of time. At the basis of this experiment was the three-fold question posed by Nobel Prize winner, Ilya Prigogine: Ilya Prigogine: "What can nature do, what can living humans do, and what are living organisms capable of" Le Roy wondered what a single person could do and then set about to find out by doing something himself. On a four-hectare site, he started planting in a completely random manner. The signing of a contract with the municipal government was foliowed by having road workers dump their residual materials at the site for several years. Le Roy processed this material by hand without any outside assistance.
For the time being, Le Roy advocates a double city: an alternative system as weil as the existing one. Within this double city, the available energy of people must not be seen as tampering with the market. His ideas have met with much positive response elsewhere in Europe, especially in Germany and Switzerland, in recent decades. To date, however, all the very enthusiastic experiments launched in urban spaces have been prematurely abandoned.
According to Le Roy, political systems will never allow creative potential applied to space and time to be really carried out in full. To change such a situation would require radical decisions to be made by politicians, industry and consumers, enmeshed as they are in the regulations of the current consumer society.
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