The idea of Karise Permatopia arose from the idea of creating a meaningful and modern co-housing that enables low cost of living as well as environmental sustainability based on the idea of permaculture.
Can you elaborate on the term ’permaculture’?
Sure. A permacultural system is a system that does not affect its surrounding in such a way that the surroundings cannot sustain the system. That is, a system that does not undermine its own existence. There is a huge focus on the use of fossil fuels at the moment, but we’re barely mentioning the fact that we are running out of nutrients like phosphorus, which means that the system we live in – in this case our agricultural system – inevitably will undermine itself. Therefore, we asked ourselves the question:
We had a chat with Kennet Harpsøe, one of the bright minds behind the project…
Kennet, can you tell us about the concept of Karise Permatopia?
The concept of Karise Permatopia is based on the philosophy of permaculture – a permanent culture – where the basic understanding is that sustainable individuals doesn’t exist. Only systems can be sustainable, and one would want to live in a system which is. With a project like Karise Permatopia, we want to show that living a sustainable life isn’t that hard to achieve and that you actually can build sustainable systems designed for the future, and not just the next 50 years. In my opinion, the word ‘sustainability’ has become such a buzzword and it has lost its true impact and meaning.
“How can we incorporate sustainability into our lives if we want to exist in the future?” We have to figure out how to live a life without the use of fossil fuels, but how? We need to be strategic and think long-term, as I mentioned before, and we need to think about the preservation of our resources – renewable energy, recycling nutrients, etc. This refers to the philosophy that individuals cannot be sustainable, only the system in which we live, can. The system we live in now is inherently undermining itself and that is why we need to create a system – a new culture, an agricultural culture, so to speak, that doesn’t undermine itself. Recycling our nutrients is a means to that end. When it comes to systems undermining itself – take for example the use of phosphorus; at the moment, we import phosphorus from Morocco, which we spread across our fields, which wind up into the wheat we’re producing. This wheat is an ingredient in the bread we eat, which wind up into the toilet and at last released into the sea, which ruins the fishing industry by causing hypoxic death zones in the oceans.