The Five Thousand Pound Life: The Energy Issue
The Energy Issues Panel Discussion
Recorded May 10, 2014
The Five Thousand Pound Life: The Energy Issue was a symposium on energy and architecture organized by The Architectural League and the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) in May 2014.
The Energy Issues panel brought together a diverse group of architects and academics along with a filmmaker and a journalist to each present an idea on energy through his or her particular lens. Each short presentation invited response and conversation from the panel, allowing the themes of economics and investment, engagement and practice, design and technology, and communication and ethics, to emerge through the issue of energy.
In this segment, Filmmaker Rachel Boynton screens the trailer for her documentary Big Men, which follows oil company Kosmos Energy as it discovers and develops the first commercial oil field off the Ghanaian coast. For Boynton, energy production is a profit-driven activity pursued for the individual attainment of wealth. The panel follows with discussion of the need to shift the focus from this individual pursuit to the collective good in order to change patterns of energy consumption.
In addition to her role as Producer and Director of Big Men, Boynton also produced and directed Our Brand Is Crisis, winner of the International Documentary Association’s Best Feature Documentary Award.
The Five Thousand Pound Life (5KL) is an initiative of The Architectural League on new ways of thinking, talking, and acting on architecture, climate change, and our economic future.
The Energy Issue is a GSAPP initiative to make energy a cultural issue, launched in partnership with Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope®. Follow the initiative @theenergyissue.
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