ABSTRACT
In a recent lecture Australian design theorist Anne-Marie Willis invited architects and
designers to leave aside the issue of sustainability for a moment and instead focus
their attention on ‘the unsustainable’: ‘Can we see the unsustainable?’ she asked
(Willis 2008). Do we really understand what is unsustainable about the present state of
the world? It has become de rigueur to act ‘sustainably’ and a particular type of sup-
posedly sustainable design solutions offer themselves so readily that they may by now
obscure rather than reveal the extent of the problem that the world is facing: by instill-
ing a false sense of relief, by thus deflating the debate, and by potentially sustaining
the unsustainable.1 Asking for the unsustainable may be a corrective to this but given
that most architects, like other modern urban citizens, are intimately familiar with and
dependent on an unsustainable lifeworld – and largely unfamiliar with sound ecological
environments – it may be difficult to answer the question.2