Like healthy food, sustainable neighborhoods are bio-divers. With numbers or data we can measure a lot, but wellbeing and systemic consequences of bio-diversity are harder to measure. A seemingly small action here, may have a huge consequence there. Precisely this lack of awareness of the complex interdependence of eco-systems, our fragility, has disastrous consequences. Like on our global bee-population. No bees, no pollination, no food, globally.

We’re destabilizing complex eco-sytems, our planet and intoxicating our soils, oceans, air, animals, farmers, food and our kids with nitrogen emissions, agro-chemicals, forever-chemicals, forever-plastics and nano-sized chemical particles.

So can we do things differently? Even as designers and the building industry, our part in the climate story is huge. A ‘sorry’ with ‘fields of wild flowers’ and a new way of designing public space, roof- and private gardens are a step in the ‘kind’ direction: helpful for our planet and our wallet.

The art of re-connecting while walking or cycling, recaring each-other with positive energy

In Marina Abramovic’s The Great Wall Walk, connection was the goal, but the opposite happened: two people walking towards each other, across the Chinese wall, dis-connect-ed in the middle. A great walk or wall? Ironic?

Cold and hard walls build echo-chambers, amplifying noise while hiding the real consequences for ‘the other’. A ‘real great walk’ follows another path, outside our own ‘frame of reference’, prejudice or bias. Off the beaten track.

Alexander Milov’s wired-artwork tells a story closer to human-nature: our need for human-connection. Back to back, but on the inside re-searching for connection, truthfulness and solutions. Getting it right, instead of being right. Restorative and narrative ART, when your own words stumble along the way.

senses - En route smell the flowers

Seeing, feeling and hearing. ‘En route’ there’re flowers. With the support of local farmers, forests- and nature conservationists, wild flowers line meandering bike- and hiking trails. Take your TIME, our most scarce resource, to ‘smell the flowers’. Locations are chosen for their view on mother nature. A blown-down tree becomes a bench. Tactility and weathered imperfection: a patinated rough trunk, with drilled holes.

After being a bench and insect-hotel, the trunk will return to the forest cycle.Holes are inserted with breeding dowels from mushrooms. Mycelium, applied as a restorer of a toxic context or soil, by myco-restoration or mycoremediation.

A resting point with back-support: a restorative antidote to social- and soil toxicity or ‘acidification’. To create a healthy humus for nature and human nature.

Similar to blown down trees, ‘The wind touches us all, so let's share our story and some humanity.’

— Tourist LeMC, Ubuntu

eco- and techno-logical - a restorative antidote to social- and soil toxicity.

Scanning a QR-code gives access to personalised messages or ‘storytelling’: each-other's story, trough music, literature and poetry.Bart Moeyaert reads to ya?

Walking from bench to bench, you’ll open personal messages, antidotes to ‘environmental’ toxicity. Every resting point holding a ‘message in a bottle’, like a ‘mixed-tape’ or playlist. One made especially for you, to re-charge, to re-connect. Walking, going the distance, between benches to ‘bridge over’ the distance ‘in between’ people.

A design based on residual flows from sustainable forestry: a blown-down tree. Returning to the forest-cycle, a restorative antidote is added for nature.

Mushroom or mycelium breeding dowels, bench by bench, will break down toxins. A simple DIY-design: local production, local raw materials, reusable parts. The applied mycelium is adjusted to local species and soil requirements.