Critical notes on aesthetics in Solarpunk Manifesto by ReDes

Humanities
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Here is another manifesto of Solarpunk:
https://www.re-des.org/es/a-solarpunk-manifesto/

This one interestingly pays a lot of attention to built environment. Here are two points specifically for that:

19. Solarpunk is set in a future built according to principles of New Urbanism or New Pedestrianism and environmental sustainability.
20. Solarpunk envisions a built environment creatively adapted for solar gain, amongst other things, using different technologies. The objective is to promote self sufficiency and living within natural limits.

Which I totally subscribe to.
And here is another one Iā€™d be quite critical about:

18. The visual aesthetics of Solarpunk are open and evolving. As it stands, it is a mash-up of the following:

  1. 1800s age-of-sail/frontier living (but with more bicycles)
  2. Creative reuse of existing infrastructure (sometimes post-apocalyptic, sometimes present-weird)
  3. Appropriate technology
  4. Art Nouveau
  5. Hayao Miyazaki
  6. Jugaad-style innovation from the non-Western world
  7. High-tech backends with simple, elegant outputs

Firstly, because it tries to define language of visual asthetics in a limited way. I agree that most of the aesthetic qualities listed are dominant in current solarpunk visual language, but the movement should not be restricted to this.
Secondly, I have some problems with irrational and fairytailish naivete which pervades most of those depictions. On the one hand it makes a lot of sense: proposals to dream of a better world should be somewat dreamy, catchy, easy to get sentimental with. On the other hand, this somewhat grounded naivete also brings a lot of wasteful, unreasonable and thus self-denying imagery. Instead of looking for really sustainable architecture, imagery of solarpunk environments often just accelerates greenwashing to extreme levels.
I perfectly understand that modernist architecture is now a symbol of both industrializing human and capitalist repression. Yet solarpunk architecture, unlike the previous attempt to counter modernism with postmodern architecture, should not throw out the baby with batwater, meaning we should remain reasonable with our energy and resources. Just because this is the whole point.

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