World's End Trek 2010

A 1,000Km human-powered expedition across some of the most spectacular though rapidly changing landscapes on Earth, following the steps of rather unknown and tragically vanished aboriginal cultures is commencing… towards the Last Great Wilderness of its Kind: Southern Patagonia & Tierra del Fuego, at the World’s End.

Before you Continue, take two minutes to watch our Trailer...

The Gist of it...

As an architect, I’ve had the great privilege of working in three continents, witnessing three radically different ways to go about our profession, however the three of them with a common thread: the growth of a global environmental conscience in this trade.

At the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Paris, 2003 [ lower left ]

I’ve witnessed too how vast regions of our planet are melting at increasingly high rates and how other vulnerable regions are seeing their ecosystems shift or simply disintegrate due to climate change. I’ve learned too how, of all CO2 emissions originating in the United States—the highest contributor per capita on the Planet—nearly half of them (48%) can be attributed to the building sector, most of which—40%— can be attributed just to building operations. According to this, we, the architectural community, hold a fundamental key to turn down the global thermostat, through design. Behavioral design, not only architectural, we just don't have a choice.

CARBON ATLAS, INTERACTIVE MAP | Click on the Circles for detailed info...

(source: The Guardian)

A year in the making, The World’s End Trek was conceptually born to celebrate and promote low-impact exploration and field observation of the planet, raising awareness of the environmental, ethnographic and cultural state of the highly imperiled southernmost wild regions of the planet: ranging from the fastest area of glacial retreat on Earth at the largest ice fields in the southern hemisphere—melting twice as fast as those in the northern hemisphere—to the tragic result of the clash between European and native cultures in the region: the decimation of entire aboriginal communities in the name of progress, through “guns, germs and steel”—not very different from episodes in North America, perhaps less notorious—with the sequestration of individuals from their homeland to be exposed as human curiosities in zoos throughout Europe. Such historically abusive and indiscriminative “productive” approach is analogous to the circumstances by which we have exploited and consumed natural resources worldwide to a point of global disarray.

While the extinction of our original peoples is now irreversible, the opportunity to shift from this "business as usual" approach towards the environment remains at reach, and lies in our hands through modifying our urban behavior.