Green Varnish： An Irony to Green Wash?

The other days, an installation named Green Varnish attracted my attention, while surfing the Internet. This significant “green” fabric is located in the courtyard of the Contemporary Art Museum of Saint Louis, with thousands of plants on it, designed by Nomad Studio. With an area of 200 sqm, the natural tapestry plays with the architectural space, while provoking it.

This work is directed by William E Robert, whose has mainly concentrated on social and environmental impact of landscape architecture. Thus, the design purpose of Green Varnish is not only to provide visitors with relaxing space, but also to explore the necessity of hiding inconvenient realities with “politically correct” beauty. It seems the work illustrates the tendency of the whole society to ignore any relevant information, which represents an inconvenience.

As is mentioned by William, human being has already brought too much negative impacts to nature. On the contrary, the actions they take to solve environmental problems are quite passive and pro forma.  Nowadays, more and more vocabularies like “sustainable” “resilience” and “smart” are abused in architecture, as well as other products. The Green Varnish seems to be an ironic gesture towards the “greening” trend.

Actually, those “green wash” thing has been very common since 1990s. For instance, in 2009, the European McDonald’s changed the color of their logos from red and yellow to green and yellow. A spokesman for the company explained the change as a clarification of responsibility for the preservation of nature resources. However, any further sustainable actions could hardly be discovered. Similar issues happened in Kimberly Clark’s claim of “Pure and Natural diapers in green packaging. Organic cotton is used in the outside of the product, but the same petrochemical gel is kept on the inside.

To deal with those “green wash” issues, relative regulations are legislated in many countries successively. Let’s talk about those legislations in the next blog.

Reference:http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34111784/ns/business-us_business/t/mcdonalds-rolling-out-green-logo-europe/