SS: Could you talk more generally about the role of the drawings in your practice? They have such a particular and very charming style and color sensibility. They also serve many purposes: drawings can create an idealized space for play and open speculation; they're a great way to circulate ideas and plans among the group as you're developing ideas together; and they communicate your sensibility and ideas to others.

JC: Yep, they are charming. Drawings can be very powerful when they are shown as a guide. The drawings, like the learning posters, go beyond that place where they are the basic idea of a project to become a sketch of something that can become real. RL: Drawings are very much like models, using a language that does not necessarily have to take into account things like bureaucratic conditions. Groups like Superstudio and Archigram did impressive work together through collages; models and drawings have been interesting to look at from the perspective of functionality.

SS: Your projects thus far have focused on problems of sustainability within the built environment. You've devised relatively simple techniques that can be used to build using easily available materials and relatively simple techniques. How did you decide on this focus? And are there particular examples of sustainable design, or ad-hoc or extreme architecture, that have inspired you?

RL: One problem is that having somewhere to live is not considered a basic right. It's a huge ongoing battle. In that perspective we have not been interested in sustainable design as much as we have been interested in looking at what getting a dwelling does for one's life. There are many different things that control these parameters around the world: either you live in shadow cities, on squatted land, or on private property. In Copenhagen, it's impossible to get a place without a lot of capital investment, and if you didn't invest in a house before the real estate market started to boom, getting a home is now very difficult to manage. It's one of the most expensive places to live in Europe. Many people have to live illegally in order to simply to get a place to live. The floating dwelling we did in N55 was built because there was a gray zone in 2000 about rules surrounding building on water. This is not possible anymore due to speculation or other interests. This means that the floating dwelling will be transformed into culture or business, so it can get a place in the harbor of Copenhagen, or it will be dismantled and either moved to a new place in a container or just stay in a container.

BB: Everything humans touch, they destroy; there are way too many of us. We have collectively fucked this planet for millennia to come with all kinds of ecological destruction. Our oceans are filled with microscopic pieces of plastic. We have polluted near space- where satellites live-with junk. Our food is contaminated with GMOs and pesticides-the industrialization of our food supply has actually diminished our food's nutritional value and taste in demonstrable ways. We are crowding into bigger and bigger cities that become more desperately unliveable. The best thing would be if people were kicked off the planet. Even our own Greek-Judeo-Christian-Humanist worldview prohibits us from talking frankly about what it would really take to stop the destruction, reduce the number of people on the planet, and design in a completely different way. We can't do that now, so we have to figure out how to work with the horrendous mess we have. Everyone should be working on these issues, not just us and a few like-minded individuals. We can't really talk about sustainability. It just isn't possible until massive change takes place. Right now it is about survival with the least amount of destructive implications. There is nothing sustainable about being human or making things at the moment. You can't be one person and be sustainable even if you live the most "green" life possible. It has to be everyone together. There are people who are thinking in more advanced ways than others, but that is about as good as it gets. The book Cradle to Cradle gives us a glimpse of a possible future, but even when we work in these ways, we are still greatly hampered by the billions of people who are living utterly destructive lives.

CW: Collecting System takes part in the behavior of the built and changing environment. Unused materials are part of environments and are transforming them by shaping behavior, producing infrastructure, using energy for transformation into new materials, etc. We use plastic bottles and cardboard in the Collecting Systems in Mexico and in Beyond Green, but the recyclable plastic PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) is a relatively new material (introduced in 1978) compared to corrugated cardboard. In that sense, in some of our work so far, we try to merge into the already existing built environment by using already existing materials that are already circulating. We get the materials after they've served their first purpose as bottles used to transport liquid or cardboard boxes that have been used to contain other materials. We use them once they are defined as unused materials.