WE'RE BAAAACK !!
Philip S. Wenz
January 2003
Due to circumstances beyond our control, namely, an unsolicited legal battle over the rights to the word "Ecotecture," and the associated costs thereof, we have been unable to provide our readers with new material for almost two years. The results of the legal struggle were pre-determined from the beginning. "Ecotecture," is now a Registered Trademark of Philip S. Wenz in the United States. ECOTECTURE is free, once again, to pursue its mission of empowering our readers to solve environmental problems.
The struggle transformed us. If you have seen The Two Towers, or read Tolkien's masterpiece, you might think of us as the Wizard Gandalf, pulled down into the abyss only to return as a White Wizard. Our legal struggle is behind us, and ECOTECTURE: The Online Journal of Ecological Design is stronger and better than ever.
It is our aim to become not just a journal, in the ordinary sense, but a virtual center for the ecological design community, a place where designers and environmentalists can learn about the ideas and projects of others while sharing their own. But we cannot achieve that goal by ourselves. We need you, the designers, theoreticians and educators to contribute to this, your Journal. Ecological design is part of a worldwide paradigm shift toward sustainable development, and is far too broad a field for a small group of reporters to cover. We invite you to write for ECOTECTURE, participate in its Forum (coming soon) and help build its resource base for the benefit of the entire community.
In our revamped Journal, we are introducing a new publishing concept that will allow us to produce ECOTECTURE's content in a manageable way while continuously building our free resource base.
ECOTECTURE will no longer publish "issues," in the sense that the entire content of the site will be replaced on a particular date. Rather, we will upload new articles and graphics to some areas of the site as they become web ready, leaving the existing content on the rest of the site intact until we have material to replace it. We will not upload at set times, but when we have the material—we are a true "periodical."
Further, older articles will not be removed from our site, but will be stored just one click away from our home page in the ECOTECTURE Library. The Library, soon to be enhanced with a Search feature and a Glossary of Ecological Design Terms to compliment its ever-building archive of articles, will grow into a prime research tool for ecological designers the world around.
We wish to thank those of you who have maintained your subscriptions through this long drought and those who entered new subscriptions even after we took the old site articles down in 2002. We plan to reward your patience with excellent, free coverage of the growing, exciting field of ecological design.
Our mission is to empower our readers to solve environmental problems. Our hope is that you will be as excited as we are to have ECOTECTURE back on line.