Best [Creative] Academic Paper Award

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Mark DeKay's paper, "Designing Relationships to Nature: Five Narratives to Solve the Climate Crisis," won the Best Academic Paper Award for creativity at the Integral European Conference 2018 in Siofok, Hungary. The full paper is available on Academia.edu. The primary investigation of the paper is the question: How can architects address climate change by designing to place people into rich and significant relationships with Nature? The point is that we experience Nature mostly via buildings, where we spend 90% of our time. If people experience Nature and natural forces in buildings more profoundly, they can develop a relationship with Nature that leads to caring for it. There are many multiple world views operating simultaneously, and each sees Nature differently. The architecture that connects people to Nature will exhibit their varying world views.