Thesis Final

ACKNOWLEDGEMEN T S
TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S
Thank you to the mentors, Debra Ruben, Rena Cumby, Malcolm Clendenin, and Max Zahniser, who encourage my investigations and give them focus. Thanks to all those people in my life who support my ambitions, debate my assumptions, and push my ideas. Finally, thank you to all the creative people in every field of study and practice who dare to question convention for the sake of reimagining a better world.
Abstract and Proposal Introduction Architectural Precedence The Culture of Change: An Investigation of ecology, philosophy, and society The Aesthetics of Biological Systems The Built Environment as Extension of Organism, Ecosystem, Earth Conclusion EDEN Ecological Development Emergent Neighborhood Program Client Profile and Performance Goals Site Executive Summary Bibliography Image Reference
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ABSTR ACT
Architects and designers have adopted the philosophy and methods of sustainable construction as a basis for good design. However, an aesthetic that expresses the movements motivations is still in its infancy. This thesis proposes to discover an ecological architecture by finding a link between design process and established environmental philosophy. The results express nature through structure, look to the earth as a design generator, and understand that the built environment is merely another extension of the natural environment.
PROPOSAL
Many architectural movements throughout history have been influenced by a philosophy that influenced the pervading culture. Brunelleschi has his Humanism; Eisenman his Deconstruction. Finding an ecological aesthetic in architecture will require the same method. This thesis will first overview architecture movements from the 20th century such as Modernsim, Post-Modernism, Deconstructivism, and 1960s Eco-Architecture to show this connection and give context for the current Sustainable movement. Next, the work will investigate established environmental philosophy, biology, and ecology that might have implications for design. The American Pastoral Ideal held in high regard by Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson will give some insight about how the thinkers at the dawn of the industrial revolution conceived the virgin land of a new republic and changing technology. The Biophilia Hypothesis explains why humans have such an innate need to connect to nature. Deep Ecology or Ecosophy suggests that humans should still live in harmony with natural processes. While Deep Ecology
theorists argue over whether humans are part of nature (monistic) or not (dualistic), the Gaia Hypothesis firmly proposes a monistic view, suggesting that the earth is one large organism with interconnected processes. Autopoiesis explores the relationship between structure and function by theorizing that internal processes inherently maintain the greater whole. Finally, Pleistocene Hypothesis suggests that humans have an innate desire to return to a tribal society that humans lived in prior to the invention of agriculture. The thesis will then connect philosophy and process by looking to architectural and aesthetic theorists. Human evolution is a controversial issue in the scientific community, but some theorists, such as Ian McHarg, have found a connection between evolution and the creative process as an indicator that humans are indeed still evolving. Janine Benyus theory of Biomimcry looks to nature for form and function of built environments. While the inclination might be to see technology as apart from nature, Leo Marx wrote that technology, aesthetics, and nature can fuse together without contradiction in both the design and building process. Finally, mass customization and the invention of nonlinear systems has allowed architects such as Kieran/Timberlake utilize the positive aspects of prefabrication to create unique structures that grow outside the shipping crate. A choice few case studies to bolster arguments will give visualization to prior theoretical discussions. The paper will conclude with summary arguments of how discoveries found in the thesis might apply to architectural and design practice.
This thesis will use various methods of research to establish arguments. The work will utilize interpretive historical research to identify key ideas within scientific and philosophical books and articles that apply to topic of inquiry. Some qualitative research will aid in discovering the human connection to nature. Logical argumentation research will make up the substance of the study as structures of thought from different disciplines fuse together to reinforce the overarching arguments. Finally, case studies will be carefully chosen that utilize many characteristic established in the conclusions of the paper.
R E S E A R CH METHODS
DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE
A R C H I T E C T U R E O R R E VO LU T I O N
WELL, THE TRUTH IS, BRIAN, WE CANT SOLVE GLOBAL WARMING BECAUSE I F---ING CHANGED LIGHT BULBS IN MY HOUSE. ITS BECAUSE OF SOMETHING COLLECTIVE.1 - President Barack Obama, from 2008 presidential debate preparation
Human civilization is in free fall, diving closer and closer to the ground below and no one notices. This is the scenario Daniel Quinn writes of in his novel, Ishmael, regarding the state of the environmental crisis on Earth. He compares human civilizations trust in its culture with the faulty and lethal notion of passengers trusting in an aircraft powered by human pedaling.2 The passengers enjoy the exhilaration of flight and wide open view of the sky. The pilot observes that the aircraft is slowly losing altitude, but no matter. The aircraft has successfully taken everyone this far, and everyone trusts in its ability to continue. The pilot pedals harder, trying to slow the aircrafts descent. No help. The pilot feels the pull towards the earth as the ground begins to swallow up his view. The only thing left to do to save everyone is abandon ship. If they only had more people to pedal. But that wouldnt matter, now would it? An aircraft powered by human pedaling doesnt follow the laws of aerodynamics. It was always in freefall. This parable that Quinn uses to illustrate his point might sound dramatic, but such are the times of hurricanes, famines, epidemics, extinctions, tsunamis, and other naturally occurring disasters that have become routine in the last decade. Quinn uses this scenario to shatter a civilization-wide trust in a culture that does not fall in line with the laws of nature, for such a civilization has no other destiny than catastrophe. There might seem to be little hope in Quinns words, but he offers some in the form of each living organisms most miraculous capability: creation. The character Ishmaels advice to his pupil at the close of the novel looks toward a new way forward: You must be inventive if its worthwhile to you. If you care to survive. Youre an inventive people arent you? You pride yourselves on that, dont you? Then invent.3
Invention is the piece of the sustainable movement of the 21st century in which architecture finds its natural place. The sustainability movement grows in business, transportation, construction, among other areas to reduce waste, reduce energy use, and bring the human lifestyle back in line with natures processes. Famous architects build taller buildings with the highest ratings from international regulating agencies. This becomes the measurement for sustainable or green design. Engineers produce ways to cultivate energy from the sun, warmth from the earth, water from the sky, among so many other inventions, for human utilization. The technological discoveries for sustainable construction are catapulting and continue to produce new innovation so fast that the rating systems rarely remain unchanged. The solution to reconnecting humanity to Earth will take more than technology and more than design. The solution will demand a fundamental change in what culture has deemed as true for millennia, as Quinn addresses in Ishmael. The philosophers, ecologists, anthropologists, and psychologists who birthed and fostered the environmental movement since the 1960s contend there is no shortcut to compromise in addressing the environmental crisis. This reconnection with nature, some theorists pose, will occur through a reminder of human evolutionary history and the pattern that connects all life. 4 This reminder that humans are part of the earths natural processes will spawn a new design method that will reinvent traditional notions of approach, programming, aesthetics, performance, construction, and technology. This new process will reveal an ecological architecture of the 21st century that represents the most sustaining product of nature, diversity.
Secrets of 2008 the Campaign. (2008). Newsweek. (1/7/2010) http://www.newsweek.com/id/167581/page/2. 2 Quinn, D. (1992). Ishmael. New York, NY: Bantam/Turner. pp. 105-110. 3 Quinn. pp. 250. 4 Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York, NY: Dutton. pp. 10.
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architectural precedence
WHEN OPERABLE WINDOWS MAKE NEWS AND SET A DESIGN STANDARD, WE HAVE REACHED AN ASTONISHINGLY LOW POINT IN ARCHITECTURE.5 - William McDonough, from Big and Green
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Revolution became the mantra of 20th-century architecture as each style rebelled against past precedent and touted its own individuality. Modernism of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe was the first to embrace the machine age and its mass production. Post-Modernism of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown rebelled against its forerunners starkness and embraced symbol and sign. Deconstruction of Peter Eisenman and Rem Koolhaas defied Post-Modernisms meaning and adopted abstraction as its muse. Phenomenology of Juhani Pallasmaa brought architecture back to basics by investigating human sensory experience. Each architects fought for his or her ideas, but ultimately, architecture would not approach revolution until climate crisis on a global scale pushed Sustainability to the forefront and changed the way the world viewed architecture. Modernism, which dominated architectural style from the 1920s through the 1950s, trumpeted logic and order as the moral imperative to create beauty. Modern architects idealized forms and materials of industry in the necessity to create a new architecture to reflect the age of machines. Decoration became evil, while classical geometries became reflection of a higher order that connected to the human spirit.6 Le Corbusier lambasted Rome and one of its greatest sons, Michelangelo, in order to distance himself from past styles and decorations: Rome is the damnation of the half-educated. To send architectural students to Rome is to cripple them for life.7 This arrogance, however, served the architect in claiming architectural rightness. However, by 1954 with the creation of Notre Dame du Haut, even the master Le Corbusier was breaking his own rules in the form of abstracted, massive, and sweeping curves of concrete.
NOTRE DAME DU HAUT by Le Corbusier. Ronchamp, France. 1955.1
Robert Venturi echoed a new and opposing sentiment in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture: Architects can no GUILD HOUSE by Robert Venturi. Philadelphia, PA. 1961.2 longer afford to be intimidated by the puritanically moral language of orthodox Modern architecture. I like elements which are hybrid rather than pure, compromising rather than clean, distorted rather than straightforward, ambiguous rather than articulated .8 Venturi continued his poetic list of contrasts that trashed all that Modernism represented for paragraphs. His solution for a new architecture was to embrace the decoration, signage, and layers of meaning found on the decorated shed even in what he called ugly and ordinary.9 His shed or Philadelphias Guild House, was full of symbol from Italian Palazzos, the Philadelphia grid, and Las Vegas in its signage. The honesty of the references and decoration, Venturi argued, was what made it superior to the duck, one large ornament, also known as Paul Rudolfs Crawford Manor.10 By the 1980s, the Deconstructivists, led by the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, strived to strip away all meaning and historical reference to create an architectural style that was truly all about architecture. Unlike the selfproclaimed boring architecture of Venturi, architects like Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, and others created evocative abstractions that seemed to fulfill their aims. Like Gehry, Eisenman too exhibited disdain for Modernisms moral imperative, but instead of claiming that Modernisms HOUSE VI by Peter Eisenman. Cornwall, CT. 1976.3 lack of decoration created giant DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE
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decorations, Eisenman argued that Modernism indeed followed the same rules of classical architecture still full of reference and history. In The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, the End of the End, Eisenman touted timeless, nonrepresentational, and artificial architecture as the true modern solution.11 By stripping architecture of its human-centeredness, idealization of form, and moral order, the architect argued that architecture could truly function only as architecture for the first time, therefore having no beginning or origin and no end to the process of design. As Venturis muse was Las Vegas, Koolhaas muse became Manhattan and its chaotic and oversized culture that would make human scale, balance, and traditional programming obsolete, which he chronicled in Delirious New York in 1978.12 Koolhaas embraced the fantasy, the congestion, and the chance that occurred in Manhattans history. The sky was the limit, yet the sky became increasingly limitless, which led the architect to theorize a new set of rules for bigness in architecture and planning, which would be the subject of his follow manifesto, S, M, L, XL.13 The responses that birthed from the rebellion against Modernism opposed one another, yet originated from the Post-Modern discussion of sign, symbol, and simulation that reinvigorated the discourse and aesthetic of architecture. Both also embraced the over-stimulated, over-crowded urban environment as the model for contemporary living. Public response was also similar in that it elicited the extreme of both positive and negative. Phenomenology, led by architects such as Juhani Pallasmaa, Peter Zumthor, and Steven Holl, moved in yet another opposing direction as the theory developed CCTV HEADQUARTERS by Rem Koolhaas. Beijing, China. 2002.4 in practice through the 1970s into
the 21st century. Phenomenological architecture, highly influenced by the writings of philosophers Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, strived to bring the human sensory experience and scale back to architecture. Pallasmaa wrote that Modernism failed due to its one-sided visual emphasis; Modern design has housed the intellect and the eye, but it has left the body and the other senses, as well as our memories and dreams, homeless.14 Pallasmaa continued by extolling natural materials for their expression of age and history as well as their ability to engage the senses.15 The movement explored existential issues and experience by reawakening the human body within the built environment. Architecture is essentially an extension of nature into the manmade realm, providing the ground for perception and the horizon to experience and understand the world.16 The Phenomenological movement and its investigation into the connection between nature and humanity would prove to be a precursor to a great climax in human cultural history caused by the environmental crisis. As the NYU PHILOSOPHY DEPT. by Steven Holl. New York City, NY. 2007.5 majority of the progressions in DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE
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20th-century architecture primarily aimed to create revolutionary aesthetic theories, buildings became less place-inspired, less energy efficient, more wasteful, less durable, and generally less in line with natural processes. Modernism championed mass production and touted the house as a machine for 6 ARCOSANTI by Paolo Soleri. Arcosanti, AZ. 1970-present. living. Post-Modernism rejected the spare forms of its predecessor by infusing buildings with symbol and meaning. Deconstruction stripped architecture of its morality, symbolism, and human-centeredness by fully embracing abstraction. Phenomenology brought human experience back into architecture, but failed to address the energy and waste problems of its buildings. The push and pull of aesthetic argument continued as architects ignored traditional fundamentals of site, culture, and community. James Wines wrote in a 1991 article, Green Dreams: What is consistently apparent is the overwhelming tendency of 20th-century architecture to treat a buildings environment as something apart from or adjacent to it.17 An ecological design movement in the 1960s among architects such as Frei Otto, Paolo Soleri, Ian McHarg, and Buckminster Fuller used nature as inspiration and a design generator. However, with the strength of other aesthetics styles, the ecological inspiration lived a short existence, and the philosophy quickly dissipated by the 1970s.18 However, in the 1990s, the increasing awareness of climate change and further development of technology birthed a reinvention of the movement that would become Sustainable architecture or green design. Sim van der Ryn wrote in his 1996 book, Ecological Design, in response to voices of prior opposition: Now these damn voices seem to be embracing sustainability and sustainable development terms that suggest the acceptance of limits and recognition that our material wealth and physical wellbeing depend on natures own health.19 With efforts from the LEED certification and accreditation processes, the scientific and functional aspects of buildings were fully
established at the dawn of the 21st century. William McDonoughs The Hannover Principles defined guidelines for architects that aimed to recognize interdependence, respect relationships between spirit and matter, and rely on natural energy flows, among other things.20 Sustainable design ADAM JOSEPH LEWIS CENTER by William McDonough + Partners. contained the moral necessity that Oberlin College. Oberlin, OH. 2000.7 Modernism craved, it claimed the originality that Deconstructivism desired. Sustainability left architecture and design is at a crossroads, one that will required innovation as well as a rediscovery of traditional building techniques, a global as well as a local perspective, and a fusion of nature and technology. Unlike so many aesthetics movements that were built for those who could afford the price tag and education it took to understand the buildings, sustainable design attempted to reach everyone. It was the movement that aimed to bring down the concrete slab that divided humanity and nature to remind humanity that the two were never divided.
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McDonough, W. (2003). Forward. Big and Green: Toward Sustainable Architecture in the 21st Century. Gissen, G. (Ed.) New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press 6 Le Corbusier. (2008). Towards a New Architecture. BN Publishing pp. 72-73. 7 Le Corbusier. pp. 173. 8 Venturi, R. (1966). Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. Garden City, NY: Museum of Modern Art, Doubleday. pp. 22. 9 Venturi, R., Brown, D. S. & Izenour, S. (1977). Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. pp. 90. 10 Venturi, R., Brown, D. S. & Izenour, S. pp. 81-103. 11 Eisenman, P. (1984) The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, the End of the End. Hays, K.M. (Ed.). (1998). Architecture Theory since 1968. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. pp. 534. 12 Koolhaas, R. (1994). Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. New York, NY: Monacelli Press. 13 Koolhaas, R. (1995). S, M, L, XL. New York, NY: Monacelli Press. 14 Pallasmaa, J. (1996). The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. London: Academy Editions. pp. 10. 15 Pallasmaa, J. pp. 21. 16 Pallasmaa, J. pp. 28. 17 Wines, J. (1991). Green Dreams. Architectural Theory, Vol II. An Anthology from 1871-2005. (2008) H. Mallgrave & C. Contandriopoulos (Eds.) Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 583-84. 18 Mallgrave, Harry Francis and Christina Contandriopoulos. (Eds.) Architectural Theory. Vol II, pp. 582. 19 Van der Ryn, Sim. Ecological Design. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996, pp. 5-6. 20 McDonough, William. The Hannover Principles. The Hannover Principles: Design for Sustainability. 1992, pp. 5.
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t h e c u lt u r e o f c h a n g e : a n i n v e s t i g at i o n o f e c o l o g y , philosophy, and society

THE GRAND SHOW IS ETERNAL. IT IS ALWAYS SUNRISE SOMEWHERE; THE DEW IS NEVER ALL DRIED AT ONCE; A SHOWER IS FOREVER FALLING; VAPOR EVER RISING. ETERNAL SUNRISE, ETERNAL SUNSET, ETERNAL DAWN AND GLOAMING, ON SEAS AND CONTINENTS, EACH IN ITS TURN, AS THE ROUND EARTH ROLLS.21 - John Muir, from his personal journals
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YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK Photographed by Ansel Adams, 1944. 8
The wildness of the American landscape has captivated the imagination of Western culture since the first European settlers arrived. Later, adventurers braved unknown territory to chart the continent. In the mid-19th century, the American government proposed to protect uninhabited land by creating a state and national parks systems, beginning with Yosemite National Park in 1872. Today, 3.5 million people gather to the park every year to catch a glimpse of wildness before heading back to their cubicles and classrooms for the 51 weeks until next year.22 The Ahwahneechee, who inhabited Yosemite before the Europeans arrived, werent seduced by foreign exoticism. Yosemite was their cubicle. They didnt feel a need to protect it from themselves by an act of Congress because they lived a life connected to the earth. This difference between a civilization of environmental destruction, in which people went skydiving to feel a thrill, and a civilization of environmental regard, in which daily life came with enough thrills, was principally a cultural difference. The human mind of today forgot its connection to nature, but the human genome, did not. Natural desires went unfulfilled because current human civilization did not satisfy them, and this in turn caused a variety of cultural afflictions. Environmental philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists,

and ecologists strived to understand how and when culture changed course as well as the best solution to reconnect humanity with nature. Many environmental theories and investigations arose in the 1960s, when Americans began to question the status quo. Nationwide environmental awareness began in 1962 with the publishing of Rachel Carsons Silent Spring in which her indictment of the indiscriminate use of pesticides raised overall questions about the serious threats posed to human health.23 In addition to raising health concerns, she questioned the anthropocentric culture in which command over nature was the dominant viewpoint. Following her lead, environmental theorists looked to JOHN MUIR Conservationist and advocate for the the writings of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, D. H. American wilderness. 9 Lawrence, Robinson Jeffers, and Aldous Huxley for inspiration. Ecologically conscious religious influences included Taoism, Saint Francis of Assisi, 19th-century Romantic counterculture in Europe, and the Zen Buddhism of philosopher Alan Watts and Beat poet Gary Snyder. In science, they looked to Carson as well as conservationist Aldo Leopold, Sierra Club founder Dave Brower, and population theorist Paul Ehrlich.24 The theories differed in several ways, but remained united in their goals to remind humanity of its link to the environment.
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THE AMERICAN PA S T O R A L I D E A L
THE LOVER OF NATURE IS HE WHOSE INWARD SENSES ARE STILL. TRULY ADJUSTED TO EACH OTHER; WHO HAS RETAINED THE SPIRIT OF INFANCY EVEN INTO THE ERA OF MANHOOD.25 - Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Nature Before 1960s counterculture and the founding of Americas national parks, a landmark of technological innovation shook the Western world. The Industrial revolution irrevocably changed human life on earth in the late 18th century. More people travelled farther than they ever had previously, new products appeared in stores from countries continents away, and companies produced goods faster and easier. The development of steam power and mechanization in Great Britain in the swept Europe and later America to produce railroads and paved the way for electricity, plumbing, and mass production. These technological marvels changed daily life for people and centered activity around dependence on the machine. Despite the Western worlds growing industrialization, a pastoral ideal remained present that inspired poets, essayists, and painters across continents to hold onto the connection to nature. This ideal stretched from British Romanticism of the 18th century with poets like William Wordsworth and John Keats through Transcendentalism in America in the 19th century with writers like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Later, Impressionist painters captured the changing landscapes of their countries as if to capture nations in the midst of radical transformation. Perhaps no one embodied this shifting struggle from pastoral to mechanical like Thomas Jefferson, who served as president of the United States at the dawn the American industrialization. KINDRED SPIRITS by Asher Durand. Oil on Canvas.

Jefferson, who spent much time at his estate at his Monticello in Virginia, deeply respected the agrarian lifestyle and wanted America to retain what he viewed as its virtue in the wake of technological progress. Author Leo Marx dedicated his book, The Machine in the Garden, to this American identity crisis:
A whole series of ideas we identify with the Enlightenment helped to create a climate conducive to the Jeffersonian pastoral. I am thinking of the widespread tendency to invoke nature as a universal norm; the continuing dialogue of the political philosophers about the condition of man in the state of nature; and the simultaneous upsurge of radical primitivism (as expressed, for example, in the cult of the Noble Savage) on the one hand, and the doctrines of perfectibility and progress on the other.26
Jefferson valued the idea of virtuous farmer who was content to own few possessions and work his property while remaining free from avarice and greed. Many economists of the day, including Adam Smith, thought this to be a good basis for a wealth in America.27 While concepts such as the Noble Savage (a term that today causes much controversy in its subversive racism) were popular in fictional literature as well as essays, Jeffersons focus was primarily on the farmer. Those who labor the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, he wrote in 1780 in his Notes on the State of Virginia, whose breasts He has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.28 Thoreau admired the same ideal as he documented his life of self-reliance at Walden Pond in Massachusetts in 1846, where he famously went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.29 However, as Thoreau moved back to Concord, Jefferson came to terms with the fact that he could not avoid the progress, ambition, and wealth the people of his country desired. He eventually realized that keeping factories in Europe to keep and ideal alive would not work and began to be seduced by the machine. However, he thought that retreating the factory from the dank, dark cities of Europe and moving them to bright, pastoral environments would keep the countryside beautiful. He attempted to retain the same myth.30 By 1844, technology was so ingrained in wealth of the people that it became a symbol of American abundance. The nation embraced progress as singularly

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THE BIOPHILIA HYPOTHESIS

TO THE DEGREE THAT WE COME TO UNDERSTAND OTHER ORGANISMS, WE WILL PLACE A GREATER VALUE ON THEM, AND ON OURSELVES.33 - Edward O. Wilson, from Biophilia
THE LACKAWANNA VALLEY by George Inness. Oil on canvas. 1855.11
positive in humanitys pursuit for perfection. The country, however, never lost its love for landscape. Marx used American landscape painter George Inness The Lackawanna Valley (1855) as the quintessential example of the national preference for having it both ways.31 The train unified the composition, as the natural landscape seemed in harmony with the smoke billowing into the air. This type of thinking, Marx contended, enabled the nation to continue defining its purpose as the pursuit of rural happiness while devoting itself to productivity, wealth, and power.32 As technological advancement enveloped American culture, a desire to keep that pastoral ideal alive lingered. Why? It wasnt until more than one hundred years later, with yet another climax of the counterculture movement, that the question started getting some answers. Those answers would prove to unsettle the basis of human civilization.
People from around the world flock to Keukenhof, a tulip park near Lisse, The Netherlands, to gaze at the 7 million tulips planted each year that cover the horizon in the brightest colors of nature. This fascination people share to see this elegant flower en masse reflects Biophilia, a hypothesis conceptualized by Edward O. Wilson in the 1980s to describe humans innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes. From infancy, we concentrate happily on ourselves and other organisms. We learn to distinguish life from the inanimate and move toward it life moths to a porch light.34 German social psychologist Erich Fromm first used the term in the 1960s to express the human desire to remain alive, happy, and around other life, while avoiding death and proximity to mechanical objects.35 Wilsons use of the word and the hypothesis he builds around it is deeply intertwined with human evolution and its connection to other organisms. This connection, he argues, is the reason for the vital importance of conservation. Wilson expresses great respect for Charles Darwin for the simplicity and clarity of evolutionary theory. He notes that evolution needs no mathematical equations or computer modeling. The naturalist summarizes Darwin by stating, New variations in the hereditary material arise continuously, some survive and reproduce better than others, and as a result organic evolution occurs.36 Wilsons explanation for the gene-culture connection surrounds the idea that humans thrived in hunter/gatherer societies among other organism for nearly all of their existence. Language and culture grew within the confines of this learning environment. He calls it biocultural evolution, during which culture was elaborated under the influence of hereditary learning propensities while genes prescribing the propensities were spread by natural selection in a cultural context.37 Wilson asserts that attractions and fears of specific organism or landscapes prove that the human mind evolved in the same place, and that humans still carry those genes with them. Examples of this are the demonizing symbolism of the serpent and pervading fear of heights
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throughout history.38 Wilson claims that no matter where people tend to settle, they go to great lengths to select property that looks like the African savanna, with its open land of moderate vegetation and nearby water. This location is highly selective for mind evolution because of its abundance of omnivorous food sources, elevation change for the purpose of surveying the land, and lakes and rivers for sustenance and protection.39 When people cannot be near nature, they seek escapes in gardening or hunting. They adorn their surroundings with animal and plants motifs. Because Biophilia is inherent in humanitys evolutionary process, it also involves the innate struggle for advantage, where the desire for progress enters the equation. This paradoxical relationship of personal expansion vs. life resolves through biophilias ability to increase contentment and rejuvenate the spirit. Therefore, in humanitys own self-interest, the ethics of conservation and defense of diversity must be a primary concern.40 Wilson sees no line between the survival of species near distinction and the survival of the human spirit.
T H E P L E I S T O C E N E PA R A D I G M
WE CAN GO BACK TO NATURE ... BECAUSE WE NEVER LEFT IT.41 - paul shepard, from Coming Home to the Pleistocene
Environmentalist Paul Shepard is the first to theorize human biocultural evolution that Biophilia and other philosophies in the environmental movement utilize. He would spend his life dedicating studies to the Pleistocene Paradigm. He claims that during human evolution in the Pleistocene epoch, dating back its beginnings about 2.5 million years ago, the human mind, genetics, and culture evolved in a hunter/gatherer society among other living organisms. Human evolution transformed the species into the perfect organism to live that lifestyle. In that archaic past we perfected not only the obligations and skills of gathering and killing, but also the knowledge of social roles based on age and sex, celebration and thanksgiving, leisure and work, childbearing, and ethos of life as a gift, and a meaningful cosmos.42 However, unlike Biophilia, which proposes conservation as an answer, Shepard proposes an overall questioning of current human civilization. He proclaims that if humanity doesnt look back to cultural practices during the Pleistocene, there will be no healthy future. He admits its not a popular viewpoint that such romanticism and nostalgia doesnt seem relevant in the age of progress.43 However, he notes that a disconnection to the past directly causes the ailments of current human civilization. We perceive the dark side of our present condition as our failure to adhere to our standards of civilization. Crime, tyranny, psychopathology, addiction, poverty, malnutrition, starvation, war, terrorism, and other forms of social disintegration seem to be the weakness and flaws in our ability to live up to the expectation of being civilized.44 Shepard contends that being civilized is not the answer. Instead, a return to the bonds of the past is the only answer. He doesnt propose wiping out all evidence of current civilization and returning to a hunter/gatherer society. The environmentalist believes that a mere acknowledgement and understanding of the past and its connection to social ailments is enough to make changes. We truly are a successful species in our own right that lived in harmony with the earth for millions of years a
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species that has not changed intrinsically.45 Shepard creates a collection of pieces of the Pleistocene Paradigm according to occurrences within ontogenic phases of life as well as social interactions and other miscellaneous conditions.46 These are aspects that differ from the current cultural norms. Ontogenic or developmental features include some ideas that may seem shocking today such as no reading until the age of 12; contact with scenes of birth, death, and copulation scenes from birth; extended lactation; and freedom of movement by 18 months of age. Current society would consider some of these ideas to be abuse or neglect. Other aspects such as few toys, and dense family structure, and selfsubsistence within a sharing culture seem like goals society should work to achieve. Many of the social characteristics seem idyllic and include political hierarchy, social roles, and general behaviors. The political aspects include the earning of prestige through integrity; politics based on participation, not representation; inter-tribal meetings to reduce tensions such as peace pipe rituals; and a fire circle of 10 adults serving as a council for the tribe. Tribe size tends toward 500 to 3,000 individuals with little contact with strangers, but immense hospitality when they arrive. Aunts, uncles, and grandparents play an active role in family life with gender and age roles differing from place to place. Other miscellaneous pieces involve health, belief systems, and forms of celebration. Running, walking, omnivorous eating, utilization of natural medicines, and hunting and gathering for food encapsulate health. Celebration and social gatherings revolve around narrative, participatory music, games, and feasting. Belief systems include a spirituality of all life, exploring the earths history through art, the science of the physical world, kinship with ancestors, and living present with seasonal and daily cycles. Each member has ultimate freedom of movement, skill learning, and marriage decisions. Shepard doesnt desire a return to these aspects of human life, but to incorporate them the best we can by creating a modern life around them. We take our cues from primal culture, the best wisdom of the deep desires of the genome. We humans are instinctive culture makers; given the pieces, the culture will stage itself.47
D E E P E C O LO G Y
IN COUNTRIES LIKE THE UNITED STATES, THE CRISIS IS RATHER ONE OF LIFESTYLE, OF OUR TRADITIONS OF THOUGHTLESSNESS AND CONFUSION, OF OUR INABILITY TO QUESTION WHAT IS AN IS NOT WORTHWHILE IN LIFE.48 - Arne Naess, from an interview in 1982 The Biophilia Hypothesis and Pleistocene Paradigm play into a greater environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s known as Deep Ecology. Arne Naess, a 1960s chair of the philosophy department at the University of Oslo in Norway, coins the term in 1973 to distinguish it from shallow movements with more anthropocentric concerns of pollution and resources.49 Deep ecology strives to look at the long-term, bigger picture and ask the deeper questions. Libertarian Socialist and Environmentalist Murray Bookchin as well as former Vice President Al Gore attacked the movement, labeling it misanthropic, with Gore claiming the philosophy treats human beings as foreigners on their own planet. However, author and Professor George Sessions claims that these attacks occur due to people with alternative philosophies pushing their own agendas and using Deep Ecology as an extremist or New Age foil.50 Such misinterpretation is understandable because the ideas that Deep Ecology proposes arent suggestions to put into effect over a century, they are immediate steps to human survival and require the intense cultural change Quinn espouses in his Ishmael novels. Naess appeals for people to put down their gadgets and realize that Western culture doesnt have an energy crisis; it has a consumption and lifestyle crisis.51 Taxpayers would rather spend millions on new tech-savvy gadgets to clean up the environment rather than make the hard choices that would require less time, money, and labor. No matter how many technological advances spur forth, basic human needs, such as a meaningful work in a meaningful environment, remain unfulfilled. Our culture is the only one in the history of mankind in which the culture has adjusted itself to the technology, rather than vice versa.52 This technological addiction, Deep Ecologists believe, stems from one event in human history, and it isnt the industrial revolution. Instead, it is the event that separates current civilization with the Pleistocene, the proliferation of agriculture.53 Quinn demonstrates the point best in a lecture form from the novel he wrote after
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Ishmael, The Story of B:

Many different styles of agriculture were in use all over the world ten thousand years ago, when our particular style of agriculture emerged in the Near East. This style, our style, is one I call totalitarian agriculture, in order to stress the way it subordinates al life-forms to the relentless, single-minded production of human food. Fueled by the enormous food surpluses generated uniquely by this style of agriculture, a rapid population growth occurred among its practitioners, followed by an equally rapid geographical expansion that obliterated all other lifestyles in its path (including those based on other styles of agriculture). This expansion and obliteration of lifestyles continued without a pause in the millennia that followed, eventually reaching the New World in the fifteenth century and continuing to the present moment in remote areas of Africa, Australia, New Guinea, and South America.54
population.58 Policy change is integral to prevent undue human intrusion with the non-human world culminating in exceedingly difference views of economics, technology, and the environment. Main ideological shifts will require the release of cultural consumption in favor of increasing quality of life. There will be a profound difference between bigness and greatness.59 Finally, Naess urges that those who come to agree with the tenets of Deep Ecology have an obligation to encourage and execute change. Naess advocates for a simpler lifestyle, with few possessions. He proposes recreating the idea of the factory by keeping them small in size and serving domestic, not international, needs. He admits that this type of restriction and emotional connection to life often leads to, as he says, tak[ing] your own life very seriously.60 However, he contends that the rewards, a self-realized contentment and connection to the earth, not to mention the subsistence of the species, are worth it.
Totalitarian agriculture, Quinn argues, leads to the creation of a 4000-year-old civilization dependent on arduous human labor. The disguise of this event as a harmless development in human history is due to what Quinn calls the Great Forgetting, in which myths from every civilization from ancient Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, India, and China through the teachings of Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, and Plato and even into Bacon, Descartes, and Newton simply didnt acknowledge human hunter/gatherer history.55 Like Shepard, Deep Ecologists believe that the original trauma of this separation from the earth is the cause for social ills because humans have lost their sense of meaning. The psychic homelessness from a vanished landscape leads to addictions and violence that is never understood because true human history, until recently, is not discussed. To fill the void, technology becomes the first addiction of choice in order to feel in control of the environment.56 However fooled and betrayed humans might feel, the hope lies in knowledge and in the cease of denial. Merely attaining the knowledge and understanding the origin of cultural wounds, is enough to heal and reconnect with nature. As a cultural solution, Deep Ecology advocates for intense changes in human 57 culture. All organisms and landscapes have intrinsic worth and the right to flourish apart from mere human utilization. Naess, like Wilson, sees human self-realization in organic diversity, but maintains that diversity has value in itself. Humans cannot and should not diminish diversity. The global population is not sustainable, and individual culture, overall human survival as well as that of non-humans requires a smaller human
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THE GAIA HYPOTHE S I S

IN TRUTH, NEITHER FAITH IN GOD NOR TRUST IN BUSINESS AS USUAL, NOR EVEN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, ACKNOWLEDGES OUR TRUE DEPENDENCE; IF WE FAIL TO TAKE CARE OF THE EARTH, IT SURELY WILL TAKE CARE OF ITSELF BY MAKING US NO LONGER WELCOME.61 - James Lovelock, from The Revenge of Gaia James Lovelock, a still living and still publishing environmentalist and scientist, proposes quite a different outlook and general theory of the world than the theories previously examined. Lovelocks ideas come with controversy, both in their validity and in their implications. Lovelock proposes that the myth of Mother Earth or Gaia is in a sense true: the Earths living matter, air, oceans, and land surface form a complex system which can be seen as a single organism and which has the capacity to keep our planet a fit place for life.62 Lovelock contends that the earth is actually a self-regulating system that keeps Earth in a state of homeostasis. Metaphorically, he calls it an organism. Evolutionary biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins argued strongly against the Gaia Hypothesis from a scientific standpoint and diminished it to nothing more than metaphorical description.63 Since his first coining of the Gaia terminology in the 1960s, Lovelock has bolstered his arguments in favor of this idea with help from scientists studying cybernetics and self-organizing systems64, which will be addressed in this paper later. The important aspects of Gaia for society are the ideas surrounding human ecology and humanitys place in the respect to the environment as well as Lovelocks theories on climate change. If Gaia exists, the relationship between her and man, a dominant animal species in the complex living system, and the possibly shifting balance of power between them, are questions of obvious importance.65 Unlike theories of Deep Ecology, Biophilia, and the Pleistocene Paradigm, the Gaia Hypothesis firmly places humans within Earths processes despite technological progress. Just because humanity cant grasp this doesnt make it nonsense. Instead of hoping for a great remembering in the like of Deep Ecology, Lovelock predicts dire times for the human species due to increased carbon emissions and the doubt that humans will be spawn fundamental cultural change. Scientists arent sure when the point of no return will happen, but Lovelock sees climate change as an eventuality that will cause civilization to make an abrupt shift to focus on the quickest technological fixes. Some of his forecasts read like a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel. In this case, Lovelock proposes the controversial notion for environmentalists of fully embracing nuclear technology because carbon emissions from coal are far more dangerous than nuclear waste.66 He also predicts that food sources from overpopulation and famine will cause the invention and proliferation of synthetic food, space-mounted sunshades, and machines that will pump carbon dioxide out of the air. For the first time, humans wont be able to rely on Earth for much of its natural comforts anymore. Humanity will be the stewards of climate on Earth.67
In several ways we are unintentionally at war with Gaia, and to survive with our civilization intact we urgently need to make a just peace with Gaia while we are strong enough to negotiate and not a defeated, broken rabble on the way to extinction. We may need restrictions, rationing and the call to service that were familiar in wartime and in addition suffer for a while a loss of freedom. We will need a small permanent group of strategists who, as in wartime, will try to out-think our earthly enemy and be ready for the surprises bound to come.68
The future from Lovelocks vantage point looks grim. As for the leaders he refers to should the planet pass the threshold of irreversible heating, he looks to the Deep Ecologists to be our guide.69
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ECOSOPHY
THE EARTH IS UNDERGOING A PERIOD OF INTENSE TECHNO-SCIENTIFIC TRANSFORMATIONS. IF NO REMEDY IS FOUND, THE ECOLOGICAL DISEQUILIBRIUM THIS HAS GENERATED WILL ULTIMATELY THREATEN THE CONTINUATION OF LIFE ON THE PLANETS SURFACE.70 - Felix Guattari, from The Three Ecologies Felix Guattari, psychoanalyst and poststructuralist philosopher, proposes a monistic view of mind, nature, and society known as Ecosophy, as opposed to the dualistic view of Deep Ecology, Biophilia, and Pleistocene Paradigm. His theories, along with the work of colleague Gilles Deleuze, influenced intense researches of organizing systems in nature and humanity, which comprise the next chapter of this study. Arne Naess also used the term Ecosophy to describe the more spiritual aspects of Deep Ecology, but Guatarris ideas, though using the same term, should not be misunderstood to relate in any direct sense. Guatarris concern in The Three Ecologies is homogenization of the human mind, environmental destruction, and decay of social bonds through mass media culture and global capitalism. Human subjectivity, in all its uniqueness what Guattari calls singularity, is as endangered as those rare species that are disappearing from the planet every day. 71 Guattari, as a solution to the technological addiction that began with Jefferson and is heightened today, calls for an application of Ecosophy of the three ecologies: environment, social relations, and human subjectivity.72 Ultimately, Guattari argues for diversity within the union of the three interdependent ecologies. He encourages mass opinion and expression and promotes humans to live their lives like artists, striving for singularity.73 He notes an individual autonomy within the ecological activism will be key. The movements may unite and then dissipate through time, but such is the way of positive change.
At every level, individual or collective, in everyday life as well as the reinvention of democracy (concerning town planning, artistic creation, sport etc.) it is a question in each instance of looking into what would be the dispositives of the production of subjectivity, which tends towards an individual and/or collective resingularization, rather than that mass-media manufacture, which is synonymous with distress and despair.74
Like theories previously mentioned in this work, Guattari calls for complete change in culture, but his ideas about how that will occur seem more of a reflection of natural selection than functioning of culture typically understood. He sees union in movements that might strive to end deforestation, production of nuclear technologies, or world hunger, but the ideas will be diverse and depend on the creativity of all humankind.75 In this way, human society, mind, and environment are pieces of dissensus within a whole of solidarity, diversity within the biosphere.
Environmental theories from philosophy, ecology, anthropology, and psychology contribute many new ideas to the discussion of how humans relate the natural world. The American Pastoral Ideal demonstrated the national identity crisis of the industrial revolution; Biophilia proposes an instinctive love for nature; Pleistocene Paradigm explains the origin of human culture and how it can inform culture of today; Deep Ecology contends that a only a fundamental shift in culture can stop environmental damage; Gaia Hypothesis suggests that the planets systems act as one large superorganism; and Ecosophy espouses diversity within a unity of environment, mind, and society. All of these theories contribute to the notion that humans must embrace that they are part of the earth in every way. The lifestyle of the present civilization must live in line with natural processes. Ultimately, it is within these processes, that humanity can rediscover the nature of its own spirit and its inherent beauty.
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Wolfe, L.M. (Ed.) (1938). John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. 22 Yosemite: History and Culture. (1/6/2010). Yosemite National Park. http://www.nps.gov/yose/historyculture/index.htm. 23 Sessions, G. (1995). Deep Ecology of the 21st Century: Readings on the Philosophy and Practice of the New Environmentalism. Boston, MA: Shambhala. pp. X. 24 Sessions, G. (1995) pp. IX. 25 Emerson, R.W. (1836). Nature. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 5th Ed., Vol. 1. (1998). Baym, N. (Ed.) New York, NY: WW Norton & Company. 26 Marx, L. (1964). The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 88. 27 Marx, L. pp. 98. 28 Jefferson, T. (1787). Notes on the State of Virginia. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 5th Ed., Vol. 1. (1998). Baym, N. (Ed.) New York, NY: WW Norton & Company. pp. 730. 29 Thoreau, H.D. (1846). Walden, or Life in the Woods. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 5th Ed., Vol. 1. (1998). Baym, N. (Ed.) New York, NY: WW Norton & Company. pp. 1816. 30 Marx, L. pp. 150. 31 Marx, L. pp. 226. 32 Marx, L. pp. 226. 33 Wilson, E.O. (1984) Biophilia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 2. 34 Wilson, E.O. (1984) pp. 1. 35 Fromm, E. (1964). The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil. New York, NY: Harper & Row. 36 Wilson, E.O. (1984) pp. 46. 37 Wilson, E.O. (1993) Biophilia and the Conservation Ethic. The Biophilia Hypothesis. Kellert, S. & Wilson, E.O. (Eds.) Washington, DC: Island Press. pp. 21. 38 Wilson, E.O. (1984) pp. 84. 39 Wilson, E.O. (1984) pp. 110. 40 Kellert, S. Introduction. (1993). The Biophilia Hypothesis. Kellert, S. & Wilson. E. (Eds.) Washington, DC: Island Press. pp. 21. 41 Shepard, P. (1998). Coming Home to the Pleistocene. Shepherd, F. (Ed.) Washington, DC: Island Press. pp. 170. 42 Shepard, P. pp. 1. 43 Shepard, P. pp. 1. 44 Shepard, P. pp. 5. 45 Shepard, P. pp. 170. 46 See Shepard, P. pp. 170-171 for full list. 47 Shepard, P. pp. 173. 48 Bodian, S. (1982) Simple in Mean, Rich in Ends: An Interview with Arne Naess. Deep Ecology of the 21st Century: Readings on the Philosophy and Practice of the New Environmentalism.
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(1995) Sessions, G. (Ed.) Boston, MA: Shambhala. pp. 28. Sessions, G. (1995). pp. XII. 50 Sessions, G. (1995). pp. XIII. 51 Bodian, S. pp. 28. 52 Bodian, S. pp. 32. 53 Glendinning, C. (1992). Recovery from Western Civilization. Deep Ecology of the 21st Century: Readings on the Philosophy and Practice of the New Environmentalism.(1995) Sessions, G. (Ed.) Boston, MA: Shambhala. pp. 37. 54 Quinn, D. (1996). The Story of B. New York, NY: Bantam Books. pp. 247-248. 55 Quinn, D. (1996). pp. 244. 56 Glendinning, C. pp. 39. 57 See the full list in Naess, A. (1968). The Deep Ecology Movement: Some Philosophical Aspects. Deep Ecology of the 21st Century: Readings on the Philosophy and Practice of the New Environmentalism.(1995) Sessions, G. (Ed.) Boston, MA: Shambhala. pp. 68. 58 Naess, A. pp. 68. 59 Naess, A. pp. 68. 60 Bodian, S. pp. 35. 61 Lovelock, J. (2007). The Revenge of Gaia: Earths Climate Crisis & The Fate of Humanity. New York, NY: Basic Books. pp. 2. 62 Lovelock, J. (2000). Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. XII. 63 Lovelock, J. (2000). pp. 11. 64 Lovelock, J. (2000). pp. 48. 65 Lovelock, J. (2000). pp. 12. 66 Lovelock, J. (2007). pp. 56. 67 Lovelock, J. (2007). pp. 56. 68 Lovelock, J. (2007). pp. 153. 69 Lovelock, J. (2007). pp. 154. 70 Guattari, F. (2008). The Three Ecologies. (I. Pindar & P. Sutton, Trans.) London: Continuum. pp. 27. 71 Pindar, I. & Sutton, P. Introduction. Guattari, F. (2008). The Three Ecologies. (Pindar, I. & Sutton, P., Trans.) London: Continuum. pp. 6. 72 Guattari, F. pp. 28. 73 Pindar, I. & Sutton, P. pp. 14. 74 Guattari, F. pp. 33-34. 75 Guattari, F. pp. 34.
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T H E A E S T H E T I C S O F B I O LO G I C A L SYSTEMS
THERE IS GRANDEUR IN THIS VIEW OF LIFE, WITH ITS SEVERAL POWERS, HAVING BEEN ORIGINALLY BREATHED INTO A FEW FORMS OR INTO ONE; AND THAT, WHILST THIS PLANET HAS GONE CYCLING ON ACCORDING TO THE FIXED LAW OF GRAVITY, FROM SO SIMPLE A BEGINNING ENDLESS FORMS MOST BEAUTIFUL AND MOST WONDERFUL HAVE BEEN, AND ARE BEING, EVOLVED.76 - Charles Darwin, from On the Origin of Species
by Means of Natural Selection
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Naturalist Charles Darwin changed world culture with his proposition that natural laws govern the biosphere in the same fashion they govern every other system in the universe. Many oppose his ideas even today for the simple reason that the laws he suggest take some magic or uniqueness away from life. However, it is this unfounded belief in lifes superiority and humanitys disconnection to the natural processes of the world that condone a culture of control over the environment. This section endeavors to not only philosophically ground humanity within Earths processes, but also to ground it scientifically. This foundation does not demystify life, but rather inspires the imagination by exposing the enormous variety of formal and organizational links that connect all processes on the planet. Ernst Haeckel, the first full professor in Zoology in the 1860s, does not see Darwins theory as a threat to the enchantment of life. Through many series of illustrated plates, he sees connections of what he terms organic stereometry, or complex patterning resulting in various forms of symmetry.77 Darwin and Haeckel share admiration for one anothers work, and Haeckel in many respects represents an aesthetic investigation of form and pattern of Darwins theories. Haeckel dedicates much of his study to Radiolaria, a single-cell protozoa class that encapsulates varying forms of organisms with intricate skeletal structures. Their inner and outer layers provide protection and buoyancy in the ocean. Haeckel sees not only a unity, but also a beauty in forms such as these. Other drawings include an analysis of wings and faces of bats, scales of fish, layers of complexity within sea life, and varying patterns of growth in demonstrated in shells. The illustrations provide 12 RADIOLARIA by Ernst Haeckel. Plate 71. knowledge of form, beauty, and connection of all
life on all scales.78 This monistic view of nature through form, Haeckel believes, is the best method of learning from nature.79 This aesthetic viewpoint directly links knowledge, aesthetics, and the environment. Knowledge of nature is natural aesthetics. Accordingly, aesthetics are nothing more than reflections of nature itself. Nature, which develops out of and into itself, is beautiful. 80 Haeckel contends that the history and theory of knowledge, epistemology, originates in nature, and is ultimately a revelation of nature. He sees no separation between the human mind, aesthetics, and the environment.81 This monistic view of humanity and the environment ties through this section in many fashions. The understanding of the processes that connect everything on earth have tremendous philosophical, social, and cultural implications for a model.
FISH by Ernst Haeckel. Plate 42.13
BATS by Ernst Haeckel. Plate 67.14
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THE PAT TERN THAT C O N N E C T S

OBSERVE ... THAT THERE HAVE BEEN, AND STILL ARE, IN THE WORLD MANY DIFFERENT AND CONTRASTING EPISTEMOLOGIES WHICH HAVE BEEN ALIKE IN STRESSING AN ULTIMATE UNITY AND ... WHICH HAVE ALSO STRESSED THE NOTION THAT ULTIMATE UNITY IS AESTHETIC.82 - Gregory Bateson, from Mind and Nature Gregory Bateson, a man of interdisciplinary influence in the fields of biology, anthropology, linguistics, and cybernetics, among others, presents an important link between knowledge, nature, and aesthetics. In his book, Mind and Nature, he poses a question to a group of art students at the California School of Fine Art in 1950s San Francisco. He reveals to them two paper bags. From the first one, he produces a cooked crab. He asks the students to imagine as if they were from another planet with no knowledge of life on Earth. He asks to prove, knowing that they are themselves living, that this object before them is the remnants of a living thing. They first recognize symmetry in the claws, not so much in size than symmetry, for the claws differ in size, but of corresponding parts. They then noticed corresponding pieces in the legs lining the body, each one smaller than the next as if containing a rhythm.83 With this exercise, Bateson requests the students to look for distinctions and differences between themselves and the crab. He asks them to find the pattern that connects. As art students, they respond by referencing aesthetics of form, rhythm, and pattern. The students recognized phylogenic homology, or the evolutionary history of themselves and the crab through form of corresponding parts. They also recognized serial homology, or rhythmic repetition with change from appendage to appendage down the length of the beast (crab or man).84 This pattern that connects Bateson speaks of is used on many different scales to connect crab to lobster, for instance, as well as human to horse. The patterns that connect each of those connect to one another as well, creating a metapattern, which is ultimately the point Bateson makes. What pattern connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose and all the four of them to me? And me to you? And all the six of us to the amoeba in the one direction and to the backward schizophrenic in another?85 This metapattern connects organisms on so many scales that it proposes an interconnection of all life. The other paper bag in Batesons classroom reveals a large conch shell. He poses the same question: How do they know it be the remnants of life? The students notice that it is not symmetrical nor does it contain corresponding segments, so those arguments no longer holds weight. The pattern in the conch shell however, retains a change in proportion of the same shape in the form of a spiral. In this case, a) all symmetry and segmentation were somehow a result, a payoff from, the fact of growth; and b) that growth makes its formal demands; and c) that one of these is satisfied (in a mathematical, an ideal, sense) by spiral form.86 This is procronism, or the evidence of an organism solving a formal problem over time through pattern, in essence, the pattern of growth.87 All of these patterns that connect are expressions of lifes pattern through time.88 Bateson notes that humans typically think of patterns as static things, but the pattern that connects he likens to a dance of interacting parts and only secondarily pegged down by various sorts of physical limits and my limits which organisms SHELLS by Ernst Haeckel. Plate 53.16 characteristically impose.89 This notion is hardly DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE
MUD CRAB. Scylla serrata, native to Australia.15
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AU T O P O I E S I S
WHAT IS COMMON TO ALL LIVING SYSTEMS IS THAT WE QUALIFY THEM AS static. In many ways, Bateson proposes, these are aesthetic, not scientific observations. Thus, the unity of all life is a question of aesthetics. Bateson mourns the failure of aesthetic discussion in the sciences and history of epistemology, theory of knowledge. I hold to the presupposition that our loss of the sense of aesthetic unity was, quite simply, an epistemological mistake. I believe that the mistake may be more serious than all the minor insanities that characterize those older epistemologies which agreed upon a fundamental unity.90 Bateson argues that many of the philosophical theories from Classical Greece to Emmanuel Kant to Jean-Baptiste Lamarck to Charles Darwin contain aspects of deductive logic that lead to erroneous conclusions about the processes of mind and environment.91 Linear processes of argument to explain the ways of the world fall short and should mimic the more serpentine approaches found in the aesthetics of nature. Batesons arguments pose several implications for the relationship between knowledge, art, and the environment. A philosophical and scientific history with integrated aesthetics would look very different from what students in universities learn today. In fact, Western culture itself might have a different viewpoint about its relationship to nature. A superior aesthetic understanding, or visual literacy, of the natural world has the potential to reawaken the minds of millions to the patterns that connects all life. This reawakening could inspire mass cultural transformation towards a sustainable, creative, integrative civilization. LIVING; IF NOT A VITAL FORCE, IF NOT AN ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE OF SOME KIND, THEN WHAT.92 - Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, from Autopoiesis What is life? This fundamental question holds the basis to understanding aesthetic properties to biological systems. Biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela answer the question through the understanding of the organization of living systems they name Autopoiesis. The term literally comes from Greek meaning selfcreation. They propose, in short, that living systems is a closed system, or unity, that is capable of maintaining its structure through the creation of components it needs to survive. Living systems are not defined by their components, rather the process that preserves and maintains these components.93 Maturana and Varela use the metaphor of the machine to describe their theory. The relations that define a machine as a unity, and determine the dynamics of interactions and transformations which it may undergo as such a unity, constitute the organization of the machine. The actual relations which hold among the components which integrate a concrete machine in a given space, constitute and structure.94 They name living systems as autopoietic machines and mechanistic systems like cars as allopoietic systems. Allopoietic systems are unable to maintain their own components. Cars get their parts from factories and are maintained by mechanics. The components of a given living system can transform and disintegrate with evolution, but the organization remains constant, meaning the machine is homeostatic and relationistic.95 A given structure and component systems remains constant only it aids in the survival of the system. While the scientists maintain that autopoietic systems have no inputs or outputs, they contend that outside agitation can promote structural change, causing evolution.96 It does not matter, it seems, whether every measurable property of that organizational structure changes utterly in the systems process of continuing adaptation. It survives.97 Maturana and Varela use the nervous system as an example. The structure, the organism and nervous system provides the components, the neurons and cells, with
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S E L F- O R G A N I Z AT I O N
SIMILAR PATTERNS AND STRUCTURES APPEAR THROUGHOUT THE NATURAL the right environment to promote Autopoiesis. This environment, with its physical and biochemical properties, sometimes cause perturbations, altering the neurons, which in turn change the activity of the nervous system, which in turn changes the organism in a physical or biochemical manner, which in turn then changes the neurons and the cycle continues. While all the physical structures, the organism, the nervous system, and the neurons, change, the organization stays constant. The implications of Maturana and Varelas Autopoiesis give credence to other unifying theories such as Lovelocks Gaia Hypothesis. The scientists make the notion of the planet as a superorganism a shallow hop away. In design, the theory has implications for gaining further understanding of how humans might someday transform machines into self-maintaining systems. Autopoiesis supports an important alteration to architect Louis Sullivans adage, Form follows function, to rather read, Form follows organization. Autopoiesis asserts that it is not the end function of a system that gives it identity, but rather the process of organization that maintains it. WORLD. ... IS THIS MERELY A COINCIDENCE, PERHAPS A LACK OF CREATIVITY ON THE PART OF NATURE? CERTAINLY NOT.98 - The authors of Self-Organization in Biological Systems Like Autopoiesis, the concept of self-organization reveals the processes of nature. However, while Autopoiesis is a closed system that applies to living systems, self-organization is typically an open system that applies to chemistry, physics, and cybernetics as well as economics, human society, and linguistics. Unlike most of the other theories in this study, self-organization stretches across so many fields that it has no clear leader. A biological investigation relates most directly in the purpose of gaining an understanding of the processes within nature. Scott Camazine et. al. describe self-organization as a broad range of patternformation processes in both physical and biological systems, such as sand grains assembling into rippled dunes, chemical reactions forming swirling spirals, cells making up highly structured tissues, and fish joining together in schools.99 Unlike Autopoiesis, in which internal systems are perturbed by outside influences, pattern formation occurs in self-organizing systems through interactions among components. Components carry no orientation of a grander scheme in the pattern; they merely react to what is around them. In fact, no grander scheme exists. The pattern arises independently as a byproduct of unanticipated interactions.100 Pattern, the authors define, is a particular, organized arrangement of objects in space or time. Examples of biological pattern include school of fish, a raiding column of army ants, the synchronous flashing of fireflies, and the complex architecture of a termite mound.101 The components in biological patterns sometimes comprise of organisms (ants) and other times comprise of objects manipulated by organisms (dirt). Most of these systems utilize positive and negative feedback, with the positive feedback mostly promoting change. Populations growth stems from the desire to be around others. Fireflies flashing as well as yawning stem from the I do what you do model.102 The premise is that there is a positive result from these behaviors that encourages them to occur more and the negative feedback occurs when these behaviors become too
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such as the grouping together of larvae like people under a bus stop in the rain. One parameter change might be enough to cause bifurcation, in which systems must change behavior abruptly to another stable state. A change in temperature turns water to ice. The important lesson in these ideas is that a relatively small number of rules provide enough information to dictate a vast complexity of systems in the natural world.106
Biologists have been puzzled by the fact that the amount of information stored in the genes is much smaller than the amount of information needed to describe the structure of the adult individual. The puzzle now may be solved by noticing that the genes are not required to specify all the information regarding adult structure, but need only carry a set of rules to generate that information.107
SAND DUNES Mui Ne, Vietnam.17
excessive (overpopulation) to keep them in line. Organisms can also receive feedback in the form of deliberate (ants using trails to find their way back to the nest) and not deliberate signals (deer trails that form over time without any clear intent. An example of all this is a school of fish. The fish do not have a greater knowledge of the pattern they create; they merely react to the fish that is heading their direction on a collision course. They abruptly make a turn to swim another direction. However, there must be an ideal distance wired into their genetics because all the fish demonstrate the same behavior in relation to their neighbor.103 In the midst of these constant interactions and feedback loops, a changing environment causing physical limitation can spawn growth and change in patterns the authors call the imagination of the system.104 Because these systems are dynamic, they also have the capability of being emergent. Emergence refers to a process by which a system of interacting subunits acquires qualitatively new properties that cannot be understood as the simple addition of the individual contribution.105 One plus one no longer equals two; it now equals five. This sometimes occurs because of an attractor
SCHOOL OF FISH swim to outmaneuver a sea lion near the Galapagos.18
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NONLINEAR HISTORY
HUMAN HISTORY DID NOT FOLLOW A STRAIGHT LINE, AS IF EVERYTHING Other systems outside of those that are self-organizing exist as well. Leaders guide a group such as ducks walking in a row. Mud wasps use blueprints as a manual for spatial and sequential instruction to build nests. Recipes are used by silk worms as a sequence of instructions for each individual. DNA provides the template for RNA, and messenger RNA serves as a template for amino acid sequences.108 Self-organization in biological systems is not only integral in understanding animals, plant life and geological formations, it is also integral in understanding humanity. Every part of human life, from biology to language to culture, is part of a self-organizing system. Humans unknowingly follow a set of rules as do schools of fish. Understanding this dynamic can only enhance human interaction within culture and amongst the greater environment. Utilizing knowledge of organization within the environment can inform humans as to how to work with natural systems and not against them. POINTED TOWARD CIVILIZED SOCIETY AS HUMANITYS GOAL.109 - Manuel De Landa, from A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History
Manuel De Landas bold treatise on the nonlinear history of humanity and its relationship to geology, biology, and genetics reshapes assumptions about culture of the past and future. De Landa synthesizes economics through rocks, cities through germs, and languages through genes to demonstrate that all these systems are part of a history of self-organizing processes. He faults theories of thermodynamics and evolution for deeming equilibrium as the ideal state and instead proposes the constant flux from one stable state to the next as the norm. He notes that bifurcation and attractors are not only dynamic, but also nonlinear, with multiple interactions between components. In a dynamic environment, De Landa argues, there is no fittest design, no equilibrium. This is the importance of understanding history.110 Unlike Deep Ecologys belief that agriculture was the downfall of civilization, De Landa sees it as merely a step that humans still retain.
If the different stages of human history were indeed brought about by phase transitions, then they are not stages at all that is, progressive developmental steps, each better than the previous one, and indeed leaving the previous behind. On the contrary, much as waters solid, liquid, gas phases my coexist, so each new human phase simply added itself to other ones, coexisting and interacting with them without leaving them in the past. Moreover, much as a given material may solidify in alternate ways (as ice or snowflakes, as crystal or glass), so humanity liquefied and later solidified in different forms.111
With each bifurcation came diversity of cultures, which all lived amongst one another and interacted. De Landa proposes that reality is a single-matter energy, from culture to rocks, from wind to genes. These are all different expressions of the same processes at work. Each variation makes the potential for the next variation more complex. De Landa also accounts for emergence within human history.112 De Landa claims that humans hold themselves and life in general in higher regard than other realities. He calls this organic chauvinism that undervalues the importance of inorganic processes to the flow of energy on the planet.113 He compares
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cities to ecosystems in the movement of organisms through the fabricated landscape. City dwellers become large decorative carnivores in their consumption while those who reside in the country become the producers of food, plants, in this parasitic dependence.114 In a confluence of environmental philosophy and systems theory, De Landa propose to destratify reality itself, and we must do so without the guarantee of a golden age ahead.115 He, like the other theorists, sees hope in the possibilities of destratification, or peeling away the layers of current culture. He notes that many beautiful phenomena in nature, such as bird songs, form through destratification. While these views do indeed invoke the death of man, it is only the death of the man of the old manifest destinies, not the death of humanity and its potential for destratification.116 De Landa foresees an intense change the understanding of human reality. While his notions peel away the layers of traditional thought and assumption, they also build groundwork for new layers comprised of acceptance of fluctuation and variation within a unified whole that comprises all the processes on Earth. The conception of viewing cities, languages, and economies as self-organizing systems with histories of variation has massive implications for positive changes in the way humans buy, build, and interact with one another. Viewing a city, an economy, or a society as an extension of the biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere will redefine human reality.
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Darwin, C. R. (1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: John Murray. [1st edition]. pp. 490. 77 Breidbach, O. (1998). Brief Instruction to Viewing Haeckels Pictures. Haeckel, E., Art Forms in Nature: The Prints of Ersnt Haeckel. Munich: Prestel. pp. 9. 78 Breidbach, O. pp. 9-14. 79 Breidbach, O. pp. 13. 80 Breidbach, O. pp. 14. 81 Breidbach, O. pp. 14. 82 Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York, NY: Dutton. pp. 18. 83 Bateson, G. pp. 7-10. 84 Bateson, G. pp. 10. 85 Bateson, G. pp. 8. 86 Bateson, G. pp. 12. 87 Bateson, G. pp. 12. 88 Bateson, G. pp. 14. 89 Bateson, G. pp. 13. 90 Bateson, G. pp. 18. 91 Bateson, G. pp. 18-19. 92 Maturana, H.R. & Varela, F. J. (1980). Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel Publishing Co. pp . 75. 93 Maturana, H.R. & Varela, F. J. pp 79. 94 Maturana, H.R. & Varela, F. J. pp 77. 95 Maturana, H.R. & Varela, F. J. pp 79. 96 Maturana, H.R. & Varela, F. J. pp 81. 97 Beer, S. (1980). Preface. Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel Publishing Co. pp. 66. 98 Camazine, S., Deneubourg, J., Franks, N., Sneyd, G., Theraula, G., & Bonabeau, E. (2001). SelfOrganization in Biological Systems. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp. VII. 99 Camazine, S. et. al. pp. 7. 100 Camazine, S. et. al. pp. 7-8. 101 Camazine, S. et. al. pp. 8. 102 Camazine, S. et. al. pp. 18. 103 Camazine, S. et. al. pp. 22. 104 Camazine, S. et. al. pp. 26. 105 Camazine, S. et. al. pp. 31. 106 Camazine, S. et. al. pp. 29-33. 107 Camazine, S. et. al. pp. 38. 108 Camazine, S. et. al. pp. 47-63. 109 De Landa, M. (2000). A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. New York, NY: Swerve. pp. 16. 110 De Landa, M. pp. 13-14.
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De Landa, M. pp. 15-16. De Landa, M. pp. 26. 113 De Landa, M. pp. 104. 114 De Landa, M. pp. 106. 115 De Landa, M. pp. 274. 116 De Landa, M. pp. 274.
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T H E B U I LT E N V I R O N M E N T A S E X T ENSION OF ORGANISM, ECOSYSTEM, EARTH

THE BARRIER BETWEEN LIFE AND MACHINE, BETWEEN NATURE AND ARCHITECTURE, IS DISSOLVING AND ... THE TWO HAVE ALREADY BECOME ONE IN A DIFFERENT SENSE THAN THE SYMBIOSIS THAT HAS ALWAYS EXISTED.117 - Phillip Jodidio, From Architecture: Nature
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The environmental philosophies and scientific analyses of systems over the last century have tremendous potential to focus the Sustainable building movement in the 21st century. From Biophilia, humans learn an appreciation for life; from Pleistocene Paradigm, culture; from Deep Ecology, simplicity; from Gaia Hypothesis, the planet; and from Ecosophy, diversity. The systems theories teach and understanding of organization of all life through pattern. Implications abound for general approach, design process, programming, construction and demolition methods, maintenance, performance, and aesthetics. All of these problems result in one fundamental question: What is a building? Ernst Haeckels and Gregory Batesons discussions of the relationship between knowledge, nature, and aesthetics, might hold some answers. If humans are part of nature, the human mind evolves within nature, and the human mind comes to know nature through aesthetics, then the three must be fundamentally linked: Nature is aesthetic Knowledge is aesthetic Knowledge is nature Environmental artist Herman Prigann makes a similar statement concerning the connection between aesthetics, ecology, and perception through the process of difference: Aesthetics and ecology can be said to be complimentary, and interdependent. If aesthetics concerns perception through the sense, encompassing all the various models of being and their formal qualities, and if ecology is the interdependent network of existence with its multiple physical and formal qualities, this interdependence is related to perception and perception is possible within difference.118 This would lead to the notion that anything designed by humans is also part of nature. However, Bateson already notes that linear logic often fails to correctly solve the problems of processes in the environment. Perhaps then, in addition to being reflections of nature, human creations are also attempts to unconsciously utilize natures processes. The unconsciousness of natures involvement throughout most of history, such in the case of linear logic, sometimes leads to overly simplistic, erroneous, or incomplete solutions. Are ceramics, steel, or adhesives part of nature? Because they are creations
of man originating in earthly materials, the answer is yes. Do they perform as well as their natural counterparts? The inner shell of a sea creature called an abalone is twice as tough as our high-tech ceramics. Spider silk, ounce for ounce, is five times stronger than steel. Mussel adhesive works under water and sticks to anything, even without primer.119 All of these materials are made by nature in conditions fit for life, not in an industrial factory of heat and noxious gasses. Though current culture might find delight in these natural materials that resemble the materials of the human reality, the truth is that humanity is constantly mimicking nature. Up to this point in time, the effort is unconscious and unsuccessful. If the effort became a conscious effort to mimic nature, in what natural science writer Janine Benyus calls Biomimicry, then human design has the potential to not only be more sustainable, but also more efficient, durable, and successful in achieving design goals. So, is a building a living system? According to Maturana and Varela, the answer is no. Autopoiesis requires that a system maintain its components, and like a car, a building does not repair itself like a Rhinoceros horn yet.120 The work of scientists and engineers following Benyus principles are getting closer and closer each day to achieving natures strength, efficiency, adaptability, and longevity through mimicry. Someday, perhaps one company or family will be able to say they own the first living building. However, the metaphor of seeing a building as an extension of an organism, an ecosystem, and the Earth, as De Landa saw the city, helps designers understand how to form structures, how life flows within interiors, how systems and materials impact the environment, and how the building as a whole can one day be as perfectly designed as a cell. This effort will take many iterations, variations, and evolutions, but such is nature.
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DESIGN APPROACH A N D P R O C E S S
WE TYPICALLY JUMP IMMEDIATELY INTO DESIGN ONCE THE BUILDING PROGRAM HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED. WE FIND, THOUGH, THAT IF WE ARE TO CREATE AN INTEGRATIVE PROCESS FROM THE BEGINNING, THERE IS SOMETHING MORE TO DISCOVER BEFORE WE START DRAWING.121 - 7 Group, From The Integrative Design Guide to Green Building In following Guattaris Ecosophy, diversity is the key to making positive change. Nearly every philosophy touched on in this study influences other fields, with many theorists actively working in multiple fields. In the case of design, and integration of diversity in opinions and specializations lead to a greater understanding of the diversity in local culture and environment. Unlike current workplaces in which a design team slices up the project and doesnt talk for two weeks, ecological design requires a simple, yet important notion: The Four Es: Everybody Engaging Everything Early.122 This integrative process suggests that the best way to foresee every problem, opportunity or connection across disciplines is to get everyone at the table from the start. The integrative design process not only supports diversity, it is also nonlinear as opposed to traditional processes. Periods of research and analysis are followed by a reassembling of the team members to participate in a charrette, or intense period of design activity to solve a problem, for brainstorming. Then, members go back to research, then back to a charrette, and so on until the end of the design development phase.123 This process is constantly being evaluated, much like positive and negative feedback loops of self-organization. Ultimately, bringing all the designers to the table encourages the chance of an emergent idea in the same fashion TRADITIONAL DESIGN PROCESS represents a linear process with little as living systems. collaboration.19 In addition to engineers, architects, interior designers, and others gathering early in the process, Benyus calls for a biologist and/or ecologist at every table to integrate biomimicry from the early design phases. She notes INTEGRATIVE DESIGN PROCESS represents a nonlinear process with emphasized collaboration.20 that a clear understanding of the local landscape and organisms can foster design ideas informed by nature. Benyus notes that the life and processes already existing on a given site can inform how the building might need to respond to conditions like flood, fire, or wind. The Integrative Design Guide to Green Building suggests an initial ecological analysis of habitat, water, energy, materials, and key stakeholders (both human and ecological).124 Vernacular architecture, using building principles to address local cultures with local materials and traditions, holds many lessons for the process of current design because of its tendency to adhere to natural processes in the absence of climatecontrolling systems. Like Benyus notion of looking to the landscape for design impetus, a local method of building passed down from generation to generation can inform material, performance, aesthetic, and programmatic decisions. Vernacular architecture can provide suggestions as to how to respond of local customs as well as climate.125 Designer Victor Papanek writes in The Green Imperative that similar vernacular styles and methods arise in completely different parts of the world for various reasons involving technology, culture, climate, change, social interaction, materials, and traditional symbolism.126 A building style in Northern Africa appears strikingly similar to that of Taos, New Mexico.127 Vernacular architecture in most occasions works for a given society over the course of generations, so to ignore its importance is to ignore the pattern of self-organization that creates the buildings.
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Architecture for Humanity Design Charrette, Drexel University
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Mission: Generate sustainable solutions for international and local communities.1 Assignments: Sustainable Portable Classroom: Philadelphia, PA, and Franklin Parish, LA; Sport Acupuncture Facilities: Archery in Bhutan, Futsal in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Guest Lecturer and Director: Architect Cameron Sinclair, co-founder of Architecture for Humanity. Time Period: Three days of research and design in March 2008. Location: Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA. Participants: Drexel University students from Engineering, Graphic Design, Fashion, Economics, Law, Anthropology, Construction Management, Interior Design, and Architecture departments.2 Team Structure: 13 teams of six to seven participants. Goals and Philosophy: Design a building solution for communities based on Architecture for Humanitys ideals of understanding the communities culture and needs, finding solutions that could be built/ maintained in the communities, and creating a solution that would inspire a sense of ownership. Research and Design Structure: Following a university-wide lecture in which Sinclair discussed the mission, approach, and projects at Architecture for Humanity, participating
students were broken up in to teams and given the design assignments. Teams were given one day to gather research via the internet, email communication, and (in the case of Philadelphia teams) site visits. Throughout that day, teams quickly formulated game plans and split up to gather information. All team reassembled in the afternoon to present their findings to the larger group and critique jurors. Each group identified the problems and needs that were not being met in each locations current communities. The portable classroom teams noted problems with toxic buildings materials, poor ventilation, poor light quality, overcrowding, among other aspects. Teams studied education reports about how a healthy classroom benefits learning and the strategies to implement to meet that goal. The Bhutan teams focused on how to address problems of illiteracy among women and a lack of electricity and clean water
OSNAP. Operation: Sustainably Nurturing Adaptive Portability Philadelphia portable classroom.21
in many villages. Teams focused on vernacular aspects of each village to apply to building design. The Sao Paolo teams found problems with safety, sanitation, and access to healthcare within the cities favelas, or areas of spontaneous settlement that arose without land ownership, zoning, or professional construction. The teams sought to create a sense of pride that would spark commerce and safety while providing access to healthcare, internet, and gardening. In the following days, teams worked on the design with critiques and presentations occurring each day until the final presentation to the entire group, local high school students, design professionals, and university jurors. Results: The information gathering that occurred within a short period of time forced people to use all their personal resources and connections from emailing family members and friends to visiting local schools to cold calling resources they found online. This effort to talk directly to the people of the community allowed the students to understand the real problems, needs, culture, and vernacular aspects. The interdisciplinary nature of the teams created opportunities for the building-focused disciplines to understand the bigger picture within each community. It allowed the designs to be assessed by people outside the sometimes insular field of architecture. Law
A BEACON OF BAMBOO. A Project for the Last ShangriLa. Bhutan Archery Community Space.22
students researched the failing of local building codes; anthropologists came to understand the cultural implications of communities and how to apply them; engineers created strategies to turn local waste into building materials; and economists looked for opportunities to jumpstart economies through local manufacturing and the creation of commerce that might stem from these buildings. The building designs in turn were not merely buildings; they became solutions to fit the larger needs within the communities. Architecture for Humanity Design Charrette at Drexel University. (April 2008). Open Architecture Network. (1/14/2010). http://www.openarchitecturenetwork. org/drexel. 2 Architecture for Humanity Design Charrette. (2008). Drexel University. (1/14/2010). http://www.drexel.edu/ westphal/charrette/2008/.
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the definition of what works can be stretched and should be stretched to, for instance, include more or less informal conditions. ... instead of, kind of, one perfect model, an incredible gradation of conditions ... could coexist in the city and feed each other.128 - Rem Koolhaas, From Lagos Wide And Close Shepards Pleistocene Paradigm has several implications for social living and theories about tribal community that affect the current thinking about community and delineation of space. This is not to say buildings should be built to enact change in social interaction, but rather to anticipate how a changing culture might choose to live. In supporting De Landas theories that communities, economies, and methods of communication are nonlinear systems with a history that shows itself continually in the present, buildings should adapt to an ever-evolving society. As Papanek writes, Aristotle said that men form communities not for justice, peace, defense, or traffic, but for the sake of the good life. This good life always meant the satisfaction of mans four basic desires: conviviality, religion, artistic and intellectual growth, politics.129 Shepards analysis of tribal cultures reveals some findings that might inform design. Shepards findings suggest a community size of 500 to 3,000 people for a community. Within that, Papanek identifies 250 people as small, 450 to 600 as the ideal social neighborhood, and more than 1500 as a large neighborhood. This community would require large spaces for celebration, feasts, and games as well as smaller spaces for decision-making. There would be a greater number of shared spaces and lesser need for private space as the community share responsibility for its own 24 self-subsistence. A constant LAGOS STREETS. Traffic sits stagnant surrounded by commerce. connection to outdoor space or even wild space would also be important according to Shepards characteristics. According to Papanek, humanity is losing to time to remember its community-oriented roots. Building programming can help facilitate this remembering. The four desires Papanek mentions occur within the realm of social interaction. De Landas theories contend that while humans live in a mostly rectilinear environment theyve created, social interaction and economics hardly occur in a linear fashion. The nonlinear mass growth of Lagos is the creative investigation of Rem Koolhaas in the film, Lagos Wide and Close, Interactive Journey into an Exploding City.130 The movie predicts that Lagos will be the third largest city in the world by 2015 with a population of 24 million people. The city contains 1970s planning methods to aid in the flow of traffic such as overpasses and highway systems, but the growth causes constant stagnation in these linear throughways. At first glance, this seems like a traffic nightmare, but the residents of Lagos adapted by turning these stagnant zones into zones of commerce. Traders walk between cars selling goods, which in turn promotes pedestrians to flock to the roadways to also purchase goods during their transport. The economy demands authenticity of products because they wont sell unless they are brand name. Lagos is the largest importer of electronics, providing $2 billion for the American economy by way of piles of irons stacked in an alley. Lagos deals with being dysfunctional, Koolhaas says. There is much more freedom in which is not rigorously organized and that remains flexible than an attempt to completely master everything.131
LAGOS MARKETS. Piles of brand-name computers sit in the street in a Lagos market.25
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The Vertical Farm
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Concept leader: Dickson Despommier, Professor of Environmental Health Sciences and Microbiology, Columbia University Location: Cities around the world The Problem: The worlds population is rising rapidly, with exponential growth occurring in urban areas. If predictions are correct that the human population will increase by 3 billion people by the year 2050, there will not be enough productive farmland to feed the world population. This would cause mass starvation that could cause a world disaster human culture has never yet witnessed.1 The Solution: Thought leaders such as Professor Dickson Despommier believe that vertical urban
THE LIVING SKYSCRAPER. Farming the Urban Skyline by Blake Kurasek, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.26
farming might be the solution. By bringing the food to the source, open space can be preserved. High-rise farms have the potential to grow a variety of crops during all seasons of the year. Advantages: One vertical farming acre has the potential to equal four to six traditional acres. Elimination of pesticide use. Potential use of urban farms as living machines to process waste. Potential to create a new job sector. Allows restoration of depleted farmland. Elimination of irrigation, pesticides, and other harmful practices used in traditional farming that cause toxic runoff.2 Longterm Advantages: Reduced hunger, malnutrition, and obesity by exposing urban populations to fresh, organic, healthy food. Improved overall health, school attendance, female empowerment, and international trade. Reduced disease vulnerability and environmental destruction.3 Designs: While Despommiers idea is still in the conceptual realm, scientists, engineers, architects, students, and community members
are working actively to turn the concept into a finished building. Some designs feature passive methods with south-facing gardens while others involve complex technologies. Some of the more technological ideas feature spinning buildings for even sunlight, hydroponic plants grown over fish tanks, hamster wheel-like crop circles tended by robots, and systems that treat sewage.4 Results: The idea of the vertical farm would change the way humans attain food since the advent of agriculture thousands of years ago. The concept would reduce the carbon footprint of food transportation and provide access of fresh food to all income levels if it were ensured to be affordable. However, the concept of a vertical farming skyscraper could stack a food source within a city at one source, making an entire urban
THE LIVING TOWER by Atelier SOA Architects in Paris.27
THE AQUAPONIC MERRY-GO-ROUND. A spinning fish tank and hydroponic farming unit in which plants and fish naturally benefit from the proximity by Organitech.28
area dependent on one building. Simpler ideas that give people more self-subsistence such as community gardens or vertical farming within mixed-use buildings might prove to be worthwhile community efforts. Seattle is currently looking at its vacant properties to give community members more autonomy.5
Welcome. (2009). Vertical Farm. (1/17/2010). http:// www.verticalfarm.com/index.html. 2 Welcome. 3 Welcome. 4 Kuang, C. (2008). Farming in the Sky. Popular Science. (1/17/2010). http://www.popsci.com/cliffkuang/article/2008-09/farming-sky?page=1. 5 Langston, J. (June 2, 2008). Urban Farming Sprouts in Seattle. SeattlePi. (1/17/2010). http://www.seattlepi. com/.
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THE CONCERN WITH FITNESS INVOLVES MEANINGFUL FORM, AND IT WAS SEEN THAT EVOLUTION HAS BEEN IN THIS BUSINESS FOR A LONG TIME AND THAT MAN IS ONLY ONE OF ITS PRODUCTS. THUS MEANINGFUL FORM IS NOT LIMITED TO MAN AND HIS WORKS, BUT TO ALL THINGS AND ALL BEINGS.132 - Ian McHarg, From Design with Nature Self-organizing systems are responsible for creating pattern in form and growth. How does the system result in a given form with all the potentials for variation? When enlisting the lessons of nature for the analysis of form in architecture, fitness arrives as a term that seems appropriate for both realms. As landscape architect Ian McHarg writes in Design with Nature, Fitness is thought to be as much the province of plants and animals as of men, and among men the doctor and the lawyer are as much involved as the poet and the painter. Creativeness, as we have seen, is a universal prerequisite which man shared with all creatures.133 In short, a form sticks because it works. Form can serve to visually identify or subvert the identity of a species through camouflage. These are all forms of communication. Ultimately, McHarg suggests, the way humans identify form in nature is through idealization. For example, a shell is formed by a growth equation that involves the rotation of a two-dimensional shape around a fixed axis in a logarithmic curve. This curve is the golden spiral, which increases in size by , phi, 1.168.., the golden ratio, which also dictates the Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 144 ).134 Other than creating a pattern that connects, as Bateson would say it, the logarithmic spiral maintains a proportion that allows it to be identified as a shell. The golden ratio and its connected forms, sequences, and equations, have inspired architectural works since its inception. Since humans are involved in the same sort of creation as that of a bird building its nest or the SHELL MODELING. Professors at the University formation of a nautilus shell, that is, to discover the of Calgary, Canada, computer model shells using fittest form, the only way to create the fittest built 30

environment is to follow the laws of the natural environment. This might break the ego of architects who believe they are creating something new, but it should be inspiring to know that the act of creation is the realization of existence.135 What is the fittest form for the human environment? As with every solution in nature, SPIRAL CITY. City plan by architect Roger Anger the results will prove to be as diverse as the forms for a spiritual community, Auroville, founded by teacher Aurobindo in Pondecherry, India.31 of Haeckels Radiolaria. Some forms that Benyus mentions Corinthian column, the floral exuberance of Art Nouveau, the winged seed motif of Frank Lloyd Wrights Samara House, and more recently, the bold figures of Gehrys fish and Calatravas bird,136 are biomorphic in form, but lack the performance and environmental consciousness required to be ecological design. According to applied design theories of Biophilia by ecologist and Wilson cohort Stephen Kellert, buildings should take into account certain attributes based on the study of humanitys intrinsic love for life.137 Some of these aspects are to be interpreted symbolically or integrated as motifs rather than taken literally. Some aspects dont contain an environmental characteristic per se, and truly represent good design choices most designers are aware of in current practice such as focal points, transition spaces, natural light, landscape orientation, and places of prospect and refuge. THORNCROWN CHAPEL. by arEnvironmental features include all the comforts chitect Fay Jones outside Eureka of nature such as light, views, water, ventilation, Springs, Arkansas. The building is embraced as Biophilic archiplant life, animals, and ecosystems. Natural shapes tecture for its use of natural light and forms include natural motifs, biomorphic and and aesthetic inspired by the geomorphic forms, and shapes found in nature. landscape.32 DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE
algorithms.
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Natural patterns and processes include awakening the sense through variability (espoused by Phenomenology), natural complex and simple geometries, and the expression of age and change. Aspects of light and space generally reflect standard practices that emphasize a connection to the outdoors such as varying uses of light and spatial connection. Place-based relationships reflect many of tenets of vernacular architecture involving local materials and connection to place KOCH CURVE. Fractals are comprised of and culture. Finally, characteristics of evolved human-nature one form repeated over generations at different scales.33 relationships include a sense of curiosity and playfulness, discovery, drama, and sacredness. While these aspects of biophilic design do not invoke an aesthetic of function that is dramatically novel, they do represent what defines good ecological design. Books on biophilic design attract respected architects and theorists from varying fields, and the philosophy has grown greatly in awareness in the 21st century because of this. Fractals are a more complex system of geometry that represents patterns in varying scales. In the Koch curve, one simple shape dictates the next form, which dictates the next form, and so on. This symmetry has appropriately been dubbed self-similarity, and form possessing it are termed fractals. Self-similarity is a direct consequence of identical processes shaping form across many scales.138 Fractals are an expression of self-organization that produces complex and beautiful formations. Because fractals forms have more surface area than the more simplistic Euclidean forms, fractals are actually also better at facilitating energy. Fractal geometry also provides an understanding of how an architect might build a biomorphic structure or some other type of structure that resembles nature.139 Various gothic cathedrals in Venice, Baroque churches in Rome, African settlements, and South Pacific settlements all contains fractal designs. When we write about the presence of self-similarity in architecture, we refer of a same shape repeated at different scales more than four times.140 This occurs both consciously and unconsciously in design. Efficiency in natural form first catches the eyes of architects Frei Otto and Buckminster Fuller in the 1960s. While the former based his work in good part on
models derived directly from nature, the latter participated in the invention of shapes that have subsequently been understood to be almost omnipresent in nature at a microscopic scale.141 At this time, the architects arent part of any movement to create biomorphic forms as are present today, they rather independently endeavor to find an efficient form that would BIOSPHERE. US Pavilion 67 Expo by Buckmister Fuller, stand against the laws of nature. Ottos Montreal, Quebec.34 serpentine cobwebs of the Olympic Stadium in Munich, Germany (1967-72) to this day cause wonder in its efficiency and lightweight construction.142 Buckminster Fuller created his geodesic spheres to understand the structural integrity of tension in triangulated spheres for the Montreal Biosphere, created for the American Pavilion at Expo (1967) in Montreal, Canada. Combining structural simplicity with low cost and strength, the geodesic dome appears to be the type of architecture that covers the most space on earth if all 300,000 known examples are counted143 Fuller earned his scientific credibility when scientists discovered his geodesic sphere in a form of carbon, giving his creations the nickname Buckyballs.
MUNICH OLYMPIC STADIUM. by Frei Otto and Gunter Behnisch, 1967-1972, Munich, Germany.35
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The California Academy of Sciences
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drawing. Instead, he interviewed the panel and asked them to talk with him about what they envisioned. This was a magic place in the middle of Golden Gate Park, Piano said standing on the old buildings roof 1999. I said, The roof has got to be part of the experience of the building, part of the itinerary.3 Design Generator: Known for many projects that look to the natural landscape and culture for inspiration such as the Jean-Marie Tijibaou Cultural Center in New Caledonia (1998), Piano again looked to the landscape for inspiration. He designed the building to fit into the concepts of the museum and apparently had no idea that he was two points away from a LEED platinum rating when the Rocky Mountain Institute came to assess the building cost.4 The seven domes that make up the 2.5-acre undulating roof were inspired by San Franciscos own famous hills. The landscape on the roofs is comprised of nine native plant species that hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies local to the Bay area thrive on. When Piano presented his first sketches to the Academy, he described his idea for the roof by asking his audience to imagine a huge elevated swath of the park, with the museum tucked underneath it.5 The domes accommodate the planetarium, aquarium and natural history museum. PIANO SKETCHES. Concept sketch for the Academy mapping out Sustainable Practices: The San Francisco office
the buildings relationship to the park and the sun.36
Architect: Renzo Piano Location: Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California Size: 410,000 square feet Cost: $488 million Completed: 2008 LEED rating: Platinum Materials: Limestone, architectural concrete, steel, aluminum, and extra clear glass.1 Approach and Process: After the original California Academy of Sciences building was forced to close a building due to the 1989 earthquake, the then director, scientist Patrick Kociolek decided to take a risk and imagine a natural sciences buildings for the 21st century.2 The Academy interviewed six architects: Toyo Ito, Moshe Safdie, Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, James Polshek, and Renzo Piano. They came in with impressive presentations involving slides, projectors, various staff members. Piano came with his daughter and not one
for Arup did the engineering services for the building. They took Pianos vision and turned it into a building at the top of the LEED rating system. The two largest two hills on the roof act as symbolic lungs for the building. A four-foot gap between the roof and the spheres allows heat to escape through skylights that open and close automatically through computer controlled actuators. The museum is built from recycled steel, portions that were torn down became a freeway, and sand excavation was brought to dunes for restoration.6 Results: The architect envisioned the aesthetics of the building, controlling the plant life on the roof and rejecting certain engineering solutions that would compromise aesthetics. The meetings of minds among the Academy, the architect, the engineers, and the host of specialists that made the California Academy of Sciences building
INTERIOR VIEW. The Academy planetarium cantilevers over the aquarium.37
GREEN ROOF. The rolling hills on the Academy roof feature skylights that open and close automatically to ventilate the building.38
succeed in being embraced by the architectural community as well as the people of San Francisco. The California Academy of Sciences in many ways defined the environmental movement in a building because it united aesthetics with performance and, most importantly, inspired the imagination.
California Academy of Sciences. Renzo Piano Building Workshop. (1/14/2010). http://rpbw.r.ui-pro.com/. 2 Steen, K. (Sept. 17, 2008) Green Architectures Grand Experiment Part 1: The Building. Metropolis magazine. (1/14/2010). http://www.metropolismag. com/story/20080917/green-architectures-grandexperiment-part-1-the-building. 3 Steen, K 4 Steen, K. 5 Lanks, B. Green Architectures Grand Experiment Part 2: The Roof. Metropolis magazine. (1/14/2010). http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20080917/part2-the-green-roof. 6 Silverberg, M. Green Architectures Grand Experiment Part 3: The Engineering. Metropolis magazine. (1/14/2010). http://www.metropolismag.com/ story/20080917/part-3-the-engineering.
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WE ON THIS BELL JAR CALLED EARTH ARE LUCKY TO BE SO CLOSE TO SUCH A MARVELOUS EXPLOSION HAPPENING ALL DAY, EVERY DAY, ABOVE OUR HEADS. THE SUNS FUSION OF HYDROGEN PROVIDES ENOUGH LIGHT ENERGY TO EASILY SUPPLY ALL OUR ENERGY NEEDS WITHOUT BURNING A DROP OF OIL. IF ONLY WE HAD A WAY TO PLUG IN.144 - Janine Benyus, From Biomimicry Environmental philosophies from Deep Ecology to Ecosophy are consistent on the fact that humanitys dependence on technology is what caused the environmental crisis. However, none of them proposes a literal return to the Pleistocene in some form of 1960s hippie commune. Even if they did propose it, the commune method of living far from cities is small communities is not a model for the nearly 6.8 billion people on Earth today. Architects, designers, and engineers offer two main innovative solutions in building performance that can bring down the carbon footprint of developed countries and pave a new way forward for developing countries: Returning to passive design and mimicking nature to improve performance technologies. Ultimately, the goal is to have a building with no footprint that functions with the natural landscape or even contributes to it. Because of the invention of climate-controlling building systems and certain city infrastructures, many buildings no longer account for orientation; wind, rain and snow; and natural heating and cooling. While the inventions of new technologies spark the human mind and economy, the best performance attributes are not additive, but passive. The Passivhaus concept originates in Darmstadt, Germany, where architects strived to build a house utilizing a fraction of the energy used in a conventional house. There are currently Passivhaus institutes in central Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States that aid in construction of passive houses. The Passive House Institute of the United States claims, The Passive House concept represents todays highest energy standard with the promise of slashing the heating energy consumption of buildings by an amazing 90%.145 Many of the methods used in Passive House technologies stem from antiquity, but many also contain contemporary twists. These buildings reduce energy costs by properly insulating and retaining heat, utilization of solar heat gain, and reduction of cooling through window shading and orientation. The buildings are nearly airtight with tripleglazed windows to prevent heat from escaping, while an energy recovery ventilator circulates air to keep it fresh.146 Solutions vary from climate to climate, but result in the same success. Because passive building doesnt require WEBERHAUS PASSIVHAUS. Weberhaus, a prefabricated house expensive technology to reduce energy, company in Britain, features a passive house model.40 the initial cost is cheap. By rediscovering methods that have been used for millennia, buildings are regaining their place as passive spaces on the planet. In instances when passive design is not yet possible, scientists learn from nature to harness energy. Benyus thinks its that humans havent moved past fire as a primary source of harnessing energy.147 It seems quaint to think that humans are still metaphorically just sitting around a campfire for warmth. Photovoltaics have the technology to power a house, but still cant store energy. This is because human understanding is still limited by what they can see, and while scientists know where photosynthesis occurs, but not how.148 In the meantime, leaves outside collect and store energy without research labs and without federal grants. While evolution of these technologies spurs a diverse group of scientists working around the world to find the solution, and they are getting closer every day. Until then, technologies that harness the Earths own science are helping buildings reduce their footprint. Green walls and roofs provide fresh air, reduce storm water runoff, maintain the buildings structure while providing insulation, and reduce the heat island effect in cities. Storm water collection in conjunction with geothermal technologies allow for less water use, storm water reduction, and reduced heating cost. Sustainable building ratings systems around the world suggest a myriad of other technologies to bring buildings back in line with natural processes, but until these technologies can tap into all natures secrets, humanitys iterations will need constant adaptation. DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE
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Passive Performance of Termite Mounds
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THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT OF TERMITES. Different views of termite mounds.41
Organism: Termites, subfamily: Macrotermitinae, genus: Macrotermes, including many different species, all fungus growers.1 Structure: Termite mound and underground quarters, largest possible reaching 30 meters in diameter and six meter in height; the largest non-man-made structures in the world. In human proportion, that would translate to a building one mile high and five miles in diameter. Location: African savannas. Construction material: Entire structure built from soil pellets, except fungus garden. Construction method: Interplay of templates and self-organization. Queens pheromones serve as a template, supported by positive feedback loops to place soil pellets in heterogeneous locations,
mortaring them with oral secretions that also release pheromones, and trail pheromones that attract workers to buildings sites. The process starts with the royal chamber where the queen resides. This interplay of pheromones as templates and positive feedback to join the group combine to make the building process possible.2 Construction: Termite mounds contain six layers: 60 centimeter-thick outer wall with ventilation ducts. Brooding chambers in the central nest that demonstrates laminar (flowing smoothly around one another) patterns in section and lamella (many layered plate-like structures) patterns in plan. They are supported by pillars. Base plate with spiraling cooling vents and pillar foundations. Queens chambers located in the most protected part of the central nest and must accommodate her fluctuation in size from 35 to 140 millimeters, or 125 times in weight increase. Comb-like fungus gardens located in between nest and outer walls. Outside galleries above and below ground that connect termites to the outside.3 Functions:
PLAN AND SECTION VIEWS. These views demonstrate complex patterns of organization that make the mounds structurally sound and efficient in ventilation.42
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Passive Performance of Termite Mounds
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Protection from predators: Mounds are designed to thwart enemy attacks from larger mammals like anteaters to small insects like army ants. Food production: The fungus gardens provide most of the colonies food, protecting them from having to face harsh climates and predators. Termites create a type of compost, combining decomposing plant matter with colony waste that eventually fertilizes the fungus gardens. Protection from climate: Temperatures swing from 37 degrees Fahrenheit to 107 degrees in the dry African savanna. The temperature within the mound remains within one degree of 87 degrees4, with a 98- to 99-percent SCULPTURAL TERMITE MOUNTS. Termite mounds form in all shapes and humidity level.
sizes.44
Ventilation: Ribs that run along the wall to the mounds summit carry carbon dioxide out and oxygen in. Large air canals carry carbon dioxide away from the nesting, nursery , and cellular decomposition areas. This air flows downward to the fungus gardens, where it heats up and rises to the top of the mound where it is forced out by increased pressure caused by radial ducts near the ribs. Oxygen flows into the ribs and cools on its way down the mound. Many layers within the mound have a free exchange of gasses due to thin walls without punching holes that create security breaches. Results: Termites create a structure that is more successful in climate control, waste management, food production, and ventilation than any structure conceived by humans. The colonies create a structure that gives them complete self-subsistence. Even understanding and implementing one of the processes the termites use in their structure would revolutionize human buildings. Building Implications: Architect Mark Pearce and engineers Ove Arup & Partners mimicked ventilation in termite mounds for a seven-story office complex that takes up a full block in Harare, Zimbabwe. Eastgate has no air conditioner and
SCULPTURAL TERMITE MOUNTS. Termite mounds form in all shapes and sizes.45
uses 35 percent less energy than six conventional buildings in Harare combined. 5 The building saved $35 million in energy after five years. It was completed in 1996. Ductwork in the atrium serves as the main ribs, while hollow floors mimic air canals in the spaces where people spend the most time. Forty-eight chimneys serve as the radial ducts that force air out. At night, giant fans flush the building with cool air seven times and hour. Humans cant attain termite conditions without electricity yet, but the lessons prove to be an important stepping-stone to further investigation of the termites superior methods of attaining passive performance.
EASTGATE. The office building in Harare, Zimbabwe, mimics ventilation systems of termite mounds.46
Camazine, S., Deneubourg, J., Franks, N., Sneyd, G., Theraula, G., & Bonabeau, E. (2001). Self-Organization in Biological Systems. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp. 378. 2 Camazine, S. et. al. pp. 386-391. 3 Camazine, S. et. al. pp. 379. 4 Benyus, J. (2008). A Good Place to Settle: Biomimicry, Biophilia, and the Return of Nature Inspiration to Architecture. Biophilic Design: The Theory, Science and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life. Kellert, S., Heerwagen, J & Mador, Martin. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. pp. 35. 5 Benyus, J. (2008). pp. 35.
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ALL COMPLEX HUMAN ENDEAVORS, INCLUDING ARCHITECTURE, REQUIRE A REGULATING STRUCTURE TO ORGANIZE THE INHERENT CHAOS THAT UNDERLIES ITS MAKING. OUR REGULATORY STRUCTURES TODAY ARE INFORMATION MANAGEMENT TOOLS, NO IDEALIZED MATHEMATICAL CONSTRUCTS OF CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE. MODERN HUMANISM IS COMMUNICATION, NOT GEOMETRY.149 - Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake, From Refabricating Architecture Many architectural and engineering wonders of the world mimic natural structures. The Eiffel Tower was inspired by the human femur bone, which is expert in handling off-center stresses.150 There is an immense amount of knowledge to gain from the natural building process. Bodies are like a kit of parts. In the class of mammals, each organism contains systems: skeletal, respiratory, nervous, integumentary, and reproductive. All of these organisms contain these kits, but the components are all arranged in different ways, producing different methods of locomotion and different physical characteristics. This notion applies to the phenomenon of prefabricated architecture in which components are manufactured off-site, then shipped to the site and assembled. The components usually take the form of standards or modules that are designed to fit perfectly to reduce construction time and (in theory) cost. According to architects Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake, prefabricated architecture has failed because of a linear design process.151 Instead of focusing on a one-solution fits all method of previous architectural iterations, the architects suggest a concept that happens to fit the construction of nature: What has changed today? Everything. Mass production was the ideal of the early 20th century. Mass customization is the recently emerged reality of the 21st century. Mass customization is a hybrid. It proposes new processes HIP JOINTS and the femur have a unique stuctural to build using automated production, but with the ability to balance stress.47 ability to differentiate each artifact from those that are fabricated before and after.152 Instead of offering the previous prefabricated solution of more cost, less choice, less customization, more standardization, and less quality,153 the architects contend that mass customization will prove to solve a design problem in less time for less money with more choice and more quality. This is all possible through adopting natures design methods of promoting diversity in form through the economy of components. If life, as De Landa says, is constantly in flux, should architecture not express this in a more immediate way than a few moveable partitions and a 10-year plan for renovation? Shells grow with their host. Perhaps instead of working towards a construction projects end date, designers and view a new building like an 18-year-old going off to college: they will change, learn, and grow with the people around them. In this way, instead of buildings permanent buildings, architects and designers might think of them as adaptive buildings. In addition to changing inhabitants, buildings might also learn from nature to respond to times of day and seasons as well as its own aging process. A winner of the Guggenheim Design It: Shelter Competition designs a shelter that would allow people to experience each phase of a changing tide of the Wadden Sea in Denmark. The creator, David Eltang of Denmark, designs the shelter with tidal stairs so hikers can experience the sea in safety as the tide rises to its full height when visitors can then utilize a observation and resting tower to immerse themselves in the oceanic experience. The shelter serves as a resting place at low tide.154 Buildings do not last forever. They age and disintegrate. Instead of building to last in the face of nature, perhaps designers can embrace the eventual demise of a structure and plan for its reuse in other SEA SHELTER was designed to give occupiers unique experiences with the tidal flows.48 buildings or release back to nature. Earth artists DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE
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embrace the ephemeral more than architects do, for obvious reasons. Artist Robert Smithsons Spiral Jetty from the 1970s succumbed to Utahs Salt Lake after construction. It remained underwater until the around 2000. Instead of being a tragedy of lost art, it serves as a symbol of why Smithson initially created it.155 Mass customization architecture has the potential to attain the goals of preparing for adaptability and disassembly like no other building method has before. In
2001 KieranTimberlake Associatesreinvents the construction of a Modern masterpiece, Mies van der Rohes Farnsworth House (1947).156 They take the design and standardize the components to see how few pieces they could use. Van der Rohes original construction involved 1,267 parts. KieranTimberlakes version requires between 22 and 48. The disassembly of a few dozen parts for reuse could revolutionize the way architects and designers view the life cycle of a building.
COMPONENT ASSEMBLY. Kieran/Timberlake used only 22 to 48 components to recreate Mies van der Rohes Farnsworth House.50
SPIRAL JETTY by Robert Smithson in Salt Lake City, Utah, 1970.49
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The Loblolly House
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Architects: Kieran/Timberlake Associates Location: Taylors Island, Maryland Size: 2,200 square feet Completed: 2007 Aesthetic Approach: Architects Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake looked to the Chesapeake Bay landscape for inspiration for the Loblolly House. The house, named after the pines that created a dense grove on the site, was designed to respond to the trees, tall grasses, the sea, the horizon, and the setting sun.1 The east elevation was designed by abstracting a site photograph of shadows falling through trees. The house was a response to Mies van der Rohes Farnsworth House, which the architects deemed to be a work of architecture entirely disconnected to its site. Instead of window being formed by rectangular
SUNSET GLAZING. Windows in the house mimic the sunset shining through trees.52
through a componentized assembly process that begins with an exposed, recycled aluminum frame that becomes the organizing fabric, the ground of the house interior.3 The floor, ceiling, bath, and mechanical rooms were all fabricated off site. Wall panels with exterior and interior finishes with windows, insulation, and structure were also created off site. This process allowed the components to be manufactured in a controlled environment and designed for disassembly. Results: The prefabrication process, which the firm named mass customization, allowed for the concept that anyone might be able to order a Loblolly House customized to fit their needs. The firm explored this further with their Cellophane House designed for the Museum of Modern Arts Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling exhibition in 2008. Three of the firms designs KT2, KT1.3, and KT1.5 are being sold on LivingHomes.com, a site that sells prefabricated homes built by well-known architects. These homes are marketed as affordable construction, but the least expensive home starts at $369,600 for a 1,540-square-foot home.4 This price of course does not include the land cost. While this might seem affordable to the wealthy architects designing the homes, the price tag is too costly for most Americans to afford. Kieran/Timberlake took part in actor Brad Pitts Make it Right rebuilding project in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. The
PREFAB CONSTRUCTION. The house was made with prefabricated components for disassembly.53
average construction cost among all the architects designs was averaging $150 per square foot, meaning that the designs would have remained unaffordable to their residents without the fundraising efforts Pitt undertook.5
Loblolly House. (2007). KieranTimberlake. (1/17/2010). http://kierantimberlake.com/featured_ projects/loblolly_11.html#. 2 Kieran, S. (2008). Evolving an Environmental Aesthetic. Biophilic Design: The Theory, Science and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life. Kellert, S., Heerwagen, J & Mador, Martin. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. pp. 248. 3 Kieran, S. pp. 249. 4 Standard Living Homes. Living Homes. (1/17/2010). http://www.livinghomes.net/homesCommunities.html. 5 Stokes, Stephanie. (July, 25, 2009). Brad Pitts Make It Right houses in New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward to include two-family models. The New Orleans TimesPicayunne. http://www.nola.com/homegarden/index. ssf/2009/07/post_40.html.
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LOBLOLLY HOUSE. The house was inpsired by the loblolly trees on the Chesepeake Bay.51
glass panes, the east elevation created windows through the voids between vertically oriented wood planks. This effect interacted with the trees outside to cause the house mimic the way light falls through the forest. Orange tinted glass gleamed with the setting sun.2 Construction and Disassembly: In keeping with perhaps the most driving force of nature, Kieran/ Timberlake planned the construction of the house for its eventual death. Loblolly House does this
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THE DIGITAL GENERATIVE PROCESSES ARE OPENING UP NEW TERRITORIES FOR CONCEPTUAL, FORMAL, AND TECTONIC EXPLORATION, ARTICULATING AN ARCHITECTURAL MORPHOLOGY FOCUSED ON THE EMERGENT AND ADAPTIVE PROPERTIES OF FORM. THE EMPHASIS SHIFTS FROM THE MAKING OF FORM TO THE FINDING OF FORM. ... IN THE REALM OF FORM, THE STABLE IS REPLACED BY THE VARIABLE, SINGULARITY BY MULTIPLICITY.157 - Branko Kolarevic, From Architecture in the Digital Age Many a computer specialist might like to think that contemporary computer is edging closer and closer to the brain that artificial life is near. In reality, computing of today is still based on a linear code, made from silicon, and outdated after three years. Brains utilize nonlinear systems, they are made from carbon, and they are inherent pieces in organisms since their origin because they evolve. Environmental philosophies uniformly see technology as the problem in environmental understanding. In many cases when gadget addiction causes mass waste and provokes people to stay indoors, this is correct. When the computers become tools for ego, their use arrives in errors. There is no doubt that digital technologies are transforming not only design visualization, but design conceptualization. Computational, digital architectures of topological, non-Euclidean geometric space, kinetic and dynamic systems, and genetic algorithms are supplanting technological architectures.158 While computers fall short of the complexity of the human brain, they prove to be a useful tool in understanding environmental forces from sunlight to ventilation to efficient forms. Benyus reminds the designer, By collaborating with the people who study natures structures, our efforts to create organic forms need not be blobitecture.159 The brain is still the superior thinker. The computer ultimately is a tool in problem solving. Architect John Frazer explores genetic code in SIMULATED EVOLUTION. John Frazer explored computer modeling. He applies a set of rules based genetics through form by simulation.55 on gene crossover and mutation in evolution to a genetic algorithm and watches as the form grows, twists, and contorts. He then selects certain forms to continue the process, and new forms emerge based on the selected forms characteristics.160 Architect ARCHITECTURE OF THE BRAIN. Marcos Novak Marcos Novak searches for architectural expression mapped his own brain, revealing complex form.56 through the sciences such as genome research, biology, nanotechnology, among others.161 His work AlloNeuro/AlloCortex, is an efforts to model his own brain using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scans and stimuli, encompassing a sort of feedback loop. He envisions his work as a melding of art and science as well as a reinvention of the notion of self-portrait.162 Performance-based architecture is also emerging from digital technology. Though computer-generated simulation, designers are able to see how their buildings would function acoustically, socially, structurally, thermally, and technically. Norman Fosters GLA building, Londons city hall (2002), went through various performance tests including solar and acoustical, that give credence in sustainability to the spiraling inner structure and its blob-like exterior.163 The INVERSAbrane material study by KOL/MAC Architects in New York City could revolutionize the building envelope by functioning as infrastructure. The material recycles air, water, and light to create energy. Scoops catch and guide water and air; exfoliation of surface increases exposure to sun and aids air filtration; and bladders store water. The designers used computer modeling to find a fusion of form and performance.164 As the computer investigation of three-dimensional space and the environment continues, a new architecture will make itself apparent in performance and form.
LIVING ENVELOPE. KOL/MAC Architects created envelope material that recycles air, water, and light.57
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Parametric Urbanism of denCITY
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Research Origin: Design Research Lab at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London Masters degree in Architecture program. Research Period: October 2007 January 2009. Designers: Team SAHRA: Peter Sovinc, Saif Almasri, and Suryansh Chandra. Conceptual Project: denCITY. Location: Ras al-Khaymah, United Arab Emirates. Mission: In response to Dubais unrestricted and collage-like planning, denCITY proposes to combine urban design and master planning to adapt to large-scale urbanization. Their idea is to use non-linear city planning that will serve as an interactive and adaptive model of Urbnanism.1 This planning will produce solutions that respond multiple scenarios at the same time to produce spaces that respond individually as part
of a whole. Economic Factors: Taking into account the development of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the students see three possibilities for Ras alKhaymahs future: Business/Financial District: High rises, large roads, public transit, high-use pedestrian walkways. Tourism Center: Mixed mid-rise and lowrise, access to coastline and waterfront, public transit, and high-use pedestrian walkways. Satellite Town: Low-rise sprawl, more vehicles needing road infrastructure, less public transit, fewer pedestrian walkways. City Analysis: The students create a simulation that would create a zoning map using the three economic scenarios based on current conditions of road intersections, pedestrian use, best transit locations, waterfront, existing development, and existing road network. That map responds
to coastline use and population size. Based on the condition, the map creates roads and transit lines. The students then use traditional concepts of density building types and apply them to the simulation. They create conditions for traditional sprawl, reducing surface area to respond to desert sun, connecting open spaces, fragmenting urban spaces, linear grid streets, and hexagonal grid streets. Each condition creates different formations based on the initial chose building type. Applied to the interactive zoning map, the students are capable of modeling and entire city with a few slide of the mouse. The tourism model places development on the
IDEAL FORM. Team SAHRA found that a tripod-like formation best allowed sunlight to hit the ground.58
IDEAL FORM. Team SAHRA experimented with different density building types.59
CITY DENSITY SIMULATION. The simulation changed building types and locations based on user-controlled economic sliders.60
coast, while the commercial model places highdensity development between the coast and major roadways. The housing model keeps the coastline clear and utilizes lower density buildings. Intermediate models show a combination of all conditions.2 Hyper-Dense Architecture: The students simulate the creation of a city two to three times denser than New York or Hong Kong that would attempt to reduce energy use. They note that sunlight rarely penetrates the ground and lower floors building in high density cities. In response, they create a model building form that would respond to the Emirates citys daylight cycles that would block the sun at certain times in the morning and evening, allowing the sun at other times. Also, then, they create a form to respond to the seasons, blocking sunlight in the afternoon of summer, but not winter. They combine the two forms to find that a tripod-like formation of interlocking forms responds to both conditions. The students experimented with height, thickness, and floorplate shape until they found that a lattice shape met all the criteria, as well as aesthetic beauty.3 Hyper-Dense City: The clustering towers allowed space for low-density buildings for public use as well as open space and roads. The formation of the buildings also allowed for the creation
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Parametric Urbanism of denCITY
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density, transportation, open space, and climate the students create a city that is adapted to the systems instead of forcing the systems to adapt to the city. Based on economics, they could predict zoning changes. Based on a location of a building, they could design it to optimize natural light. This type of simulation is the kind of forecasting that saves millions in expensive technology to green a skyscraper. The research might take longer, but its far less expensive that a building that lacks performance and a city that doesnt meet the needs of its people, its economics, and its climate.
SIMULATED CITY SCAPE. The daylighting simulations arrived at an ideal tripod-like form that allows the light to shine to the ground. This extra ground space provides open space for public buildings and roads.62
DLR Parametric Urbanism by SAHRA:denCITY. Video Part 1. (April 22, 2009). Future Framework Blog. By Yheu-Shen. Architectural Association School of Architecture. http://yheu-shen.blogspot.com/2009/04/ drl-parametric-urbanism-by-sahradencity.html. 2 DLR Parametric Urbanism by SAHRA:denCITY. Video Part 1. 3 DLR Parametric Urbanism by SAHRA:denCITY. Video Part 2. (April 22, 2009). Future Framework Blog. By Yheu-Shen. Architectural Association School of Architecture. http://yheu-shen.blogspot.com/2009/04/ drl-parametric-urbanism-by-sahradencity.html. 4 DLR Parametric Urbanism by SAHRA:denCITY. Video Part 2. 5 DLR Parametric Urbanism by SAHRA:denCITY. Video Part 2.
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of elevated walkways, open space, and public buildings. To respond to this, the students placed public spaces such as atriums in the buildings at the walkway connection points.4 The Building Envelop: To respond to the desert condition, the students created an envelope that would reduce solar radiation without compromising natural light. They created another simulation to throw light, shadow, and reflected light onto the forms they created based on time of day and season. The light is represented by color values. From this, the simulation calculates the best envelop fenestration for each point in the building taking into account all times of day
and al seasons. The simulation also moves floors plates in the same way. The result is an entire city structure designed to take best advantage of sunlight compromising health and comfort.5 Results: The students did a huge amount of research to create simulation models and understand condition that affect cities. Their results at every level created different results. The diversity of options resulted in solutions that proved to be superior to the rest. Taking advantage of variation proved to be the most successful way of achieving a result that responds to a world full of variation. By being able to simulate many city conditions economics,
SIMULATED BUILDING ENVELOPE. SAHRA simulated sunlight on the building forms until the perforations in the building envelope discovered the ideal shape to balance light in all seasons.63
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ARCHITECTURE OR REVOLUTION, REVOLUTION CAN BE AVOIDED.165 - Le Corbusier, From Towards a New Architecture
The environmental reawakening of humanity demands a new architecture. This architecture will be boldly different from its collaborators to its process, from its form to its performance, from its construction to its disassembly. The process of this ecological architecture will push all those involved to question every method they considered fixed and every course they deemed constant. This new architecture will spawn from a process that mimics nature to create structures that mimic nature. The results with be as diverse as the methods. Linear notions of communication, form, technology, society, and economics will be discarded in favor of nonlinear understandings of the systems that make up the planet. A great turning point in human history will form from an integrated understanding of knowledge, aesthetics, and nature. This change will not be about form or about function. This change will be a reflection of organization, the process itself. The product of that process, diversity, will be the catalyst that reminds humanity of its connection to the whole.
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Jodido, P. (2006). Architecture: Nature. New York: Prestel. pp. 22. Prigann, H. (2004). Ecological Aesthetics: Art in Environmental Design: Theory and Practice. Basel, Germany: Birkhauser. Pp. 22. 119 Benyus, J. (2002). Biomimcry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. New York, NY: Harper Perennial. pp. 97. 120 Benyus, J. (2002). pp. 97. 121 Boecker, J., Horst, S., Keiter, T., Lau, A., Sheffer, M., Toevs, B., Reed, B. (2009). The Integrative Design Guide to Green Building: Redefining the Practice of Sustainability. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 61. 122 Boecker, J., et. al. pp. 62. 123 Boecker, J. et. al. pp. 104-105. 124 Boecker, J. et. al. pp. 111-120. 125 Papanek, V. (1995). The Green Imperative: Ecology and Ethics in Design and Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson. pp. 198. 126 Papanek, V. pp. 119-127. 127 Papanek, V. pp. 124-125. 128 Lagos Wide and Close, Interactive Journey into an Exploding City. (2006) Dir. Bregtje, V. & Haak, D. Voice of Rem Koolhaas. DVD. Submarine Studio. 129 Papanek, V. pp. 105. 130 Lagos Wide and Close, Interactive Journey into an Exploding City. 131 Lagos Wide and Close, Interactive Journey into an Exploding City. 132 McHarg, I. (1969). Design with Nature. Garden City, NY: The Natural History Press. pp. 165. 133 McHarg, I. pp. 165. 134 Ball, Phillip. (2001). The Self-made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 12-13. 135 McHarg, I. pp. 53. 136 Benyus, J. (2008). A Good Place to Settle: Biomimicry, Biophilia, and the Return of Nature Inspiration to Architecture. Biophilic Design: The Theory, Science and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life. Kellert, S., Heerwagen, J & Mador, Martin. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. pp. 29. 137 See Kellert, S. (2008). Biophilic Design: The Theory, Science and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life. Kellert, S., Heerwagen, J & Mador, Martin. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. pp. 6-15. For complete list. 138 Van der Ryn, S. (1996). Ecological Design. Washington, DC: Island Press. pp. 38. 139 Broadbent, G. & Brebbia, C.A. (Eds.) (2006). Eco-Architecture: Harmonization between Architecture and Nature. Southhampton, England: WIT Press. pp. 160 140 Broadbent, G. & Brebbia, C.A. pp. 162. 141 Jodido, P. (2006). Architecture: Nature. New York: Prestel. pp. 26. 142 Jodido, P. (2006). Architecture: Nature. New York: Prestel. pp. 26. 143 Jodido, P. (2006). Architecture: Nature. New York: Prestel. pp. 27. 144 Benyus, J. (2002). pp. 60-61. 145 What is a Passive House? Passive House Institute US. (1/10/2010). http://www.passivehouse.
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us/passiveHouse/PassiveHouseInfo.html. What is a Passive House? 147 Benyus, J. (2002). pp. 62. 148 Benyus, J. (2002). pp. 62. 149 Kieran, S. & Timberlake, J. (2004). Refabricating Architecture: How Manufacturing Methodologies are Poised to Transform Building Construction. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. pp. XII. 150 Benyus, J. (2008). pp. 30. 151 Kieran, S. & Timberlake, J. pp. 13. 152 Kieran, S. & Timberlake, J. pp. XII. 153 Kieran, S. & Timberlake, J. pp. 155. 154 Sea Shelter by David Eltang. (Aug. 2009) The Design It: Shelter Competition. Guggenheim Museum. (1/10/2010). http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/education/sackler-center/ design-it-shelter/winners. 155 Prigann, H. pp. 36. 156 Kieran, S. & Timberlake, J. pp. 171. 157 Kolarevic, B. Digital Morphogenisis. (2003). Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and Manufacturing. Kolarevic, B. (Ed.) New York, NY: Taylor and Francis. 158 Kolarevic, B. Introduction. (2003). Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and Manufacturing. 159 Kolarevic, B. (Ed.) New York, NY: Taylor and Francis. pp. 3. 160 Benyus, J. (2002). pp. 33. 161 Kolarevic, B. Digital Morphogenisis. pp. 23-24. 162 Jodido, P. pp. 142. 163 Jodido, P. pp. 142-144. 164 Kolarevic, B. Digital Morphogenisis. pp. 25-26. 165 Feireiss, K. & Feireiss, L. (Eds.) (2008). Architecture of Change: Sustainability and Humanity in the Built Environment. Berlin: Gestalten
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Statement of Intent
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Ecological Development
Emergent Neighborhood
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A Transformative Concept for Mixed-Use Urban CoHousing
The environmental reawakening of humanity demands a new architecture. This architecture will be boldly different from its collaborators to its process, from its form to its performance, from its construction to its disassembly. The process of this ecological architecture will push all those involved to question every method they considered fixed and every course they deemed constant. This new architecture will spawn from a process that mimics nature to create structures that mimic nature. This change will not be about form or about function. This change will be a reflection of organization, the process itself. The product of that process, diversity, will be the catalyst that reminds humanity of its connection to the whole. The intent of the proposed project is to represent the ideals of ecological architecture. Cohousing is a rapidly growing residential housing solution, with 112 projects around the country currently in forming, site seeking, or building phases. Cohousing offers a unique solution for sustainable development because of its inherent concern for energy use, conservation of open space, increased density, and affordable living. Cohousing residents give up large private spaces for larger shared community spaces. Many incorporate shared meals and community gardens. The residents come from all demographic
DAYBREAK COHOUSING. Architectural Rendering of Daybreak Cohousing in Portland, Oregon.64
BROOKLYN COHOUSING. Architectural Rendering of Brooklyn Cohousing in Brooklyn, New York.65
backgrounds. They are multi-generational, multiracial, and are diverse family units. The proposed cohousing development for Philadelphia would represent the first in the city. The target neighborhood will be a transitional area between low-income and highincome neighborhoods. The ideal location would have an ethnically diverse population; ample mass transit options; open space and expansion potential; a rich architectural and cultural history; and access to grocery stores, banks, schools, and other community amenities essential to a thriving neighborhood. The cohousing development will serve as a catalyst for revitalization in the chosen neighborhood and will include many shared community spaces for gardening, gathering, and relaxation. Mixed-use development reduces the need for car transit and creates an economically productive community that reduces low-income community displacement. The proposed cohousing project will be planned within a larger mixed-use development to attain these goals. Building performance will be a key goal in ensuring that the development represents the ideals of ecological architecture. The building will take advantage of the highest passive performance possible and implement technological systems when necessary. Special consideration will be
SWANS MARKET COHOUSING. Outdoor circulation area at Swans Market Cohousing in Oakland, California.66
taken in the six LEED categories sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, indoor environmental quality, materials and resources, and innovation and design to reach the highest hypothetical LEED rating possible.
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WHAT IS COHOUSING?
the planning process in 38 states including Washington, D.C. There are many programming and site
Sense of entry or arrival Kitchen Dining Lounge or Library Childrens play area Workshop Guest Rooms Storage Specialty Rooms Private Units Number of units Unit Mix (How many 2 bedrooms, 3 bedrooms Unit sizes (for each type of unit) Flexibility, expandability, adaptability Common elements for cost savings1
considerations when communities decide to start looking for a site and start the design process: Site Considerations: Location Schools Shopping Work Transportation Size Requirements Uses Intended Gathering
THREE GROVES ECOVILLAGE. Site plan for Three Groves Ecovillage planned for West Grove, Pennsylvania.68
Retreating Parking Gardening Storage

1
Cohousing find its roots on the commune movements that date back to the 1800s but are most commonly associated with the 1960s. Both share characteristics of creating an intentional community, but cohousing tends to be a more updated and pragmatic lifestyle. Residents of cohousing dont share incomes or live in remote places. Instead, developments like this are usu-
ally located in suburban or urban areas in which people live in smaller private quarters in order to share larger shared community spaces and open space. They are affordable alternatives to the three-car garage mcmansion lifestyle. Interested organizers around the United States are currently planning about 112 cohousing developments today. Cohousing developments are completed or in
Sense of entry or arrival Common House Elements:
Scotthanson, C. & Scotthanson, K. (2005). The CoHousing Handbook: Building a Place for Community. Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers.
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JAMAICA PLAIN COHOUSING

Program Case Study
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General Characteristics:
Location: Boston, MA Size: 30 units on .9 Acres Number of buildings: One Land ownership: community-owned Completion Year: 2005 Transportation: Subway access within one block, shared cars, community bicycles, subsidized mass transit Architect: Kraus-Fitch and Domenech, Hicks Krockmalnic Population: 42 people JAMAICA PLAIN COHOUSING. Jamaica Plain in Cohousing the 69 Decision-making: By consensus, board Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. of directors, no clear leader check-in point Financial makeup: Individual finances, monthly Mail/Coat Room (100-150 sq. ft.): condo fees, no joining fees Common mail room encourages Community contributions: 4 hours of service to daily interaction. cohousing community per month1 Great Room (1,000 sq. ft.): Main
JAMAICA PLAIN COHOUSING SKETCH. Schematic design sketch by Kraus Fitch Architects.70
Very Important Items (Priority 2): Large multi-purpose room, game room with craft closet (300-400 sq. ft.) Pantry (50 sq. ft.): for bulk food storage Meditation room (150-200 sq. ft.) Important Items (Priority 2.5): Exercise/movement (200-500 sq. ft.) Sauna/spa Nice to Have (Priority 3) Exercise Machines (150-200 sq. ft.) Roof Gardens
Common House Program:

Prepared by Kraus-Fitch Architects, 2001 Common House to be connected to individual spaces to support neighborhood connection. Circulation to individual quarters to pass through common house as much as possible to support interaction. Essential Items (Priority 1): Porches, patios, decks: Located in main circulation area. Entry (150 sq. ft.): Serves as a daily
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gathering place for meals and celebrations. Should be able to fit total community population, typically 2/3 of the population as well as children. Acoustics are a concern. The gem of the building. Kitchen (300 sq. ft. min.): Commercial grade with residential feel. Kids Room (600 sq. ft.): Accommodate many ages, acoustical concerns, visual communication to adjoining
spaces. Living/Sitting (200 sq. ft.): Near many spaces to promote spontaneous lounging. 2 Guest Rooms (100-150 sq. ft. per room): Guest rooms allow for smaller living quarters yet allow for visitors. Laundry (150 sq. ft. min.): Serves as regular community water cooler. Support Functions Circulation: 20% of building Very, Very Important Items (Priority 1.5): Small multi-purpose room, Guest # 3, Library, Meeting (150-200 sq. ft.): Space functions as a third guest room, meetings space, and library.
Separate Common (Non-Common House) Functions:

Home offices (500-800 sq. ft. or 100-150 sq. ft. per office) Priority 1 Community Office (100 sq. ft.) Priority 1 Extra Meeting Rooms (size of conference table) Not priority: Bike Storage (400 sq. ft.) Priority 1 Workshop (400 sq. ft.) Priority 2
1 Jamaica Plain Cohousing. (2009). Cohousing Directory. Cohousing.org. (1/26/2010). http://www. cohousing.org/directory/view/6191. 2 The following program is paraphrased from Scotthanson, C. & Scotthanson, K. (2005). The CoHousing Handbook: Building a Place for Community. Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers.
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Population Size: About 400 Total Square Footage: 166,085-202,085 sq. ft. Number of Buildings: 1
SPACE SQUARE FOOTAGES:

RESIDENTIAL ZONES:
Units: 200, Average of 2.5 people per unit Unit Mix: 50 studios; 100 one-bedroom units; 50 two-bedroom units Qualities: Units to be customized by residents. Maximize adaptability with easily installed prefabricated components to reconfigure units for accommodation of greater or fewer residents. Lots of natural light. Studio: 50 x 300-400 sq. ft. 15,000-20,000 sq. ft. One bedroom: 100 x 600-700 sq. ft. 60,000-70,000 sq. ft. Two bedroom: 50 x 800-900 sq. ft. 40,000-45,000 sq. ft. Total unit square footage: Circulation 30%: 115,000-135,000 sq. ft. 24,500-40,500 sq. ft. 139,500-175,500 sq. ft.
Laundry: Support Functions: 2 Small Multi-Purpose Rooms: Large Multi-Purpose Rooms: Pantry: Meditation Room: Exercise/Movement: Sauna/Spa: Exercise Machines:
400 sq. ft. 1,000 sq. ft. 400 sq. ft. 1,000 sq. ft. 150 sq. ft. 400 sq. ft. 1,500 sq. ft. 400 sq. ft. 800 sq. ft. 16,350 sq. ft. 4,905 sq. ft. 21,255 sq. ft.
Common House Square Footage: Circulation 30%:
Total Common House Square Footage:
SEPARATE COMMON (NON-COMMON HOUSE) FUNCTIONS:

Qualities: These areas are for community use, but should not necessarily have direct connection to community circulation areas. Home Offices: 100-150 sq. ft. per office 2,000 sq. ft. Community Office: 300 sq. ft. Extra Meeting rooms: 400 sq. ft. Bike Storage and Bike Shop: 1,000 sq. ft. Workshop: 400 sq. ft. Separate Common Functions Square Footage: Circulation 30%: Total Separate Common Functions Square Footage: 4,100 sq. ft. 1,230 sq. ft. 5,330 sq. ft.
Total Residential square footage:
COMMON HOUSE ZONES:

Qualities: Common House to be connected to individual spaces to support neighborhood connection. Circulation to individual quarters to pass through common house as much as possible to support interaction. Should be a comfortable space for 1 or 400 people. Entry: 400 sq. ft Mail/Coat Room: 400 sq. ft. Great Room: 4,000 sq. ft. Kitchen: 900 sq. ft. Kids Room: 2,000 sq. ft. Living/Sitting: 800 sq. ft. 4 Guest Rooms: 400 sq. ft.
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OPEN SPACE:
Qualities: These areas have direct and constant connection to community spaces to increase surface permeability, self-subsistence with food production, indoor pastoral environments, and outdoor recreation space in the middle of city. Gardens for pastoral enjoyment: 50% Gardens for food production: 30% Porches, Patios, Decks: 20%
MIXED-USE: Qualities: These spaces will be tenant-based and separate from community spaces in order to provide nearby shopping and employment opportunities for the cohousing community as well as the greater city community.
Commercial Retail: Commercial Office:
50% 50%
SPACE DESCRIPTIONS AND ADJACENCIES:

COMMON HOUSE: Entry (400 sq. ft.): Serves as a daily check-in point. o Welcoming area; announcement space; floor mats; view of great room; standing room area; leading to mail/coat room. o Adjacencies: porches, mail room, great room. Mail/Coat Room (400 sq. ft.): Common mail room encourages daily interaction. o Located on main level; accommodate all types of mail; hooks and cubbies for belongings; paper recycling; bulletin board; seating or close to seating; adjacent to entry. o Adjacencies: Entry. Great Room (4,000 sq. ft.): Main gathering place for meals and celebrations. Should be able to fit total community population, typically 2/3 of the population as well as children. Acoustics are a concern. The gem of the building.
o Located on main level; accommodate 2/3 of community; accommodate dancing, piano, lounging; moveable furniture; acoustically controlled; flexible lighting; comfortable for people from one to full population; extensive natural light; high ceilings, ceiling variability; skylights; plants; seating area near entry that functions like a living room; fire element; private dining area; storage; wet bar, condiment area, bussing area; visual connection to kids area; direct access to kitchen with flexibility of visual connection. o Adjacencies: Entry, kitchen, kids room, storage, restrooms. Kitchen (900 sq. ft. min.): Commercial grade with residential feel. o located on main level; efficient layout; accommodate 3-4 cooks; consider accessible counter heights; easy cleaning; residential feel; commercial appliances (2 ovens, 2 fridges); central work island; 50 sq. ft. pantry; recycling area; pot and pan storage; meets local board of health requirements; cart storage from dining room; access to garden. o Adjacencies: Great room, kids room, outdoor garden and compost. Kids Room (2,000 sq. ft.): Accommodate many ages, acoustical concerns, visual communication to adjoining spaces. o Located on main level; separate toddler and big kids area with open connection; big toys for winter play; pillow area for little kids; out of reach storage; bathroom with changing table and portable kids potty; possible daycare; visually o Adjacencies: Great room, kitchen, kids room, outdoor play area, restroom. Acoustical separation from all adjoining rooms. Living/Sitting (800 sq. ft.): Near many spaces to promote spontaneous lounging. o Located on main level; accommodate small meetings; fireplace; o Adjacencies: entry, mail room, kids room, great room, outdoor gathering area. 4 Guest Rooms (100-150 sq. ft. per room): Guest rooms allow for smaller living quarters yet allow for visitors. o One larger bedroom to accommodate a family of 3 or 4. Include individual accessible bathroom. o Adjacencies: Separate from common areas. On second floor if possible. DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE
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Laundry (400 sq. ft. min.): Serves as regular community water cooler. o Located on any level; Commercial appliances (3 washers, 3 dryers per housing unit); folding area; storage out of reach of children; ventilation; clothes lines (ext. and int.); o Adjacencies: mail room, outdoor clothes line, circulation to individual quarters. Support Functions: o Restrooms: 2 for great room, 2 for kids room, 2 for guest rooms. o Janitors closet o Storage closet (60 sq. ft.) o Chair storage (200 sq. ft.) o Mechanical room share with individual quarters o Sprinkler room o Electrical closet o Trash compaction room o Central vacuum o Library shelving wherever appropriate 2 Small multi-purpose rooms, Extra Guests, Library, Meeting (150-200 sq. ft.): Space functions as a third guest room, meetings space, and library. o Fold-out couch, library shelving, TV, reserved quiet room. Large multi-purpose room, game room with craft closet (1,000 sq. ft.): o Pool, fussball, ping pong and other games; open area for games; casual lounging; craft closet; TV. Pantry (150 sq. ft.): for bulk food storage o No need for windows, o Adjacencies: stair or elevator Meditation room (400 sq. ft.): o Acoustically quiet, windows, skylights o Adjacencies: can be isolated. Exercise/movement (1,500 sq. ft.): o Acoustically separated, resilient flooring, well ventilated, can be on second
level. o Adjacencies: Meditation room, Sauna/spa o Lockable for privacy; dressing room; plumbing; windows. Exercise Machines (800 sq. ft.): o Lockable for child safety; ventilated; acoustically separated; windows. o Adjacencies: exercise, spa, meditation. SEPARATE COMMON (NON-COMMON HOUSE) FUNCTIONS: Home offices (2,000 sq. ft. or 100-150 sq. ft. per office) Priority 1: o Common copier; open or closed plan o Adjacencies: Near Street Access, not connected to cohousing spaces. Community Office (300 sq. ft.) Priority 1: o Adjacencies: Within home office space. Extra Meeting Rooms (size of conference table) Not priority: o Acoustical separation; white board; o Adjacencies: Home and community office with separate entrance. Bike Storage and bike shop (1,000 sq. ft.) Priority 1: Workshop (400 sq. ft.) Priority 2: o Woodworking, repair, etc. o Adjacencies: Not near other common areas. OPEN SPACE: Gardens for pastoral enjoyment (50%): Gardens for food production (30%): Porches, patios, decks (20%): Located in main circulation area. o Outdoor and indoor gathering and relaxing; outdoor dining; sun in spring and fall, summer shade; connects interior to exterior; view of exterior play area; close to water fountain; part of or connected to entry; easy to maintain. o Main entry porch: covered or sheltered area; visually appealing; connected to outdoor gathering space and patio o Adjacencies: Entry, main circulation to individual quarters. DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE
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Code Analysis
Client Profile and Performance Goals
CODE ANALYSIS: Consider RC4 (Residential/Commercial 4) and R16 (Residential 16) Codes.1 RC 4 Definitions: Single, Two, Multi-Family, Residential & Non-Residential related, Hotel, Commercial uses permitted. Detached, Semi-detached, Attached, Multiple Structures permitted. Minimum Lot Width: None required. Minimum Lot Area: None required. Gross Floor Area (Max. Permitted): 500% of lot area. Minimum Open Area: 10% for bldgs 5-stories or less; for higher structures, open area determined by other area stipulations. Parking: Varying index dependent upon use. R 16 Definitions: Residential and Non-Residential uses permitted. Detached/Semi-detached/Attached/Multiple Structures permitted. Minimum Lot Width: None required. Minimum Lot Area: None required. Gross Floor Area (Max. Permitted): 500 % of lot. Minimum Open Area: 0% (buildings 6 stories or more); 20% (5 stories or less). Set-Back Line/Front Yard Minimum Depth: the height of any point on a wall with legally required windows above the av. ground level at the base of the structure. Rear Yard Minimum Depth: Same as Front Yard. Side Yard Minimum Width: Same as Front Yard. Maximum Building Height: No limit. Parking: One (1) per unit. Design to utilize existing six to eight stairs per floor and four to six restrooms per floor in compliance with code classifications.
Zoning Classifications. (2010). Philadelphia Zoning Code Commission. (1/31/2010). http:// www.zoningmatters.org/facts/districts.
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CLIENT PROFILE: Membership: 400 community members, constitutes a social community. Ownership: Community members to own units, with subsidized rates for lowincome residents. Decision-Making: Consensus decision-making with small group of representatives. Financial Makeup: Mixed-income. To include some subsidized housing to attain a fully mixed-income community. Community Contributions: Cohousing members to do 4 hours of service to the community per month. Age Group: Multi-generational from college students to families with children to the elderly. Diversity: Encouragement of residents of all ethnic backgrounds. Car Ownership: Residents must be willing to use forgo parking spots for a Car Share program.
PERFORMANCE GOALS: SITE: Make environmentally positive changes to site to produce positive impact on the environment. WATER: Zero stormwater runoff; rely primarily on onsite collection; treat all water for reuse. ENERGY: Employ passive design and green technologies to produce more energy than needed. INDOOR AIR QUALITY: Create a clean and bright pastoral environment. MATERIALS: Respect the impact of every material constructed or dismantled. WASTE: Zero waste. Compost, recycle, reuse. FOOD: Create self-subsistence and abundant fresh produce. QUALITY OF LIFE: Embrace systemic diversity.
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Site
Former Philadelphia Post Office 2970 Market Street Philadelphia, PA 19104
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Cultural and University Institutions Park Lands

72 PRIORITIES Access to multiple mass transit lines Access to parks Access to basic community amenities such as banks, grocery stores, and schools Location encourages transportation other than car ownership Site has a cultural and/or architectural history the community takes pride in Site is not so historically embedded that it limits design creativity Large abandoned building with potential for expansion and open space creation Potential for greening roof areas Site located in a transition point to encourage diversity of ethnicity and income Opportunity for site to become revitalizing force in the neighborhood Building has large amount of natural light or opportunities for skylights Building is large enough to house cohousing community as well as additional mixed-use areas
Banks Religious Institutions Transit Hubs Restaurants, Cafes, Bars Grocery Stores and Markets
Philadelphia Eco City
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Site History
Site History
Former Philadelphia Post Office 2970 Market Street Philadelphia, PA 19104

The Philadelphia U.S. Post Office located at 2970 Market Street across from 30th Street Station was built in 1931 by Rankin & Kellogg Architects in association with Tilden, Register & Pepper Architects as a government post office and courthouse. 1 The styling of the buildings represents the Art Deco style, with the main material being stone. There is no national historic registry for the building. Rankin and Kellogg graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and practiced Beaux-Arts styling of public buildings. Influenced by architectural firm McKim, Mead, and White, Ranking and Kellogg participated in many competitions for public buildings throughout the early 20th century.2 They built the Philadelphia Inquirer Elverson Building on North Broad Street. The post office functions closed in September of 2008 and opened in a new location one block away at 30th and Chestnuts Streets. Brandywine Realty Trust and the University of Pennsylvania bought the site as part of a large Cira Centre South project that will transform the 30th Street corridor into a gateway to the University City universities. The post office building is currently under construction to house 5,000 IRS employees now working on Roosevelt Boulevard. Architectural firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson redesigned the building to be complete by 2010 along with a 2,400-spot parking garage to cost $360 million as the first phase of the Cira Centre South project. An office and residential tower is slated for completion by 2012 at the cost of additional $400 million. The residential portion of the tower will include
PHILADELPHIA POST OFFICE. A photo from opposite bridge take in 1934.74
CIRA CENTRE SOUTH. Rendering of planned development to be completed in 2012.77
PHILADELPHIA POST OFFICE INTERIOR. A photo taken in 1935 on the 5th floor.75
225 rental units. The projects make up a 14-acre parcel which comprises a Keystone Opportunity Improvement Zone, which allows city and state tax abatement for 15 years.3 Implications for Thesis Project: The thesis project will propose a cohousing and mixed-use development as opposed to the IRS office complex planned for Cira Centre South. The development will provide an opportunity for mixed-income living before the area becomes too expensive due to the multi-million-dollar developments as part the riverfront master plan. The cohousing aspect would also provide increased residential presence so the area avoids becoming merely a financial, educational, and transportation district. With 135,000 people within walking distance to the area every day,4 the development of the post
PHILADELPHIA POST OFFICE INTERIOR. Main concourse interior from 1948.76
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Site Documentation
CIRA CENTRE SOUTH PLAN. Development master plan.78
ZONING PLAN AND ROOF PLAN. All Architectural Drawings by Bohlin Cywinki Jackson Architects.79
office would become a visible sustainable example that solves problems of gentrification and displacement of low-income communities that is occurring due to the rapid development of university communities in West Philadelphia.
1 United States Post Office. (2010). Philadelphia Architects and Buildings. (1/31/2010). http:// www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/pj_display.cfm/20984. 2 Tatman, S. (2010). Rankin & Kellogg. American Architects and Buildings database. (1/31/2010). http://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/26268. 3 Parmley, S. (Aug. 31, 2007). New Towers to Arise on 30th Street. Philadelphia Inquirer. Released as University of Pennsylvania Press Release. (1/31/2010). http://www.pennconnects. upenn.edu/news_articles_pdfs/New_Towers_To_Rise_On_30th_St.pdf. 4 Parmley, S.
GROSS AREA FLOOR SQUARE FOOTAGE FIRST FLOOR 171,975 SQ. FT. SECOND FLOOR 171,693 SQ. FT. THIRD FLOOR/ 171,696 SQ. FT. THIRD FLOOR B THIRD FLOOR A 17,927 SQ. FT. FOURTH FLOOR 171,701 SQ. FT. FIFTH FLOOR 169,509 SQ. FT. PENTHOUSE 50,790 SQ. FT. PENTHOUSE ROOF 141,000 SQ. FT.
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Site Documentation
FLOOR PLANS. (Above left) First floor plan, second floor similar. (Above right) Fourth floor plan, third floor similar. (Below left) Fifth floor plan and (Below right) penthouse floor plan. All Architectural Drawings by Bohlin Cywinki Jackson Architects.79
EXTERIOR ELEVATIONS. (Top) East elevation, (second to top) west elevation, (third to top) north elevation, (bottom), south elevation. All Architectural Drawings by Bohlin Cywinki Jackson Architects.79
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Site Documentation
KEY PLAN. North elevation. Potential configuration of spaces in section views.
POTENTIAL COHOUSING AREA
POTENTIAL VOID FOR CIRCULATION AND LIGHT
POTENTIAL MIXED-USE AREA
KEY PLAN. First and second floor plans. Potential configuration of spaces to be repeated on each floor. See key on page 119 for explanation.
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
ABSTRACT Architects and designers have adopted the philosophy and methods of sustainable construction as a basis for good design. However, an aesthetic that expresses the movements motivations is still in its infancy. This thesis proposes to discover an ecological architecture by finding a link between design process and established environmental philosophy. The results express nature through structure, look to the earth as a design generator, and understand that the built environment is merely another extension of the natural environment. RESEARCH SUMMARY The environmental philosophies and living systems theories of the last century have tremendous potential to focus the sustainable building movement of the 21st century. From Biophilia, humans learn an appreciation for life; from Pleistocene Paradigm, culture; from Deep Ecology, simplicity; from Gaia Hypothesis, the planet; and from Ecosophy, diversity. The systems theories teach and understanding of organization of all life through pattern. The new architecture that stems from the cultural environmental reawakening will be boldly different from its collaborators to its process, from its form to its performance, from its construction to its disassembly. The process of this ecological architecture will push all those involved to question every method they considered fixed and every course they deemed constant. This new architecture will spawn from a process that mimics nature to create structures that mimic nature. The results with be as diverse as the methods. Linear notions of communication, form, technology, society, and economics will be discarded in favor of nonlinear understandings of the systems that make up the planet. A great turning point in human history will form from an integrated understanding of knowledge, aesthetics, and nature. This change will not be about form or about function. This change will be a reflection of organization, the process itself. The product of that process, diversity, will be the catalyst that reminds humanity of its connection to the whole. PROJECT PROPOSAL EDEN: Ecological Development. Emergent Neighborhood. A Transformative Concept for Mixed-Use Urban CoHousing CLIENT PROFILE 400 Members: Ethnically diverse, mixed-income, multi-generational. Members to participate in group
meals, community service, and car share. Members to own the cohousing development. PROGRAM Residential: 50 Studios: 300-400 sq. ft. 100 One-Bedrooms: 600-700 sq. ft. 50 Two-Bedrooms: 800-900 sq. ft. Total Residential Square Footage: 140,000-175,000 sq. ft. Community (Common House): Entry, Mail Room, Great Room, Kitchen, Kids Play Room, Lounge, Four Guest Rooms, Laundry, Support Functions, Multipurpose Rooms, Exercise Rooms: Total Community Square Footage: 22,000 sq. ft. Separate Shared Spaces: Home Offices, Community Office, Meeting Rooms, Bike Storage and Shop: Total Separate Shared Spaces: 5,000 sq. ft. Total Square Footage: 165,000-200,000 sq. ft. Open Space (Interior and Exterior): Pastoral Gardens: 50%; Food Production Gardens: 30%; Patios, Porches, Decks: 20% Mixed-Use: Commercial Retail: 50%; Commercial Office: 50% All total square footages include 30% circulation. PERFORMANCE Strive for building performance beyond conventional requirements to create a holistic environment. Apply principles to site, water, energy, waste, indoor environmental quality, materials, food, and quality of life. SITE ANALYSIS Site: Former Philadelphia Post Office. 2970 Market Street. Philadelphia, PA 19104 Priorities: Transformational potential; historical significance; expansion and open space; transitional location; revitalization potential; light opportunities; large roof; and access to banks, schools, grocery stores, parks and transit. DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
The site meets all priorities and allows for a cohousing project within a larger mixed-use development. DESIGN ISSUES AND ATTITUDES Biomimicry: Design decisions will be informed by the principles of ecological design. Since many of the concepts require advanced technologies and outside experts, the decisions will be based primarily on research. The design will mimic nature in every part of the design process to create a holistic interior environment. Historical and Contemporary Architecture: The design will express a contemporary architecture yet respect the historical significance of the building. Instead of treating the building as historical by restoring a century-old design, the new construction will heighten the contrast of styles. Most importantly, the design will create a connection between the building and nature that was never originally considered by the architects. Pastoral and Open Space: Roof space and interior gardens will bring pastoral space to an urban environment. Interior voids of space throughout many stories will create vistas between the mixed-use and CoHousing areas as well as allow light to penetrate to the lower floors of the building. Circulation/Connection: CoHousing requires a careful design of circulation to encourage spontaneous gathering and conversation as well as a connection to the outdoors. This will be applied to the entire buildings circulation and outdoor spaces to create a more connected community. However, the safety and privacy of the residences will be important. In turn, the design will be careful to create connections between cohousing and mixed-use areas that are not necessarily directly physical. PRESENTATION REQUIREMENTS Master Planning (Master Plans): Sustainable Practices Mixed-Use Spaces Entries Circulation and Voids Planning (Generic Furniture Plans, Generic Sections): CoHousing Private Spaces Circulation In-Depth Design (Furniture Plans, Sections, Perspectives, Materials): CoHousing Shared Spaces
Outdoor Spaces Presentation Drawings and Analyses: Master plans Furniture plans of in-depth design spaces 2 building sections Many perspectives of outdoor spaces, exterior, in-depth design spaces, other design features, residential space. Sustainable analysis and LEED certification WORK PLAN Week Of: February 8 February 15 February 22 March 1 March 8 March 15 March 22 March 29 April 5 April 12 April 19 April 26 May 3 May 10 May 20 May 21 May 22
Activity: Finish binder and presentations, draw base plans in CAD Bubble diagrams, parti diagrams, start planning Make clear master plan decisions and start cohousing plans Design Development Walk-Through Develop cohousing plans, start elevations, furniture and materials Finish plans, develop elevations, furniture and materials Get plans and sections to finished level, make final furniture and material selections Final Design Walk-Through Revisions and 3D modeling 3D modeling and rendering Presentation mock-up Presentation Walk-Through LEED analysis and certification Compose final presentation and print Presentation Submission Prepare oral presentation Final Juried Thesis Presentation
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ACKNOWLEDGEMEN T S

4 7 11 19 39 57 92 96 102 109 110 120 124 129

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

t h e c u lt u r e o f c h a n g e : a n i n v e s t i g at i o n o f e c o l o g y , philosophy, and society

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK Photographed by Ansel Adams, 1944. 8

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

THE BIOPHILIA HYPOTHESIS

THE LACKAWANNA VALLEY by George Inness. Oil on canvas. 1855.11

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

Ishmael, The Story of B:

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

THE GAIA HYPOTHE S I S

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

by Means of Natural Selection

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

FISH by Ernst Haeckel. Plate 42.13

BATS by Ernst Haeckel. Plate 67.14

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

THE PAT TERN THAT C O N N E C T S

MUD CRAB. Scylla serrata, native to Australia.15

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

SAND DUNES Mui Ne, Vietnam.17

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

T H E B U I LT E N V I R O N M E N T A S E X T ENSION OF ORGANISM, ECOSYSTEM, EARTH

DESIGN EVOLUTION: IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE