Placed Based Architecture vis-a-vis Other Architectural Approaches

Design as Art ... Frank Gehry - one of my personal favorite architects - is praised and vilified. He designs by playing with paper and coming up with various curvilinear shapes, then getting his closest associate to put those into actual scale drawings.

Design as Functionality ... Developers who create McMansions, pre-designed templated subdivisions, faceless apartment buildings, etc. Some of this is driven by safety considerations which drive codes in various counties and municipalities - standardization is the easiest way to make sure that each subsystem is going to not cause harm to any one - safe electric, leak free plumbing, etc. - and besides, we can do UL testing on safety with numbers and charts, but who can agree on aesthetics.

People Based Design ... Emphasis here is on ease and access. Closeness of shopping to housing, proximity of parks, easing parking and walkability, and design of open areas that are protective of privacy and/or conducive of conversation with neighbors.

Place Based Design ... Probably the most neglected approach - and probably the approach we'd most like to see - alongside an ecological preserve / no-build open space. Place based design starts with the site. Starts with the kinds of sensitivities the three of us share with regards to the five senses, a sense of being and connecting, awareness of the elements and the views, respect for ground and soil, consideration of the humblest of plants and other life forms, a sense of sky as well as land based surroundings, etc. 

Architecture for years has depended, for example, on cheap energy, and architects were for a long time not even taught that southwest orientation maximizes solar gain through glass. In fact, subdivisions are largely based on the old Roman war camps - easier to check on your soldiers when tents and so on are organized in rows. So houses face sidewalks and streets (car culture) and each other (ease of trash pickup and deliveries but don't say hi to your neighbors) - not oriented to ... sun / wind / land / earth / soil / water / and people in that context.

Architect Louis Kahn "Gave Us Our Democracy"

If you're an architect enthusiast who also enjoys biography, the DVD of the documentary "My Architect, a Son's Journey" is well worth time and attention. 


http://www.myarchitectfilm.com/


Louis Kahn's master work was the National Assembly Building in Dacca, Bangladesh. It is a great example of how a building can provide an environment which informs the senses and inspires the human spirit.

Though in many ways a very modern building, it summoned such an ancient and traditional sense of architecture that it was spared by bomber pilots during war.


http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/National_Assembly_in_Dacc.html 


The DVD is worth watching, alone, for the saga of the son discovering his father, and worth watching, alone, for the saga of the father, the architect, discovering his true calling within his already true calling as an architect. There is also great footage around the "gentleman's agreement" among architects in Philadelphia not to exceed a certain height of buildings, and how that agreement was broken. This segment includes the late great Philadelphia architect, Edmund Bacon.


http://designmuseum.org/design/louis-kahn

Ecosystem Ecology, General Systems Theory, Energy Accounting

"Howard Thomas Odum (1924, Chapel Hill, North Carolina–2002 Gainesville, Florida) (also known as Tom or just H.T.) was an American ecologist. He is known for his pioneering work on ecosystem ecology, and for his provocative proposals for additional laws of thermodynamics, informed by his work on general systems theory."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_T._Odum

"Energy accounting is a system used within industry, where measuring and analyzing the energy consumption of different activities is done to improve energy efficiency.


"Energy accounting is a system used in energy management systems where measuring and analyzing energy consumption is done to improve energy efficiency within an organization."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accounting


"Sponsored by Sun Microsystems, this free online community is designed to help participants calculate, track and reduce their organization's carbon footprint.  The GHG calculation tool currently focuses on emissions from electricity and natural gas use in buildings.  The new OpenEco.org Version 2 also provides a top-level organization dashboard where users can track a broad spectrum of emission sources to provide a comprehensive view of an organization's (or individual's) carbon footprint."


https://www.openeco.org/faq

Farms in Detroit and Green Architecture in the Heart of Dallas

"Organic Architect" Eric Corey Freed sums up much that is going on these days in trying to make our future more sustainable both in food and buildings, in the context of urbanization and city living.

http://vimeo.com/12073980

Build New or Restore Old, Which is More Eco-Friendly?

A topic worth reviewing again and again. Here's one thoughtful link on this subject:

“Embodied Energy”: “The greenest building is one that’s already built.”

http://retrorenovation.com/2008/05/22/embodied-energy-the-greenest-building-is-one-thats-already-built/

User Friendly Architectural Design

An architect once described in a lecture how he suddenly realized that working on a team renovating an apartment housing community, no one on the team invested much time in visiting and talking with the people who would utilize that housing the most. He recognized that he was in a mostly male team, and that most of the people using the environment would be moms and children during daytime.


This startled him into sensing that much design is created in an aloof environment away from the site environment. A friend, trained as an architect, later a project manager in online applications and web design, realized much the same; experts design often for the thrill of turning out the next great thing, and then move on, eager for the next and the next, to take on challenges, prove skills, build a portfolio - and get paid. The end-user of technology often gets shorted in the process.


Perhaps there is a trinity of design, use and nature in any building project. It seems we usually think primarily in terms of developers, architects, government agencies, contractors plus brokers and agents, and buyers, renters or lessees.


People in the business of building have been looked to as the developers of practical solutions. Now it is becoming clearly functional and effective to save energy, including embodied energy, in our buildings. 


http://www.architecture2030.org/
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Net_energy_analysis


Add beauty and use, and we may see that architecture emerges in fresh celebration of the natural.

Boxes, Rectangles, Curves, Natural Forms, Hyperboloids, Paraboloids, Nature as Architecture School

When I was a boy I met an architect who had designed a school in the shape of a circle. I was immediately intrigued. It wasn't a very beautiful building, but it was functional, and what I liked about it, was what it wasn't: rectangular or square. I'm not opposed to rectangular or square buildings, I've just wondered whether all buildings should be based on this template and form. Maybe I was also influenced by Malvina Reynolds' song, "Little Boxes". I didn't think every one should live in a box. Though some boxes are fabulous to live and work in.


http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/MALVINA/mr094.htm


Naturally I got interested in Antoni Gaudi and Frank Gehry. (In a BBC presentation on Gaudi, presenter Robert Hughes states about one of Gaudi's "signature works" that "it feels raw and primitive, and yet it's immensely sophisticated".) 








http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHXGKROfjuw


"Organic Architect" Eric Corey Freed 


http://organicarchitect.com/

... introduced me to architect Bart Prince:

http://bartprince.com/

I've long been intrigued by Arcology at Arcosanti. 


http://www.arcosanti.org/theory/arcology/intro.html


Northern California's eco-architecture innovator Sim van der Ryn's architectural autobiography Design for Life is not to be missed.



http://www.amazon.com/Design-Life-Sim-Van-Ryn/dp/B000H2MESM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1283102924&sr=8-1




























Earthships creator Mike Reynolds has explained that even with the wild, extraterrestrial looking shapes of his early work, over time the essence becomes undeniable: the building has to function, has to work, is inevitably made up of systems and subsystems that need structural elements to perform tasks that take care of us who live and work inside.


http://www.dreamgreenhomes.com/plans/earthship.htm


Meanwhile, vertical farms have come under scrutiny in terms of whether they pencil out or not on the bottom line. It's intriguing to think we can grow food way up high in dense cities if we plan and build for doing so, but can we.


http://www.verticalfarm.com/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/08/george-monbiot-girds-for-battle-vertical-farms.php
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/05/vertical-farms-food-problems.php

Richard Cook, of Cook+Fox, talks about being in buildings that are essentially seamless with their natural surroundings, so that we don't have to feel harsh separation from nature while also being sheltered from its harsher elements.


http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currents/2010/08/richard-cook.html
http://environment.bankofamerica.com/article.jsp?articleId=Tower
http://www.durst.org/properties/one_bryant_park.php


Early eco-architecture often focused on energy efficiency so much that it may have neglected to also include the beauty that is in the eye of the beholder, the aesthetic that gives us comfort and delight as much as natural heating and cooling.


Meanwhile, Frank Gehry's had headaches with buildings that have leaked, with controversies about whether this has been due to the design or the construction. And some have complained that Gehry's Guggenheim Museum is such a work of art that it distracts attention from the art that it houses; or is that a compliment.


http://www.guggenheim.org/bilbao


Form and function, natural shapes and effective systems, are intriguing and challenging when viewing Architecture As Ecology. 

Architecture As Ecology

Architecture As Ecology ... 


The inspiration for this blog is to explore the idea that a building can be an ecosystem that informs the senses and soul of a visitor or inhabitant to be in harmony with the human world of artifice and structure with the natural world of surrounding ecological complexity and biodiversity.


This is not a new idea, only that it goes deeper than a building that, as the saying goes, chases LEED points to look green and sell well in an evolving ecology-informed society. As Richard Cook (architect, LEED Platinum awarded B of A tower in NYC) said recently in an interview with Paul Goldberger (architecture critic, New Yorker magazine), any design that goes for the highest possible level of ecological design will get all the LEED points it needs to be recognized, even if the LEED rating system is not perfect, it's the best we currently have.


After years contemplating, as a lay person, the energy and aesthetics of architectural design which is ecologically aware, this blog is largely inspired by that interview, which can be found here:


http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currents/2010/08/richard-cook.html


This blog is also inspired by Earthships and other "autonomous buildings" which attempt to not only free visitors and inhabitants from depending on the grid (food, water, and waste management "grids" as well as energy) but also to free the "commons" from the impacts of multiple, individual, highly-consumptive structures. 


http://earthship.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_building


As a student of Permaculture and other approaches to organic food growing, but also some one who, like many, once hoped and planned to be an architect (I used to design curvilinear residences as a hobby), I have found myself intrigued by any system that puts food growing and individual homes and community altogether.


So much of this is experimental, and living this way, or working this way, involves adjustments. I hope to explore all of these permutations by inaugurating this blog.


David Glober
San Francisco, CA
August 26, 2010