NATURE'S HOME
In congruence with ecology as the guiding principal, this living home is designed to be nearly entirely edible so as to provide food to some organism at each stage of its life cycle. While inhabited, the home’s gardens and exterior walls continually produce nutrients for people and animals. As a direct contribution to the ecosystem it supports an economy comprised of truly breathing products not reconstituted or processed materials. Imagine a society based on slow farming trees for housing structure instead of the industrial manufacture of felled timber.
The concept resolutely accumulates the inscribed nuances that influenced the American Rustic period. Stemming from the insurgent writings of Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, and Alcott, America defined a sensibility. These authors represent an early mode of intention that was profoundly ecocentric. Their notion of dwelling was envisioned as retreats, poets’ bowers, hermitages, and summer cottages in a Sylvan style. In 1847 it culminated in the self-made assembly of a crooked cedar and honeysuckle summer home by Thoreau and Alcott for their friend Emerson in the midst of a cornfield. This peculiar house severed as our point of departure. Here traditional anthropocentric doctrines are overturned and human life is subsumed within the terrestrial environs. Home, in this sense, becomes indistinct and fits itself symbiotically into the surrounding ecosystem.
Furthermore, the approach draws from Jeffersonian ideologies in regards to equalizing edification and ecology. In the mind of Thomas Jefferson, the measure of any single human gesture was its contribution to the individual’s pursuit of happiness. He believed humans had natural rights. He devoted most his life to a revolution ensuring the rights of agrarianism and education. This was vital to a citizen’s personal livelihood in an agrarian economy within a nascent system of government. Universal access to education was critically linked to sustenance thus, the “gentleman farmer.” Jefferson essentially would advocate ecological principles applied to human habitat so that each person can live off the land without detriments. He could have never imagined a human race that ignored the right to freedom from toxicity, carcinogens, and ozone depleting substances. This not only attempts to provide a healthy biological exchange with the inhabitant, but also strives to contribute in a positive way to everyone’s quality of life.
Modern design has essentially left behind these principles of symbiosis. Although many individual and collective efforts towards “sustainable” or “green design” of buildings are apparent internationally, derivative design cannot address the underlying systemic nature of sustainability. Fixing pieces of a puzzle fails to address the interplaying complexities of the whole, and innovation is stifled by the need to work within given contexts. Lack of certainty in cause and effect is often cited as a reason for not developing ecologically sound practices, most notably with green house gas reductions and improvement of indoor air quality. However, the precautionary principle implies that protection should be embraced deliberately even in the face of uncertainty. Thus, instead of incorporating materials that may impart less impact to the environment and human health - impacts which may remain uncertain in extent - the design seeks to protect and embrace the ecosystem as a source of sustainability in the built environment. Just as the modern biotechnology revolution owes its existence to the intelligence in ecosystems at the molecular level, sustainable technologies for homes can also benefit from biological, natural systems; however, starting at the molecular scale is not necessary. Rather, as the intention of this design explores, lumber maintained in its macro, living form becomes a superstructure. |
