Building and Living With The Natural World, part 3

Our buildings can be made of real materials - soil, wood, stone, water. Think of building materials as the food we eat:  The more our food lived a healthy life - with no pesticides, hormones, etc.; wasn't processed with chemicals or in-organic additives, etc.; was grown under the sky and fed intrinsically nurturing food - the more it feeds and nurtures us.  Being surrounded by real materials, simply rendered, surrounds us with a vibration or resonance our bodies and minds have always known.

Building forms can be sensual and alive, as our body, not rigid and hard and lifeless (think drywall).  Surfaces can have vitality, hold an intention atuned to the what we want to experience in each room: Be soft, or vibrant, or rough, or glassy/reflective, or…….. 

In the way that our breath is perhaps our most vital aspect of living, our buildings can breathe, drawing in the world around us.   A building can pull in the breezes, gather daylight into most parts of the building. One room can open into a garden while another expands out to a distant view.  At another level, just as we breathe in and out, one space can be expansive, while another space can be inward-focused.  Buildings can provide place for inner, reflective solitude, and outward-reaching gatherings.

Our buildings can be as a wave, which is the meeting of the deep energy of the ocean with the firm soil of the earth.  A wave puts us in one of the most ancient dynamics of the earth.  Our buildings can also put us in-between realms - a building can be just inside the edge of a forest overlooking a meadow, or a bay window in a bedroom looking onto a city street  - opening up reflective chords.

There are many ways our buildings can be interwoven into the natural world. The first and essential step is to awaken our awareness to this possibility.  A simple exploration of this opening:  Go into the woods, find a small, intimate space, and sit.  Be still.  Listen.  As when dropping a pebble into a still pond, soon your mind will be clear of ripples.  You'll be deep in the pond (the place), and the world around you will begin to embrace you.  Animals will resume their goingson, birds will land on branches nearby; you'll slowly become a part of the place.  Then you can begin to consider how the spaces you create and live in can be an extension of the centered place this consciousness was born in.

Generous cities: biomimicry and urban design

Biomimicry pioneer Janine Benyus argues that generosity and not competition is the building block of nature.: http://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/generous-cities-biomimicry-and-urban-design.html

That's an idea that could transform most of society!!

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article in Natural Awakenings - WE ARE NOT THIS BODY

http://content.yudu.com/Library/A25e26/NaturalAwakeningsDCM/resources/5.htm


That's the link........on page 27........this article i wrote explores our heart-space, where we connect with loved ones and places.


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Greener Than Green

Here is the center of our backyard -  our retention pond and bog, rendering storm water management as a beautiful garden!  Planted with natives and edibles, that feed (migrating) birds.

That's Beth's work, my wife and part of our collaborative -  we consider all our home projects similarly.

Her website -  www.GreenerThanGreen.net



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Helicon Works is on Houzz!

Now we're on Houzz (our link is below)!  Such a racket, all these things you need to do to ride high th SEO wave!  So be it..............to my architect friends, I'm soon to also be on Porch (which launches pronto)............any other places you recommend?


http://www.houzz.com/pro/billhutchins/helicon-works





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Living and Building With The Natural World, part 2

-- Here's part 2 of the writing i began posting last week ~

Unfortunately, some people who occupy buildings have no awareness of where the materials of the building comes from, or where the energy to nourish the building comes from, or how to block out the summer sun while letting in the winter sun, or how to cool the building by working with the wind.  

We live in buildings as if we are riding in a powerboat -  unconsciously flipping on switches to bring us light or energy, moving through space with no consideration of our relationship to the natural world.   We can live as if we are sailing:  A building can be a vessel that puts us in more intimate relationship with the world around us and inspires us to engage with natural energies, flows and rhythms.

What other ways can the built environment be a part of the natural world? Most simply, it can put us in relationship with the natural world - and provide place for intimate relationship with our loved ones and all parts of our self.  We can consider each natural element -  water, soil, fire, air/wind, sun, wood, stone - and ask how we can consciously interact with each as 

we design and live in our buildings.

-- The third and final part will further explore ways to build and live with the natural world!



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Building and Living as Part of the Natural World, Part 1

I'm going to begin posting articles i've written, each in a series of parts with images.  Here is the latest writing i've been working on, the first part......... comments welcome!

Building and Living as Part of the Natural World, Part 1

A few years ago, my wife, Beth, and I rafted through the Grand Canyon for eighteen days.  We were out of doors twenty four hours a day, in and out of the water, in the canyons formed over billions of years, sleeping under the stars.  When we left, we were bused to the back of a hotel and told to walk through a hallway up to the lobby to meet another bus.  As soon as i entered the hallway, I was completely disoriented, bouncing off walls, head dizzy.  

While in the canyons, my body and mind had drifted back into some ancient rhythm, or way of being in the world.  Every fiber within me was alive, alert, invigorated, breathing, and attuned to the sky and water and canyons. Returning to Cartesian space - abstract and geometric - jarred me out of my new primal existence.

This disconnect is unnecessary.  Architecture can be otherwise -  the spaces we live in can be attuned to the natural world.  As we painfully know, buildings in the US are, for the most part, life-less and soul-deadening. There is no resonance with anything from the world we come from.

More acutely, most buildings are full of toxic materials, often hermetically sealed with no relationship to the natural world.  Buildings are typically designed as discrete objects, with no regard for how the sun tracks across the sky, the wind courses through the windows, the flow of the land, the rhythms of the seasons.  

That's the intro.......i'll offer ways of creating vital space and form next week!



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