Malcolm Wells, the original prophet of underground or earth-sheltered architecture, died on November 27, 2009.
I still remember reading about his architectural office in Cherry Hill in the early 1970s, a startlingly light filled room beneath a meadow that restored the suburban site to its natural condition.
That ethic became the basis of his gentle architecture, for [...]
Malcolm Wells, 1926-2009
Is Sustainable Design Avant-Garde?
Is sustainable design, or ecological architecture more specifically, a kind of avant-garde?
I don’t mean to ask if it is fashionable, which it certainly is, but whether sustainable design is understood only in terms of new advances or breakthroughs, according to the military metaphor that has come to define the arts more generally?
What I mean more [...]
points to an ecology of architecture
An summary of the items explored in this blog and the outline of a possible book. organized in descending scales.
Scale.
Everything is connected to everything else, but not equally (Simon).
Systems (or communities or populations…) divide into parts and sub-systems at many different scales, with their own distinct forms or behaviors. Herbert Simon argues that sub-systems the [...]
Biomimicry: LabStudio
LabStudio: http://www.sabin-jones.com
Briefly saw the review of LabStudio’s fall course on Non-Linear Biology, and couldn’t resist the urge to advertise their new website, and to comment briefly on the future of the biological analogy…
Cleanliness, or Compost Theology
Is cleanliness a design principle?
There seem to be different kinds of cleanliness. The cleanliness of a sand beach or a meadow in summer differs from the cleanliness of bathroom, but all indicate some kind of recent, or regular, activity… the scouring of waves, the steady growth of the grass, or the chemical scrubbing of contemporary [...]
Biotechniques
Since the 19th century, designers have increasingly turned to biological and ecological explanations to understand the complex and interconnected nature of their design projects, as well as the unintended effects of those projects on the natural environment. Pollution and resource depletion are readily understood as the cumulative, systematic effects of human activity, but so too [...]