Manifesto - Nature Re-Claim

RECLAIMING LANDSCAPE

CITY LANDSCAPE

FLOATING LANDSCAPE

NATURAL LANDSCAPE

Nature RE-claims There are cases based on biomimicry with great solution on how buildings can be designed to consume less energy and therefor to be more sustainable. Although researching biology and nature to achieve a sustainable architectural outcome could eventually decrease the amount of negative affect of the built environment on nature, such as energy consumption, there are many more challenges that there have to be faced, which can’t be solved through biomimicry Nature has the tendency to survive any situation that stands on its way. By not respecting nature, humanity has led to a great amount of negative effects against him, like depletion of natural resources, climate change and natural disasters as a result. As a consequence, this may cause great loss in human lives, severe damage in countries that are not prepared enough for the scale of an unexpected catastrophe.

There is a great need for sustainable design and numerous scenarios of how this may be achieved. The reason why sustainability is so important has been analyzed and premier sustainability difficulties such as energy consumption for cooling and heating mechanisms and water resources are given a possible solution by studying how nature solves them, through learning from organisms that face these challenges in their natural environment. Nevertheless, having a solution to these challenges is not just enough. There are other problems that cannot be solved by adding natural mechanisms into architectural structures and need a move radical solution, such as population growth, depletion of resources and climate change.

Having evaluated scenarios that would limit climate change, reduce the amount of resource depletion, manage population growth, secure food supply and even adopt to a sustainable way of living as well as designing our buildings, the author believes that these measures are simply not enough to secure our survival on a planet in crisis.

Therefore this manifesto proposes the “Moving of Population”. This proposal is based on the agricultural procedure of fallow. This is a procedure where plowed/harvested areas are left unsown for some period of time, in order to restore its fertility, as part of a crop rotation. This proposal uses the same main idea as the procedure. Use a certain area for the urban space, to build and harvest and after a justifiable amount of time, move to a different location.

In this proposal, all built environment is set in a specific area and should be able to be disassembled in order to be moved to a different location. By relocating populations, the natural environment can be given the chance to reclaim the area that was built and bring it to its original state.

This could be a challenge as a matter of design. That is because these structures/buildings should not only be able to disassembled in order to be moved, but also should be able to face any kind of weather conditions and stand on any ground type.

The design of these structures could also give then the ability to transform into floating structures. In that case all soil would have the chance to regenerate without being affected by humans. In this case though there would be challenges such as agriculture and green environment in general, on this structure.

The area that was used before as the city’s landscape should now be left unused by people/habitants so that it can replenish and back to the closest condition and state it naturally was. This will be achieved by reclaiming anything that might had been left behind, filling any voids that the structures could have created and reinforce the environment with trees and plants through a natural procedure.

Concluding this proposal, there would be three different types of landscape.

The first one is the natural environment that has not yet been build or that had been built and has replenished.

The second type is the urban landscape, where the city’s infrastructures exist at that certain time period.

And finally the area where the city was recently moved from and is now left unused to fallow and be reclaimed by nature.

Finally this proposal could be a possible solution not only for the natural and the build environment but also for the sociopolitical and economic environment. That is due to the radical negotiation of complete land owning.

Land owning could exist in the scale of a neighborhood, a city or a district, but only for as long as the population lives on that site. By the time the population moves to a different location, the piece of land that was someone’s property is now owned only by nature.

This might seem a great solution to the challenges that are a consequence of the way a growing population has to come up against in order to survive and co-exist with nature, affecting nevertheless the structure of society as it is known.