Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature and Adaptive Oportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

To my parents, Eleanor, David, and Lester, and my children, Fearghal, Sinead, Caoimhe, and Sadhbh

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies April 2004

University of East London School of Computing and Technology Longbridge Road Dagenham RM8 2AS England Tel: 44 (0) 020 8223 3215

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

1

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Kindergarten Lessons Man, Nature, and Adaptive Opportunity Architecture as the Littoral Zone

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

2

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Abstract Using a diverse range of material, this paper examines the role that the ‘adaptive’ process within nature has played in our cognitive and emotional development, the intrinsic importance of this relationship, and how this relationship has abruptly changed during the last century.

Contemporary culture is now largely dominated by the urban context.

Estranged from our natural habitat we live in a culture of denial and fear.

From this situation of remove we are now in the process of adapting in relation to our own design, materials, and technologies, replacing natural diversity with the ‘virtual’ or ‘artificial.’ The true importance of nature as our support system has been lost to a design process shaped by a technical definition of energy, driven by security strategies.

Our pervasive ignorance regarding the intricate mystery and mastery found in natural systems, and our own role within them, is preventing us from truly understanding the potential of architecture, infrastructure, and planning, to meet our ‘survival needs’ in the fullest sense (integrating the social, psychological, physical, material, environmental, etc.).

This paper examines studies that attempt to diagnose this phenomenon, catalogue the cocktail of parameters necessary for human well-being, and pinpoint what role nature plays in these multifaceted needs. In relation to these findings our current ability to meet these needs through design, and to test the success of these designs, is questioned. The fact that ‘green’

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

3

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

architecture can house ‘grey’ occupants is used to extend this query, taking a critical look at the philosophical foundation of this movement.

In the final sections adaptive behaviour will be identified as the primordial and universal logic behind form, ‘expression mobility,’ or design for survival. A biological framework for design will be introduced along with examples of how nature uses conflict and limits to produce an intuitive code of ethics.

Projects experimenting with biologically based design principles will be used to illustrate how mechanical and systemic emulation of nature, or working in collaboration with natural systems, will generate elegant, highly energy efficient, multifunctional solutions, redefining human aesthetics.

The conclusion of the paper suggests that an answer to the question: ‘Can we return to nature?’ may lie in the re-establishment of an adaptive relationship within nature through our architecture, engineering, and planning. By envisioning architecture as the ‘littoral zone,’ a third and permeable system between systems, where the intellectual works in partnership with the biological, we could facilitate an essential dialogue, reinvent testing, and begin to develop progressive models for human (in tandem with environmental) restoration.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

4

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Preface This dissertation is submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements of the Degree of Master of Science in Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies.

Statement of Authorship I certify that this dissertation is my own unaided work and that all sources of references have been acknowledged.

_________________________________________

Acknowledgments I would like to extend deep appreciation and respect to my supervisor, mentor, and guide through the physical and philosophical, Nick Baker, and to the many other individuals who generously offered me the benefit of their experience, wisdom, and support through the process of compiling this paper:

Mike Thompson, Phil Horton, Peter Clegg, John and Nancy Todd, David Orr, Hein Van Bohemen, Richard Douthwaite, Folke Gunther, Morag Gamble, Evan Raymond, Max Lindegger, Janine Beynus, Brian Goodwin, Annika Alvenäng, Sally Starbuck, Paul Leech, John-Paul Frazer, Tom O'Reilly, Colin Bell, Tony McKinley, Michael Wall, Alan Mee, Bernard Seymour, Ragna Jorgenson, Holly Ashley, Rossi Stohr, Melissa Taylor, Peter Tansey, Dominic Stevens, Sandy Fitzgerald, Dorothy Smith, Austin O’Carroll, Bridget Farrell, Kitty Farrell, Alec Darragh, and Arctic Papers.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

5

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Table of Contents 1 ADAPTIVE OPPORTUNITY

11

HOMO FABER – HOMO FABRICATUS

12

THE URBAN CONTEXT

14

OUTSIDE LOOKING IN

16

SEPARATING TO CONNECT

20

2 WHO NEEDS WHO?

23

FROM SURVIVAL TO CONTROL

24

BIOPHILIA AND ECOPSYCHOLOGY

26

LANDSCAPE, PATTERN, MEMORY, SYMBOL

27

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONFLICT – BIOPHOBIA

28

3 THE DOOR

31

BEHAVIOURAL GEOGRAPHY

32

NATURE AS THERAPY

35

4 KINDERGARTEN LESSONS

40

PSYCHO-SOCIOLOGY AND ORGANISATIONAL ECOLOGY

41

THE GEOMETRY OF HOME

42

PREFERENCE AND COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE

44

CAN A BUILDING EDUCATE?

47

5 TOLERANCE

50

THE UNIVERSAL OPTIMUM

51

CAN ‘VIRTUAL’ NATURE SATISFY THE ADAPTIVE URGE?

58

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

6

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Table of Contents continued 6 ADAPTATION OR ADDICTION

63

GREEN BUILDINGS, GREY OCCUPANTS

64

TESTING A COCKTAIL OF PARAMETERS

68

THE BIOLOGICAL MODEL

72

AUTOPOESIS

73

7 TIME

76

IS CONVENIENCE THE ENEMY?

77

PERMA(NENT) CULTURE

81

8 NATURE REDEFINED

88

CONFLICT AND RESOLUTION

90

LIMITS

94

NECESSITY

98

9 THE LITTORAL ZONE

105

HUMAN RESTORATION

108

DISTRIBUTED COGNITION

110

LOST IN TRANSLATION?

115

LIVING AND LEARNING

116

BIBLIOGRAPHY

123

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

7

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

List of Illustrations, Figures, and Tables Figure 1

Product diversity replacing biodiversity. An example of the use of psychological associations in advertising: We want all that nature used to provide: freedom, adventure, mystery, and a “multiplicity of associated stimuli.” We are sold: a car.

(Toyota advertisement as in I.D. 2001)

Figure 2

15

Comparison of analgesic doses per patient for wall-view and tree-view patients; 46 patients between 2 and 5 days after surgery (R S Ulrich 1984 as in Baker 2002)

Figure 3

32

Examples of Frank Lloyd Wright Buildings: with 'prospect refuge' characteristics: sheltered hearth (refuge) with expansive views (prospect), (Hinterland, 1991)

Figure 4

34

Health and Well-being through horticulture: a simple model of the processes, activities and outcomes of social and therapeutic horticulture as described in the literature showing the interconnectedness of all elements.

(Evidence and messages from research, Sempik, Aldridge, Beckåer, 2003) 36

Figure 5

Vidarklinik, Jarna, Sweden, various views of the interiors and exteriors of the clinic buildings and waste processing 'park' (the author, 2003)

Figure 6

38

Table from: Towards a general theory of the human factors of Sustainability (Heerwagen 1999)

42

Figure 7

Romanesque Broccoli and example of fractal geometry or ‘rhyming.’

43

Figure 8

The main human oscillations with their nominal periods (Young, M. 1988)

Figure 9

56

An example of our desire to bring nature indoors. “The 20th century introduced an explosion of cultural changes and wallpaper styles…

Landscape imagery assumed a new meaning as more and more | people moved to cities and suburbs, and farmland and forests disappeared in the process”. At the Fender, a Colonial Scene by Wallace Nutting (1861 - 1941) - Landscape Wallpaper: Dufour's "Views of Italy" (Kosuda-Warner, 2001)

56

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

8

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

List of Illustrations, Figures, and Tables continued Figure 10

The effect of indoor plants on neuro-psychological Symptoms.

(Fjeld et al, 1998, as in Baker, 2002)

Figure 11

‘Virtual nature’: a trick with mirrors. Image from Eliasson’s WEATHER PROJECT at the Tate Modern, November 2003 (the author, 2003)

Figure 12

59

‘Synthetic ambience,’ images from Eliasson’s WEATHER PROJECT at the Tate Modern, November 2003 (the author, 2003)

Figure 13

57

60

Design strategies based on biological principles table constructed by the Author. (Gamble and Evans, 2003, Beynus, 2003, Van Bohemen, 2002, Todd and Josephson, 1996)

Figure 14

80

Ecological Succession table adapted from Braden R. Allenby and William E. Cooper, “Understanding Industrial Ecology from a Biological Systems Perspective”, Total Quality Environmental Management, Spring 1994, pp. 343-354 (as in Bueynus, 1997)

Figure 15

82

Examples of the modules in Odum’s energy circuit language and a diagram of "Man in a system of industialized, high-yield agriculture.

Energetic inputs include flows of fossil fuels which replace the work formerly done by man, his animals, and the network of animals and plants in which he was formerly nursed”. (Odum, 1971)

Figure 16

84

Ecological engineering, the merging of infrastructure ecology, and art: a variety of images from Ecological City: Impressions

Figure 17 Figure 18

(Van Bohemen, 2002)

93

Subterranean wildlife tunnel (Van Bohemen, 2004)

94

Wildlife bridge: widely shaped at entry and exit to encourage use, cultivated with native flora to recreate the natural habitat of native fauna (Van Bohemen, 2004)

Figure 19

94

‘Lotus Effect’ self-cleaning lotus leaf microstructure (Phillip Morris as in Etsuler, 2000),

96

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

9

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

List of Illustrations, Figures, and Tables continued Figure 20

REM recording of a holographically produced self-cleaning surface (Fraunhofer ISE as in Etsuler, 2000)

Figure 21

Early examples of John Todd’s ‘living machines’ where eco-systems where controlled in ‘test tube’ environments (Brown, 2002),

Figure 22

96

100

Todd's sewage processing plant in Burlington Vermont, USA. More like a tropical rainforest, the opulent plant-life is beginning to escape from its tanks (photos by the author)

Figure 23

101

A selection of images from John Todd’s floating restorer technologies with examples of the native plant-life used in the reclamation process. 102

Figure 24

Greg Lynn's Embrionic House (in various stages of development) gained international attention at the 2000 Venice Biennale. (as in Dery, 2002)

107

Figure 25

Details: Ozone Maker, Jeffery Miles, project 1993 (as in Wines, 2000)

116

Figure 26

Improvements to domesticated plants and animal s have often involved an increased dependency on fossil fuels (Gunther as in Douthwaite and Jopling, 2001)

Figure 27

117

A rough breakdown of the energy use of a family of four in sweden.

The single largest energy user is the food system which is where the greatest potential for increased energy efficiency lies

Figure 28

(Gunther as in Douthwaite and Jopling, 2001)

118

Ruralisation. (Gunther, 2002)

119

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

10

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Adaptive opportunity

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

11

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Homo faber – Homo fabricatus “Although we spend most of our time indoors, we are really outdoor animals. The forces which have selected the genes of contemporary man are found outdoors in the plains, forests and mountains, not in airconditioned bedrooms and at ergonomically designed workstations. Fifteen generations ago, a period of little consequence in evolutionary terms, most of our ancestors would spend the majority of their waking hours outdoors, and buildings would primarily provide only shelter and security during the hours of darkness. Even when inside, the relatively poor performance of the building meant that the indoor conditions closely tracked the outdoor environment.” (Baker, 2002)

In recent years the debate regarding the source of our behavioural patterns has shifted from “bipolar nature/nurture distinctions to discussion of eclectic perspectives that recognize the crucial roles of both learning and genetics… in human behaviour and response.” (Ulrich, in Kellert and Wilson1993). This has sparked new research into the significance of the ‘adaptive process’ within nature on two levels: the coded genetic or historical learning that governs our instincts, and our day-to-day response to environmental stimuli (cause and effect).

Studies examining this phenomenon have found that ‘adaptive opportunity’ (the ability to interact and effect change on one’s environment), stimulates a sense of well-being, nurtures creativity, and enhances discriminative learning. This is not surprising since adaptive behaviour in relation to one’s environment is considered by biologists and educational theorists to be the

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

12

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

primary ingredient in the cognitive process. Survival in relation to the natural environment is the original adaptive experience and the basis of learning for all living organisms.

The heuristic benefits of nature have always been respected by educational theorists, as represented in the philosophy of Foebel, Goethe, Steiner, Montessori, Piaget, et al. More recently a new educational paradigm, based on biological research, has emerged, employing a ‘systems’ based approach to learning. Here the ‘outdoors’ is used as a ‘classroom’ in an attempt to stimulate an intuitive awareness of ecology while fine-tuning a sense of responsibility to environment and community.

In contrast to the linear approach taken by conventional teaching over recent decades, this method uses techniques that are a throwback to life on the farm in an ‘experiential’ process where social, environmental, and economic theory are communicated in real life situations. Results demonstrate that letting children learn for themselves directly from nature can instill an innate moral code which develops spontaneously through connection to place and an immediate relationship with the principles and patterns found in natural ecosystems.

“Since the pioneering work of Jean Piaget in the 1920s and 30s, a broad consensus has emerged among scientists and educators about the unfolding of the cognitive functions in the growing child. Part of that consensus is the recognition that a rich, multi-sensory learning environment – the shapes and textures, the colours, smells, and sounds of the real world

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

13

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

– is essential for the full cognitive and emotional development of the individual student and the school community, and it is one of the best ways for children to become ecologically literate and thus able to contribute to building a sustainable future.” (Capra and Crabtree 2000,33)

This educational theory has developed in tandem with a widening field of research which originated in socio-biology, proposing that a relationship with life and lifelike processes might be a biologically based need and integral to human development. This area of study suggests that we are experiencing a deep estrangement from and longing for nature as our emotional and creative resource, that this need is genetically based, and may be a significant influence in the development of societal malaise.

The urban context Ironically, the man-made environment has increasingly been constructed to ‘protect’ us from nature, housing us in hermetically sealed spaces that provide a ‘flat’ experience. The urban community (approaching 60% of the global population) is effectively isolated from the constant flux and cyclical characteristics of diurnal and seasonal change, and the multi-sensorial variety of the natural world. We have also lost touch with how our food is produced, and where our waste goes. Natural processes are, increasingly, an abstraction, exclusively limited to the lives of animals, viewed by us as voyeurs through the medium of nature documentaries.

“The fact is that in almost every area of our public culture we are disengaging from nature, rendering it as a plaything, a scene from the picturesque, or a horror film – and always as an object.” (Mabey 2003)

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

14

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

It would appear that general detachment from our natural habitat may be contributing to a culture of disgust, fear, and, ultimately, denial. The knowledge that we develop in relationship to the built environment, homo faber / homo fabricatus, or “We shape our buildings and afterwards they shape us” (Winston Churchill), is well established. It is reasonably possible, therefore, that our estrangement from an integral role in natural processes is having an effect on the structure of our society. Has this, in turn, informed our architecture in a recursive manner, creating an exponential phenomenon, that is moving us ever further into a sterile situation of remove?

As biodiversity decreases product diversity is increasing in what could be viewed as a subconscious attempt to replace the abundant stimuli present in nature. We are often in a state of confusion as to what nature

Figure 1: Product diversity replacing biodiversity.

An example of the use of psychological associations in advertising: We want all that nature used to provide: freedom, adventure, mystery, and a “multiplicity of associated stimuli.” We are sold: a car. (Toyota advertisement as in I.D. 2001)

represents, not surprisingly, as our experience of it is often limited to the promotional backdrop in advertising for sports utility vehicles.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

15

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

The World Health Organization predicts depression will soon rank second in the global disease burden. In Britain alone, mental illness costs £32 billion a year. In response government strategies attempt to balance four dimensions: the social, environmental, economic, and institutional (Sprangenberg, 2001), in the push for ‘sustainable’ development.

The ability to cope within complex dynamic interactions, diagnose and respond to change, and understand our individual identity and purpose within a larger system, are all skills essential to negotiating the complexities of contemporary living.

It has been established historically and empirically, through education of children, that an adaptive relationship with nature is a fertile link to an intuitive understanding of ‘systems’ and the integral responsibility to one’s support system. More recently, the adaptive relationship has been considered a vital element in the promotion of health, linked to a sense of well-being, creativity, and discriminative learning in the work place. This being the case, it follows that we should be maximising this relationship in the design of our buildings and settlements.

Outside looking in Reinstating our position ‘within’ nature in the urban context places as many demands on planning as it does on architecture. In the 1991 edition of his classic book, ‘Design for Nature’ Ian McHarg1 acknowledges the segregation of man from environment present in the dualistic institutional dogma of 1969 (the date of original publication). Twenty years later he argues for a shift away

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

1 Ian McHarg was the founder of and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. In 1969 he published the book, “Design with Nature” which attempted to redefine the fields of landscape architecture, urban and regional planning, and ecological design by offering a blueprint for a new, healthier relationship between the built environment and nature.

16

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

from the established anthropocentric perspective of ecology (man ‘outside’ examining nature as an independent system) toward an integrated planning approach (man integrated back into the environment) where human energy and settlement patterns are considered an element of the topography.

The realignment he envisaged has been slow coming, but increasing activity in biological research has produced new conceptual models, ‘systems theory’, ‘complexity’, and ‘emergence’, which promise to accelerate the process of reconciliation. These theories, combined with advanced research tools (e.g. microscopes, computer simulation) have made it possible to test complex sets of interrelationship, the core constituents of natural networks, and demonstrate their potential value as principles for design. Where we previously viewed ‘natural’ resources as primarily material, this new knowledge is deepening our respect for nature as an ‘intellectual’ resource.

The evolution of our philosophical position is primarily held to task for the schism of body from mind in the western world. Descartes described the intention behind ‘new’ science as an attempt to push beyond simple knowledge and understanding and gain technological control, making us ‘‘masters and possessors of nature’’. It has been said that the difference between the philosophy of Descartes and Buddha (west versus east) can be traced back to the environments in which they meditated: Descartes suffered from cold and sat inside an oven, while Buddha sat under a tree, a metaphorical description of the influence of environment on behaviour.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

17

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Architectural theorists including Portoghesi hold this philosophical position responsible for the modernist movement and call for a return to:

“ An architecture which again becomes the art of Living the earth under the banner of a new alliance, renouncing its role as a tool and an emblem of that thirst for supremacy and violence enunciated by Bacon when he spoke of ‘stalked’ nature ‘put in chains’ and considered it the task of scientists to “extort its secrets through torture”. A female architecture is what is hoped for here, far from the arrogance of the widespread chaos of the twilight years of this millennium.”

(Portoghesi, P. 2000 acknowledgments)

Yet it may be argued that we required this shift in perspective, a separation, in order to experience what Einstein, Simmel, Bachelard, Bateson, et al, have referred to as the ‘trans-contextual’ experience. From this situation of remove we may become more sensitive to one of our most unique abilities.

“In the immediate as well as the symbolic sense, in the physical as well as the intellectual sense, we are at any moment those who separate the connected or connect the separate.” (Simmel as in Leach, 1997).

If acknowledged and understood our detached state could be embraced and used to perpetuate a heightened awareness of our interdependent relationship with nature.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

18

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

" ...By changing space, by leaving the space of one's usual sensibilities, one enters into communication with a space that is psychically innovating.

For we do not change place, we change our nature." (Bachelard 1967, as in Davies 1997)

The intention of this paper is to explore this conceptual ground. Using a cross- disciplinary body of research and biological models as a framework it will examine the necessary role of architecture as the primary interface of communication between man and nature. This is an area of crosscultural diversity where an adaptive experience and cognitive development can take place. For the purposes of this paper this area will be defined as: the littoral zone

The need to justify a relationship with nature should begin with a definition of NATURE itself. It is most certainly arguable that ‘everything’ is nature, since all that exists has grown out of the natural world. We will base our argument on the philosophical position previously described, defining the human world as that created by man, and ‘nature’ as the natural environment from which we have separated ourselves.

The reference to ‘kindergarten lessons’ in the title refers to the crisis that has prompted this paper: What conditions have lead to the point where we need to justify the intimate relationship between these two entities that is so essential to our survival?

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

19

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architechture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Separating to connect Littoral 1 Adj relating to or occurring on or near the shore of a sea or lake. (Latin litoralis, from litor-, litus seashore) 2 noun a coastal region; esp the inter tidal zone

In Biology the Littoral zone represents a distinct location of rich exchange between two ecosystems (as in the connecting territory between land and water, e.g. the area between high and low tide, rich in biodiversity and activity due to constant change in physical conditions). It is an area of accelerated fertility also described as the ‘edge’ or ‘fertile boundary,’ a common design principle employed in biologically based intentional technologies, and systems. This ‘in between space’ is abundant in ‘adaptive opportunity.’ Here elements confront each other and develop (evolve) as a result, creating an entity that could be considered an environment in itself, more than the sum of its parts:

“It is recognized by ecologists that the interface between two ecosystems represents a third, more complex, system which combines both. At interfaces, species from both systems can exist, and in many cases the boundary also supports its own species. Gross photosynthetic production is higher at interfaces …estuaries and coral reefs – show the highest production per unit area of any of the major ecosystem.’ (Kormondy, 1959, as in Mollison, 1998)

Ecological engineers use this area of fertile activity to accelerate natural processes. An example is use of the shock effect (steep gradient) produced by abruptly transferring organic waste from one ecosystem to another (e.g. anaerobic to aerobic) used to stimulate productivity in waste processing systems, significantly reducing processing time.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architechture as the Littoral Zone

20

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

In fact this concept appears to be universal, as true in social systems as it is in natural ones, an obvious example being border areas between countries where a rich cultural exchange, and, often, conflict predominate, generating cross-cultural enlightenment. Frequent references to the concept of boundary and the need to separate in order to connect are found in philosophy. Simmel observes: “only to humanity, in contrast to nature, has the right to connect and separate been granted”. He uses architectural metaphors such as: door, bridge, window, to describe our need to separate in order to redefine our position in relation to the ‘outside’ and understand better the need for connection2.

The visualization of architecture as a ‘littoral’ zone is used in this paper to explore our need to separate in order to connect, confront, and redefine, human needs that exist today on both a physical, psychological, and abstract level. The components of this boundary can be illustrated using analogy:

Manmade World Habitat of the embodied intellect Architecture:

The tidal area (permeable membrane, bridge, door)

The Littoral

facilitating dialogue, exchange, and an adaptive

Zone

relationship between the manmade world and nature.

Natural

The natural environment, containing an archive of

2 “Because the human being is the connecting creature who must always separate and cannot connect without separating – that is why we must first conceive intellectually of the merely indifferent existence of two river banks as something separated in order to connect them by means of a bridge. And the human being is likewise the bordering creature who has no border. The enclosure of his or her domestic being by the door means, to be sure, that they have separated out a piece from the uninterrupted unity of natural being. But just as the formless limitation takes on a shape, its limitedness finds its significance and dignity only in that which the mobility of the door illustrates: in the possibility at any moment of stepping out of this limitation into freedom”. (Simmel, as in Leach 1997)

synaesthetic memory, pattern, and association.

Socio-Biologists now contend that these ‘symbols’ represent the history of our adaptive relationship within the natural environment interwoven into our genetic code (human nature).

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

21

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

The purpose of this paper is to establish a philosophical understanding of our contemporary culture’s estrangement from nature and how architecture has assumed a defensive role in this relationship.

Using a diverse body of research, the extent of our multifaceted need for nature will be thoroughly explored. In relation to this, our current ability to design to meet these needs and to test the success of these designs will be questioned, as will the platform assumed by ‘green’ architecture.

In the final sections a new biological framework for design will be introduced, leading to the conclusion of the paper which suggests that an answer to the question: “Can we return to nature?” may lie in the enhancement of an adaptive relationship with nature through the redefinition of architecture as the ‘littoral zone.’

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

22

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Who Needs Whom?

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

23

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

From survival to control In relative terms our relationship with nature has been straightforward until very recently. Survival was the motivating force and catalyst for all invention. We chose location on the basis of the ability it gave us to shelter from predators; view our adversaries from a distance, access water, and harvest food. Control over, protection from, and the ability to predict, random acts in the natural world took precedence.

Though these basic survival instincts continue to drive us today, and remain the motivating force behind development in science, technology and architecture, during “a period of little consequence in evolutionary terms” population growth and the industrial revolution have generated a significant change in this relationship. As we gained the ability to produce more than we could use the necessity to produce a ‘consumer’ became as important as the development of the product itself.

This situation generated a successful industry in itself, advertising, which has made a business out of building a sense of human supremacy, spawning the ever increasing dependency on product, now the main influence on western culture and global economics. Nature is now primarily viewed as an abundant source of materials and energy. As the effect of our extensive demand on the earth’s resources has become increasingly obvious a reverse of roles has taken place. It is now considered our responsibility to sustain nature.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

24

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

These anthropocentric notions separated humanity out of the eco-system and onto centre stage, as pinnacle of the evolutionary hierarchy. Ecological and environmental thinking argues that we alone have been given the gifts of consciousness and ethical awareness, and because of this should accept our unique responsibility as caretaker of the planet.

Ironically, biological research has begun to blur this altruistic vision, stirring evolutionary theory into a state of flux. Developments in chaos, complexity, and systems theory, claim that the past and future of life is not solely the product of ‘selection’ but dependent on a vast network of interconnected systems with ‘emergent’ properties. We have been knocked out of centre stage.

These theories reconnect us with our primal fear of the robust, unpredictable, qualities of nature, which argues that, inevitably, nature will fight back inflicting its own revenge.

The Greeks conjured up our fragile liaison with nature via the goddess of fortune who “could scatter gifts, then with terrifying speed shift the rudder’s course, maintaining an imperturbable smile as she watched us choke to death on a fishbone or disappear down a landslide”. (De Botton, 2000). Malthus predicted that nature would inevitably utilize pestilence, famine and societal breakdown to curb human population and incrementally crawl back, as it has done following several previous mass extinctions. The relevance of understanding evolution in relation to biodiversity and human survival continues to perplex us and fuels considerable chunks of scientific research.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

25

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Biophilia and Ecopsychology Over the last 20 years developments in behavioural biology and biogeography have produced evidence to support the claim that the history of our relationship with nature may be encoded in our genetic structure.

This research is the foundation for the theory of biophilia, pioneered by the socio-biologist and entomologist E.O. Wilson that has formed a framework for the development of environmental psychology and eco-psychology3. In ‘The Biophilia Hypothesis’ twenty experts4 from a diverse range of fields explain how hidden influences, based on our primitive relationship with nature, affect the contemporary human experience. These essays argue that our very ‘nature’ is, to a large extent, influenced by a genetic history of adaptive learning honed by our interactive relationship ‘within’ nature5.

If an adaptive relationship with a geographical location is deeply imbedded in our behaviour it may follow that this relationship also influences the individual characteristics of a culture, creating a direct correlation between society and the landscape it inhabits. Taboos, habits, traditions, and inevitably, ethics, would be based on a survival code, or the most practical way to live within a specific landscape along with the native inhabitants, flora and fauna (e.g. where it is safe to go, what is safe to eat, drink, etc.).

This observation by Charles Darwin gives a simple example of the potential disparity in the sense of ‘taste’ and how this might be related to location and circumstance. In this excerpt Darwin compares the cultivated preferences of individual cultures as representative of divergent locations:

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

3 Ecopsychology The major contribution ecopsychology promises to make to environmental politics is the identification of the irrational forces that tie people to their bad environmental habits. For example, some ecopsychologists believe that our consumption habits are connected to deep addictive attractions... ecopsychology seeks to redefine sanity within an environmental context... drawing upon the ecological sciences to re-examine the human psyche as an integral part of the web of nature.

At the heart of the coming environmental revolution is a change in values, one that derives from a growing appreciation of our dependence on nature….we cannot restore our own health, our sense of wellbeing, unless we restore the health of the planet.

Ecopsychology brings together the sensitivity of therapists, the expertise of ecologists, and the ethical energy of environmental activists. …(to create)….a more effective, more philosophically grounded form of environmental politics. (Roszak, Theodore, Gomes, Mary E., Kanner, Allen D., editors,1993, p. xvi) 4 Authors: Jared Diamond – Psysiology Madhav Gadfil – Biology Judith H. Heerwagen – Psychological Nursing Aaron Katcher – Psychiatry Stephen Kellert – Forestry and Environmental Studies Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence – Veterinarian and Anthropologist Lynn Margulis – Biology Scott Mcvay – Philanthropist and Author Gary Paul Nabhan – Conservationist Richard Nelson – Anthropology Gordon H. Orians – Zoology David W. Orr – Environmental Studies Holmes Rolston – Philosophy Dorian Sagan – Author: Evolutionary Biology, and Philosophy Paul Shepard – Author: Evolution Ecology Michael E. Soule – Environmental Studies Sara St. Antoine – Forestry and Environmental Studies Roger S. Urlich – Behavioral Geography and Environmental Psychology Gregory Wilkins – Psychiatry (Wilson, E.O.and Kellert, S.R , 1993) 5 “The Biophilia hypothesis. …asserts the existence of a biologically based, inherent human need to affiliate with life and lifelike processes (Wilson 1984). This proposition suggests that human identity and personal fulfilment somehow depend on our relationship to nature. The human need for nature is linked not just to the material exploitation of the environment but also to the influence of the natural world on our emotional, cognitive, aesthetic, and even spiritual development.

Even the tendency to avoid, reject, and at times, destroy elements of the natural world can be viewed as an extension of an innate need to relate deeply and intimately with the vast spectrum of life “(Kellert, S.R in Kellert, S.R, Wilson, E.O.,1993, p. 42)

26

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

The term ‘disgust’, in its simplest sense, means something offensive to the taste. It is curious how readily this feeling is excited by anything unusual in the appearance, odour, or nature of our food. In Tierra del Fuego a native touched with his finger some cold preserved meat which I was eating at our bivouac, and plainly showed utter disgust at its softness; whilst I felt utter disgust at my food being touched by a naked savage, though his hands did not appear dirty. A smear of soup on a man’s beard looks disgusting, though there is, of course, nothing disgusting in the soup itself.

I presume that this follows from the strong association in our minds between the sight of food, however circumstanced, and the idea of eating it. (Darwin, C.1872))

Landscape, pattern, memory, symbol The relevance of a relationship between landscape and our psyche is never more obvious than in Architecture where symbolic references based on our primary need for shelter are represented in deeply rooted preferences that are, as in taboos and ethics, now imbedded in our culture. This is the main subject of Christopher Alexander’s trilogy Timeless Design, Pattern Language, and the Oregon Experience. These books represent a meticulous attempt to create a classification of the relationships between architectural form and community function.

In Nature and Architecture (Portoghesi 2000) Paolo Portoghesi criticises contemporary architecture’s dependence on formula and laments the loss of an intuitive architectural dialogue based on a symbolic language of natural form, structure, and organisation, now lost to the obsession for

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

27

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

technical supremacy dominant in modernism. Over a thirty year period he has collected stunning visual documentation of this primordial relationship between nature and human structure in everything from primitive shelters, to everyday construction, to architecture as an expression of spirituality in the design of cathedrals, a subject covered in equal depth by Gombrich in The Sense of Order: a study in the psychology of decorative art.

Portoghesi hinges the future of architecture on a philosophical enlightenment and draws inspiration from what he calls, the ‘new paradigm,’ pioneered by Gregory Bateson, David Bohm, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, Fritjof Capra, and others, where the fields of biology, anthropology, philosophy and physics meet. He sees this multidisciplinary realm of exchange as key to reinstating a productive relationship with natural form, matter, and process, left behind by the modernist movement. James Wines fortifies this argument, expressing his misgivings regarding the technical concentration on energy control in ‘green’ architecture. “The only way this condition of disconnectedness can begin to change…is through a total revision of philosophical grounding and a deep commitment to regaining spiritual and psychological contact with nature.” (Wines 2000)

The importance of conflict: biophobia The theory of biophilia embraces Wines and Portoghesi’s concerns. It attempts to provide a tool to assist us in our search for the source of symbolism and analogy, and promotes the maintenance of our relationship with nature as an intrinsic link to human health. The proposition that nature is the foundation of our emotional, creative, and cognitive development provides a convincing argument in support of the

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

28

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

protection of biodiversity and the establishment of a mutual relationship of exchange.

Viewed from a biophilic perspective our desire to control, harness, or overcome, nature appears illogical, particularly from the perspective of our safe, bordering on blandly predictable, urban existence. Nevertheless, this love-hate relationship with nature represents a deep-seated and valid fear.

A considerable amount of the early work by E.O. Wilson that led to his concept of ‘biophilia’ was discovered during the process of investigating ‘biophobia’ or phobias based on natural elements, the fear of snakes, for example, in people who had never been exposed to any direct threat by these animals in their lifetime. The remarkable aspect of this research was that these fears were greater than that of objects representing actual threat to the patient in daily life, such as guns, knives, automobiles, electric wires, etc. Wilson makes the point that a strong negative response to aspects in nature (a biologically prepared survival instinct) proves that the opposite (biophillia) is also true6.

There is no doubt that fear is an essential component in our relationship with nature and our fascination with it. Without the motivation, excitement and respect it instills there would be no need for adaptive response, incentive to learn, desire for protection/shelter, or motivation for invention.

“When we behold those deeply-furrowed hollows in which glaciers have

6 “A basic conceptual argument… is that both the rewards and the dangers associated with natural settings during human evolution have been sufficiently critical to favour individuals who readily learned, and then over time remembered, various adaptive responses – both positive/approach (biophilic) responses and negative/avoidance (biophobic) responses – to certain natural stimuli and configurations. This perspective explicitly recognized that the natural habitats of early humans contained dangers as well as advantages... theoretical propositions for an innate predisposition for biophilia gain plausibility and consistency if they also postulate a corresponding genetic predisposition for adaptive biophobic responses to certain natural stimuli that have constituted survival-related threats throughout human evolution.” (Ulrich in Wilson and Kellert 1993)

lain, we think it hardly possible that a time will come when a wooded,

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

29

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

grassy valley, watered by streams, will spread itself out upon the same spot.

So it is, too, in the history of mankind: the most savage forces beat a path, and are mainly destructive; but their work was nonetheless necessary, in order that later a gentler civilization might raise its house. The frightful energies – those which are called evil – are the cyclopean architects and road-makers of humanity.” (Nietzche as in Wines, 2000 p 237)

However, since the industrial revolution, this healthy awe that Nietzche speaks of, with nature as inspiration and motivator, has incrementally been eroded by our obsession with control. Throughout society fear has become the dominant influence. This is reflected in our architectural relationship with nature. What once was a fertile area of exchange has been transformed by ‘security’ strategies into a protected boundary.

The following sections review research calling for reconciliation with nature.

It is particularly relevant that these studies come from a widely disparate range of fields and that each distinct perspective supports the theory of biophilia and our intrinsic need for the diverse stimuli present in nature.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

30

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

The Door

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

31

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Behavioural geography The significance of our relationship with nature is rather an abstract entity.

Roger Ulrich, a landscape architect specialising in Behavioural Geography and Environmental Psychology, has devoted his career to examining this phenomenon through research he has carried out on his own, in collaboration, and through the study of research conducted by many others. In his article Biophilia, Biophobia, and Natural Landscapes (Wilson and Kellert ed. 1993) Ulrich discusses a variety of studies supporting the theory that there is a genetic basis for our varying response to natural settings.

His work has concentrated on the exploration of ‘biologically prepared learning’ rooted in early adaptive response to danger and survival needs in primitive landscapes. Similar to the study of negative responses, positive responses to nature have been most successfully examined in relation to health. A well circulated study by Ulrich in 1984 compares the effects of a view on patients recovering from surgery (Ulrich in Baker, 2000), documenting a parasympathetic response: “patients recovered more rapidly when able to view a middle distance natural scene including trees, than when viewing a blank wall”.

number of doses Analgesic strength

wall group

tree group

Strong

2.48

0.96

Moderate

3.65

1.74

Weak

2.57

5.39

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

Figure 2: Comparison of analgesic doses per patient for wall-view and tree-view patients; 46 patients between 2 and 5 days after surgery (R S Ulrich 1984 as in Baker 2002)

32

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Ulrich’s tests found that the preferred restorative, stress reducing landscapes were reminiscent of the ‘savannah’, thought to be our place of origin, that contain the natural elements and configurations favouring survival (water, food, refuge, a view of potential danger approaching, but not so open as to risk exposure). He suggests that these secure spaces, defined and tested subsequently under the ‘prospect refuge’7 theory, would have made survival less demanding and allowed primitive man more relaxed periods of time to indulge in ‘non-urgent’ creative tasks, such as tool making, linking a sense of well-being to creative pursuit:

7 In 1975 in…”The Experience of Landscape”, Appleton outlined what he called prospect refuge theory…He argues that…pleasurable response to landscape conditions consistently illustrate certain repetitive characteristics…prospect, a place of unimpeded opportunity to see; and refuge, by which he means a place of concealment. These are mutually complementary, and can be summed up as the dual characteristics in the phrase “to see without being seen.” (Hittebrand 1991)

“Perhaps modern humans, as a partly genetic remnant of evolution, tend to have more positive emotional states and accordingly are smarter in creative thinking when exposed to most unthreatening natural settings compared to most built environments lacking nature.”

(Ulrich in Wilson and Kellert 1993 p 112 )

Striking similarities in response patterns across diverse groups and cultures reveal a preference for natural settings that include ‘prospect refuge’ characteristics over urban scenes providing the same elements.

Hildebrand has conducted a fascinating exploration of this theory in relation to the unprecedented enthusiasm for Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture.

Despite the fact that his buildings were not well built and that he was a particularly unpleasant man to work with, clients consistently returned to him. Hildebrand feels the secret to this may lie in Wright’s intuitive ability to recreate environments with ‘prospect refuge’ characteristics as well as another ‘preferred’ feature of views, ‘mystery,’ discussed later.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

33

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Figure 3: Examples of Frank Lloyd Wright Buildings: with 'prospect refuge' characteristics: sheltered hearth (refuge) with expansive views (prospect), (Hinterland, 1991)

The documentation of the positive effect of prospect refuge views on an individual’s ability to heal has stimulated further research into the significance of aesthetics in relation to health, and high order cognitive functioning. Ulrich conjectures as to whether these preferences could have ethical implications and if, in turn, ethical concerns might have an effect on health. He has observed that scenes of damaged natural settings, such as ‘clear cut’ forests, consistently have adverse effects on participants in testing. This suggests that our lack of exposure to nature may be creating a sense of detachment within society and a diminishing interest in environmental issues.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

34

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Ulrich’s simple study, ‘View through a window may influence recovery from surgery,’ has been referred to time and again since 1984 in a diverse range of research including hospital design, psychological research, horticultural therapy, office design, and even, surprisingly, corporate management strategies. Yet despite the universal significance of this piece of research, documented almost twenty years ago, its application remains seriously underdeveloped, as has similar work by others at that time recording the beneficial effects of exposure to nature (e.g. Markee and Janick, Morreau, Ackley and Cole, et al, as in Sempik, Aldridge, Becker, 2003).

Ulrich perceives the dilemma. In a society where success is defined in the terms set by capitalist economics the value of well-being is difficult to quantify. There is a need to attach value to the non-monetary qualities of nature in such a way that they can stack up against the short term financial advantages of using nature as a material resource.

Nature as therapy More recently extensive substantiation of Ulrich’s findings, highlighting valuable physical, emotional, and social benefits generated by ‘experiential’ projects, indicate important economic advantages to being in the presence of, and functioning within, natural settings. This research has been catalogued by practitioners who have been experimenting with the use of horticulture as a therapeutic device in a variety of circumstances. It is important to note that this research was carried out with ‘real’ nature (not simulated through photography or other imagery).

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

35

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Figure 4: Health and Well-being through horticulture: a simple model of the processes, activities and outcomes of social and therapeutic horticulture as described in the literature showing the interconnectedness of all elements.(Evidence and messages from research, Sempik, Aldridge, Beckåer, 2003)

Social and Therapeutic Horticulture: Evidence and Messages from Research (Sempik, Aldridge, Becker, 2003) This analysis of over 1000 papers using 131 references in the areas of health and social reform provides a poignant and persuasive body of support for the presence of nature in urban environments. Both ‘passive’ appreciation of landscape and ‘active’ participation in horticulture and gardening are represented in a diverse range of projects dealing with: social rehabilitation, mental health, learning disabilities, aggression, dementia, substance misuse, etc.

The reports were broken down into three categories: 1. Horticulture in rehabilitation, physical health, mental health and well-being 2. Horticulture, nature, aggression, and peace 3. The mechanisms of therapeutic horticulture

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

36

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Figure 3 gives an indication of the multifaceted benefits recorded:

‘Trees and Communities – What is the Connection?‘ (Sather 2001) A report for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, this presentation concentrates on a singular element of Ulrich’s landscape, the tree, reporting on the effects of ‘passive appreciation’ from a social and community perspective. Although many results are parallel to the study above, the recorded effects of exposure to trees on community health and cohesion are striking: more time is spent outdoors bringing higher levels of safety and social interaction, lower levels of violence among adolescents, families, Alzheimer’s patients, prison inmates, and a general reduction of mental illness.

‘Greenbacks From Green Roofs: Forging a New Industry for Canada’ (Peck, Callahan, Kuhn, and Bass 1999) This substantial report details an economic argument for green roofs and walls in cities. It reiterates the benefits produced by the cultivation of disused urban areas into ‘green’ space, to individual and the community well-being, as listed above. It then goes on to incorporate these advantages as part of a wider global vision that involves environmental reclamation, CO2 sequestration, and the reinstatement of biodiversity (bees will take residence on 20 story rooftops, butterflies 23 stories, and birds 19 stories). It proposes that embracing nature, in an urban context, on an easily imaginable level (5% of walls and roofs), would not only promote human health, but could eliminate urban greenhouse gas emissions and generate economic benefits in the creation of a new industry servicing urban ‘green’ space development and maintenance.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

37

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Interestingly, the ‘add on’ benefit of employment is stressed in all three of the studies above, providing a strong economic case for nature, set by the conventional economic measuring tools (GDP/GNP). Professions in therapeutic horticulture, therapeutic garden design, urban forestry, and arboriculture, are multidisciplinary (forestry, horticulture, ecology, planning, public policy, landscape architecture, etc). Employment in this field can lead to an effective role in community development and an individual sense of identity and respect, representing an important social value to the development of such an industry.

A Healing Architecture – Asmussen Though the testing methodology may be more sophisticated, the subject

Figure 5: and page 39: Vidarklinik, Jarna, Sweden, various views of the interiors and exteriors of the clinic buildings and waste processing 'park' (the author, 2003)

covered by Ulrich et al has been experimented with for some time. The theories of anthroposophy based on Goethe’s philosophy represent an interpretation of nature’s principles in a holistic vision for education, healthcare, and architecture. Though based on implicate trust in the intuitive, the enthusiasm that guides anthroposophic theory has been translated into a dogma that leaves little to be guessed at. Often these principles have produced heavy, rigidly asymmetrical, awkwardly fluid structures. Nevertheless, the tools are as sensitive as the designer.

Erik Asmussen’s architecture in Jarna, Sweden, is unique in its use of these principles. Asmussen devoted his professional life to the architecture, planning and infrastructure of this country town of 5,000 built around a clinic and Steiner teaching school. The gentle intelligence of the man himself is communicated through the best of two vernaculars, his own,

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

38

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Danish, and that of the Swedish countryside he adopted. These mediums are used to communicate anthroposophical theory, yet the landscape and Nordic light always dominate.

The success of the therapy hinges on the intensity of the experience at the Vidarklinik, which must be rooted in Asmussen’s deep understanding of the philosophy combined with his all-consuming respect for its healing capabilities. Asmussen moved to Jarna to make it possible for his mentally disabled child to attend the Steiner school, as did the artist and the entrepreneur with which he collaborated in the development of the complex.

The fascinating aspect of his architecture is the need to experience it over time. Here the landscape (views, changing light, colour, form) is completely integrated with the infrastructure for the therapy in a mutually supportive, fluctuating relationship. This dynamic extends right down to the community sculpture park that contains the reed beds processing the clinic’s effluent.

When there, one is convinced of the essential connection between health and nature. The reflective mood of the therapeutic architecture strikes a chord incalculable by formula that defies photographic representation.

(Alvenäng 2003)

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

39

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Kindergarten Lessons

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

40

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Psycho-sociology and organisational ecology Judith Heerwagen is an assistant professor of psychosocial nursing. Her work has focused on behavioural psychology and the application of evolutionary theory to human environmental interactions as well as the establishment of ‘organizational ecology’. Heerwagen focuses on the psychological and emotional elements of our relationship with environments, subjects that, as Ulrich implies, are not easily understood and complicated to test.

As a nurse and psychologist, she is intuitively aware that emotional and physical health is brought about by a rich mixture of factors. This cocktail of ingredients is now of primary importance to corporations who have become aware that the highest cost of their financial investment is in staff maintenance (represented by the ratio 1/5/200) who seek to create an environment that minimizes sick days and maximizes creative output.

“There is growing recognition that to be truly effective, a facility will need to succeed across three interrelated domains: environmental sustainability, organisational effectiveness, and human well-being.”

Heerwagen appreciates the synaesthetic quality of Ulrich’s work, comparing

8 Boyden distinguishes between “survival needs” and “well-being” needs. Survival needs deal with aspects of the environment that directly affect human health, such as clean air and water, lack of pathogens or toxins, and the opportunity for rest and sleep. Well-being needs, on the other hand, are related to quality of life and psychological health….Failure to satisfy survival needs may lead to serious illness or death. In contrast, failure to satisfy the wellbeing needs produces the “gray life” of psychological maladjustment and stress related illnesses. Boyden’s list of well-being needs include several that are relevant to green building design: An interesting visual environment

it to earlier research carried out by Stephen Boyden (1971) and Stokols

Meaningful change and sensory variability

(1992), promoting the notion that health is multidimensional,

Noise levels not much above or below that in nature Opportunity for regular exercise

encompassing physical, psychological and social components, with cognitive function and creativity as key elements8, an identical recipe to that used by Assmussen in the design of the Vidarklinik community.

Opportunity to engage in a full range of species typical behaviours (creativity, self expression, cooperation, exploration) Opportunity to engage in spontaneous social encounters Freedom to move between social phases (from solitude to group interactions) (Boyden 1971 as in Heerwagen 1999)

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

41

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

The geometry of home The challenge for Heerwagen is to itemize the, often abstract, characteristics of preferred environments into an easily assimilated formula for application in management strategies and building codes. She argues that preferences should not be viewed as idle ‘whims.’ They represent links to primal requirements that have become subliminal in the contemporary urban context. She has synthesized her research into a simple table of characteristics common in preferred environments, and emphasises that these symbolize the same sensory features that met the survival needs of our early ancestors.

Characteristics of Preferred Environments

Figure 6: Table from: Towards a general theory of the human factors of Sustainability (Heerwagen 1999)

Key Dimensions

Attributes and Qualities

Prospect (ability to see into the distance, Appleton 1975)

Brightness in the field of view Visual distance Perceived ability to get to a distant point safely Horizon/sky imagery (sun, distant mountains, clouds) Changes in elevation Strategic viewing points

Refuge (sense of enclosure or shelter, Appleton 1975)

Overhead canopy effect Framing at view edges Variation in light levels (darkness suggests refuge) Enclosing surfaces Penetrable barriers and surfaces for views out

Water

Glimmering or reflective surface (suggests clean water) Moving water (also suggests clean, aerated water)

Vegetation

Large trees (especially with spreading canopy for refuge and shade) Flowers (signals of resource availability in the future) Shrubbery (sources of food and protection)

Sensory Variability

Changes and variability in environmental color, temperature, air movement, and light over time and space

Information processing aids (Kaplan and Kaplan 1989)

Features that encourage exploration and information processing – mystery, coherence, legibility, and complexity.

Patterned complexity (Humphrey 1980)

Moderate degrees of sensory variability coupled with an underlying pattern that contains some randomness, but is not in itself totally random (e.g., fractal or rhyming).

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

42

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

One of the design elements that intrigues Heerwagen is the preference for fractal geometry, ‘rhyming’, or patterns that have some repetition, but are spiced with variability and surprise. These organic and flowing forms mirror those found in the human brain and physiological system. Studies have found rhyming patterns to be more conducive to “higher cognitive functioning than chaotic or simply repetitious geometric patterns.”

Evolutionary psychologist Stephen Kaplan has written extensively on the preference for a combination of balance or ‘safety’ (repetitive, cyclical and therefore familiar, as in ‘prospect refuge’) and ‘mystery’ (complexity or challenge) in environments preferred by knowledge seeking/using organisms (these two main characteristics of adaptive behaviour, the ‘cyclical’ and the ‘linear,’ will be discussed later in the theory of autopoesis).

Figure 7: Romanesque Broccoli and example of fractal geometry or ‘rhyming.’ (The author)

Repetitive yet evolving patterns communicate a sense of renewal yet maintain a consistency of form. Reminiscent of Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis taken from the morphology of plants, this concept has been incorporated in the anthroposophic design principles.

The repetition of self-similar parts as subsystems of systems has always been a standard theme in mainstream architecture as based in natural geometry. More recently the system subsystem relationship has been rediscovered as an important conceptual device in ‘systems’ theory. In biology and chemistry this relationship is described as ‘homology’ (a similarity attributable to common origin. Homo = one and the same similar,

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

43

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

alike + logic). The concept of the ‘holon’ (a pattern within a pattern, all a version of the original) is another example.

Recurrent patterns are so universal in nature that it is not surprising that the term homology is intimately related to the word ‘home,’ adding further support to the notion that natural patterns are appealing on a preconscious level (Portoghesi, Heerwagen, Gombrich, et al). This argument is put to practical use in the design of therapeutic gardens for Alzheimer’s patients, where the application of repetitive and figure of eight forms are now established as a psychological inducement for stress reduction.

The design and construction of a building (shelter), the use of materials, pattern and form all represent a psychological interpretation of our primal relationship with elements of the natural world. Heerwagen, and the researchers she represents, believe these connections can be employed in the design of buildings to produce a variety of desired outcomes including enhanced creativity, as well as the development of environmental values (Williams and Berkebile as in Heerwagen,1999).

Preference and cognitive performance Since it has been established that exposure to nature (NASA, Ulrich, et al, as in Heerwagen 1999) can promote states of ‘cognitive tranquillity’ (neurophysiological relaxation), and reduce the psychological arousal related to stress, it follows that exposure to nature may also positively influence cognitive functioning and creativity.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

44

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

To support this proposition Ulrich and Heerwagen refer to studies by Alice Isen and colleagues, which observe that positive moods: • Generate neural patterns associated with broad searching.

• Promote novel juxtapositions of ideas, concepts, and memories.

• Enable people to ‘break set’ more readily and see additional features and associations.

• Create a more complex cognitive context associated with a broadened focus of attention and greater access to materials stored in memory.

With indications that benefits may also be: • Increased altruism • More effective problem solving • Increased job satisfaction • Greater motivation • Lower absenteeism • Greater organizational attachment (Isen 1990, Isen et al 1987, Mitchell, 1989, Clark and Watson 1988 as in Heerwagen 1999)

Ulrich and Heerwagen conclude that if preferred landscapes were places where survival needs were easily met, making occupation in ‘non-urgent’ or creative work possible, a subconscious memory of this relationship may be triggered by present day exposure to natural environments, engendering a similarly constructive state of consciousness.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

45

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Testing theories regarding the influence of environmental factors on cognitive functioning and creativity in ‘real work’ conditions requires time, appropriate examples, and a perceptive testing mechanism. Heerwagen comments on the difficulty in separating architectural issues from social and organisational ones in the testing of green buildings.

“It is also important to recognize that the benefits of green buildings are more likely to occur when the building and organization are treated as an integrated system from the start (Cole 1999), it is entirely possible to have a ‘green’ building with ‘grey’ occupants due to lack of systems integration and lack of training on how to use the technologies…Grey occupants are also more likely to be found in buildings that ‘green’ individual systems rather than the environment as a whole or in buildings which focus primarily on technology to the exclusion of building features that wield their effects through social and psychological mechanisms...

…it is possible for ‘grey’ organizations to exist in a ‘green’ building, thereby passing up significant opportunities for high-level benefits resulting from resource efficiency and process innovation thoughout the organization”. (Heerwagen 2000).

Based on her experience, she feels that the benefits generated by a conscientious approach to design integrated with organizational strategy could exceed those initially anticipated. Diane Haigue, and Leaman and Bordas, who have been conducting Building Use Analysis since the late 1970s in the PROBE program, agree with Heerwagen and insist that regulations are only part of the solution.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

46

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Her comments touch on the experience in Asmussen’s architecture at the Vidarklinik. Although his buildings do not obtain the high levels of technical eco-efficiency present in the buildings she has been testing in California, the psychological effect of the architecture seems to override any physical inconvenience, even with individuals who are quite ill.

Heerwagen takes this observation further and suggests that a building which “expresses commitment to sustainable values” (on both environmental and human levels) could ultimately influence human public values…and asks:

Can a building educate?

The intrinsic value of a multi-sensorial experience in educational environments is well established (Foebel, Goethe, Steiner, Montessori, et al, later echoed by Frank Lloyd Wright, etc) where tactile knowledge of natural materials has also been considered particularly important.

Over the last century our environmental brief has narrowed. The importance of daylight and fresh air has more or less dominated design strategies for educational facilities, a highly respected example being the Open Air School (Johannes Duiker, 1930, Amsterdam, Nl).

Heschong’s studies for the Collaboration for High Performance Schools (CHPS) in California report an increase of seven to forty percent in the level of cognition when students work in natural daylight. This discovery has led to the establishment of a minimum daylight requirement in the state, also the case in other states and countries.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

47

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

The school buildings influenced by CHPS recommendations, though day lit and naturally ventilated, are still boxes and often boring. The mere presence of daylight or fresh air does not, in itself, create a building that will instill well-being or maximize cognitive development.

Contemporary research by Dudek, (Britain) and Lackney (USA) into the elements necessary to stimulate learning in the design of educational environments for young children appear retrospective in their itemization of what we have known all along (e.g. diversity, change, exercise, fun, easy movement from inside to the outside, a relationship with nature and natural elements, light, air, etc.), suggesting that we have lost confidence in our primary instincts.

Leaman and Bordas claim our building deficiencies relate back to the onedimensional quality of our post-occupancy testing and the fact that this is rarely done at all.

The TEACH project (Dublin) and the eco-renovation of the Crookham Junior School in Hampshire by Cullinan Architects (Britain) suggest that ‘experiential’ learning may be an important aspect of the educational environment that has been bypassed by passive environmental control systems. In both projects students tested and manually adjusted the building climate in response to energy requirements, learning in the process. In both projects reports highlighted the importance of adaptive opportunity. Students who found studying facts about energy tedious were suddenly drawn in by the interactive experience of measuring, recording,

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

48

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

interpreting, and working in cooperation with natural conditions. Heschong illustrates our appreciation of adaptive devices using the example of ‘shutters’, a common vernacular instrument used for thermal adjustment, suggesting:

“One factor that can help us to appreciate the thermal function of a place or object is variability. We are more likely to notice the function of something if there are times when it is not in operation”. (Heschong, 1979)

These findings refer back to Heerwagen’s concerns regarding our primary focus on technological solutions over adaptive features that employ social and psychological mechanisms. The TEACH and Cullinan projects answer her question indicating that buildings can indeed educate. Heerwagen might then ask: does the need for stimulation stop at primary school level?

Her table of characteristics common in preferred work environments is virtually identical to those required to stimulate learning in children.

Michael Resnick of the Lifelong Kindergarten and Epistemology Group (Medialab USA), mentioned in the conclusion of this paper, experiments with these issues.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

49

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Tolerance

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

50

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

The universal optimum When did the potential to lead the ‘grey life’ Heerwagen refers to begin?

Nick Baker, in his paper Environmental Diversity in Architecture, gives a graphic history of our migration to the city as instigated by the industrial revolution. Over a relatively insignificant period of time masses of the population left an agrarian ‘outdoor’ existence to work in city factories.

Early industrial conditions had a rapid and dramatic effect on the physicality of our relationship with nature, escalating to a point when, prior to the 1952 clean air act, the combined industrial and domestic pollution in London cut sunshine hours to little more than half that of countryside they had left, transforming the outdoor climate to a “fetid sunless atmosphere of fog and smoke”. Very soon after a belief in technology and the need to control this, now hostile, environment prevailed. Baker marks the delivery of each new technology and the social change it elicited until, by the 1970s, ‘nature had been conquered.’9

Thermal Comfort “The most essential characteristic of the outdoor environment is its variability. There is variability on different time scales – daily and annual

9 … in the UK the Electricity Council were promoting all-electric buildings as providing an ‘optimised artificial environment’ in deep plan buildings. Narrow slit windows were the only concession, providing minimal but poignant reminders of the world outside. It is interesting to speculate if this attitude was also driven by the deep-seated desire to respond, and in this case retreat from the natural world – if so we might say that it had become a victim of its own success” (Baker, 2002)

cycles as well as the quasi-random nature of weather, and on different scales of space ranging from human scale to global scale. Yet it is the elimination of this variability which is the main objective of the engineering services of a building.”(Baker N. 2002)

In 1970 Fanger introduced the thermodynamic model used to determine the ‘universal optimal temperature,’ still used today in conventional

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

51

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

services design. At virtually the same moment another stream of research put forward the claim that there was no such thing. This tangent of study has gone on to establish that thermal variation is not only tolerated it often enjoyed, and that thermal consciousness works in relation to many factors acting simultaneously. An example of this would be the studies of naturally ventilated buildings by Humphries and Nicol et al, (as in Baker, 2002) which demonstrate that ‘preferred’ indoor temperatures vary in relation to outdoor temperatures in a ‘responsive’ relationship.

Baker explains how this paradox in thinking may have arisen by pointing out two flaws in the way Fanger’s model has been applied in testing. Both points reflect behavioural elements:

1. Testing was done in a ‘static’ state in order to be accurate (In fact the body is normally in a ‘dynamic’ state).

2. The ability to mitigate discomfort was not allowed during testing. (As a result the test ‘context’ is significantly different from ‘real life’ scenarios where adaptive opportunity is present).

More recent evidence (Heerwagen 1992, Bordass 1993, Baker and Standeven 1996, as in Baker 2000) has shown that ‘adaptive opportunity’ has a critical influence on our ability to accept varying levels of discomfort.

Studies by Guedes (as in Baker 2002) discovered that tolerance is increased by the possibility of adaptive opportunity even if we decide not to use it, highlighting the psychological element to this phenomenon.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

52

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

In fact stimulation of potentially threatening thermal ‘extremes’ is often found enjoyable and an important aspect in leisure activities, where it is common to take chances and risk danger on many levels. Lisa Heschong uses our desire for quality and variety in food 10 as a simple analogy to describe the multifaceted character of our environmental requirements, commenting that:

“with all our… senses, there seems to be a simple pleasure that comes with just using (them) …Our nervous system is much more attuned to noticing change in environment than steady states…

(Exposure to extremes)…strengthens one’s health and improves resistance…(In fact)… we need not even directly experience both extremes in order to savour their contrast. Simply being reminded of the cold winter storm outside can make us enjoy the warmth of the fireside

10 “A parallel might be drawn to the provision of our nutritional needs. Food is as basic to our survival as is our thermal environment. Just as thermal needs have been studied, so scientists have also studied the basic nutritional requirements of human beings. Our level of understanding makes it theoretically possible to provide for all of our nutritional needs with a few pills and injections. However, while eating is a basic physiological necessity, no one would overlook the fact that it also plays a profound role in the cultural life of a people. A few tubes of an astronaut’s nutritious goop are no substitute for a gourmet meal. The lack of sensuality – taste, aroma, texture, temperature, colour. They are disconnected from all the customs that have developed around eating – the specific types of food and social setting…

A proper gourmet meal has a wide variety of tastes – salty, sweet, spicy, savory…The thermal environment also has the potential for such sensuality, cultural roles, and symbolism that need not, indeed should not, be designed out of existence in the name of a thermally neutral world….”

(Heschong, 1979 p 17 - 19)

more intensely.” (Heschong, 1997 p 22)

Previously mentioned studies by Kaplan into the psychology of environmental aesthetics found that we crave an unpredictable element or ‘edge’ in our environmental experience as knowledge seeking/using organisms, but, at the same time, prefer to experiment from a secure base. This is confirmed by Oseland ‘s study of how familiarity with a space affects one’s ability to function (1994, as in Baker 2002). The same group of subjects, in three different contexts, became increasingly tolerant of discomfort the more familiar the environment: climate chamber, workplace, and home.

Nicologoulou (as in Baker, 2000) compared levels of thermal tolerance in

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

53

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

relation to both indoor and outdoor settings, finding that people are more tolerant when outdoors, suggesting that we feel more at ‘home’ in nature.

“This evidence, suggests that humans have a special empathy with stimuli which can be seen to be from natural causes, and that this is even stronger when the individual has freedom to make a response, such as moving from the shade into the spring sunshine.” (Baker, 2002)

Daylight and Natural Cycles Nicologoulou points out that we instinctively choose to experience natural over artificial elements in our environments, but ‘choice,’ or the adaptive ability is integral in this. More often than not, our choices represent a multidimensional need. In a study of library environments (Papairi 1999 as in Baker, 2000) students were drawn to areas of contrasting bright sunlight and dark shadow over the uniformity of artificially lit spaces, but the naturally lit areas had views of a river scene and students were able to change position in relation to intensity of light and glare. This behaviour reflects another human preoccupation, the weather:

“One of the reasons why we have this strong preoccupation with the weather, and why we continue to mediate it through various layers of social tissue, is because the weather has such a strong relationship with time.

The weather helps us to get our heads around the abstract notion of what time is, making it more tangible. In the modern age time has been compartmentalized into common concepts, predictable systems, schedules and numbers, objectifying its aspect of continuity with the weather, there is

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

54

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

always the risk of the unforeseeable. This element – duration, and unpredictability that inevitably flows from it, the idea of constant movement or flow – is, I think, one of the basic reasons for our obsessive preoccupation with the weather.” (Eliasson 2003)

When changes in light, temperature and weather are linked with views of changing landscape, seasonal factors and natural cycles come into play, and our sense of time is defined. It is known that we require daily contact with our ‘zetgeber,’ the sun, in order to entrain our biological clock (Hopkin, M., 2003). Lack of synchronization with the circadian rhythms is considered a triggering factor in Seasonal Affective Disorder, but the twenty-four hour cycle of day and night is only one of many cyclical rhythms with which living organisms require synchronization. Rhythms within human, animal, and plant, societies are also aligned to circalunar, circannual cycles, with the sun as central ‘regulator.’ “Ups and downs of temperature, due to diurnal and seasonal variation, must certainly be one of the determinants in this relationship, since temperature is critical for all chemical processes, in or out of the body.” (Young, M. 1988).

This could be one explanation for our craving for thermal variation as well as our adaptive alignment of indoor preferences with the outdoor climate as described previously. It is most certainly the case that there are many other unacknowledged relationships between our internal and external environment that have been obstructed by our existence in modern buildings.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

55

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Type of Cycle

length

Bioelectric nervous waves

0.1 sec. per cycle

Heartbeat complex

1 sec. per cycle

Ventilation

4 sec. per cycle

Blood circuit flow

10 per cycle

Blood flow oscillations

30 per cycle

Vasomotor oscillations

400 per cycle

Fast endocrine oscillations

300 – 1000 per cycle

Gas exchange oscillations

2000 per cycle

Metabolic fuel oscillations

5000 per cycle

Heat balance oscillations

3 hrs per cycle

Circadian rhythms

24 hrs per cycle

Water cycles

3-1/2 days per cycle

Figure 8: The main human oscillations with their nominal periods (Young, M. 1988)

Longer-range endocrine rhythms

Bringing Nature Indoors Figure 9: An example of our desire to bring nature indoors. “The 20th century introduced an explosion of cultural changes and wallpaper styles… Landscape imagery assumed a new meaning as more and more | people moved to cities and suburbs, and farmland and forests disappeared in the process”. At the Fender, a Colonial Scene by Wallace Nutting (1861 1941) - Landscape Wallpaper: Dufour's "Views of Italy" (Kosuda-Warner, 2001)

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

56

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

The desire to bring nature indoors with us, as we have retreated from it, may be an attempt to feed this requirement that has proved highly paradoxical. Baker comments on how plants are made to suffer as secondclass citizens in the design strategy, while we extract enormous pleasure from their presence.

The advantages are twofold, improved air quality (reduction of contaminants e.g. formaldehyde, benzine, carbon monoxide) and stress reduction. As previously discussed (Ulrich et al), either ‘passive’ or ‘active’ cohabitation with plants will lead to improved emotional health with many knock-on benefits. The table below shows data from the introduction of plant life to a space where air quality was already high, suggesting that a larger proportion of their influence was psychological.

Symptoms

without plants

with plants

fatigue

0.82

0.58

heavy-headedness

0.71

0.58

headache

0.33

0.27

dizziness/nausea

0.27

0.22

poor concentration

0.50

0.42

mean sum score

2.6

2.0

Figure 10: The effect of indoor plants on neuro-psychological systoms (Fjeld et al, 1998, as in Baker, 2002).

Scoring: no problem – 0 minor problem – 1 moderate problem – 2 major problem – 3

Research in the previous sections insists that an understanding of the links (biological, genetic, behavioural, and contextual) between sensorial stimulation and psychological outcome are intrinsic to the study of comfort.

This ‘multiplicity of associated stimuli’ must then be combined with the potential for intuitive response, adaptive opportunity (the ability to stand up and open a window combined with the experience of fresh air, a view of

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

57

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

landscape, natural light, etc.), in order to conduct an effective study of environmental potential.

Baker suggests that the advantage of a multi-sensorial experience within nature might be best tested by singling out one element of that experience to study in isolation. An example of this would be to compare the benefits induced by natural light when channelled into an underground room through a light pipe or via fibre optics. Would this sort of exposure to natural light be as beneficial as the ‘experience’ of light through a window with other aspects of nature present? To a certain extent this is what Fanger was doing without doing without acknowledging the need for a counter experiment.

Can ‘virtual’ nature satisfy the adaptive urge?

Baker refers to the ‘multiplicity of associated stimuli’ represented in nature as ‘natural ambience’ and asks: 1. Is it essential to create ambience through contact with ‘natural’ environmental diversity?

2. Can we create artificial ambience – where natural environmental diversity is simulated?

3. Can we create synthetic ambience – were the diversity is artificial and arbitrary?

Most people would find it difficult to consider the second two options, but is this just sentimentality? We are surrounded by examples of both artificial and synthetic ambience daily, television being the most prevalent, and the

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

58

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

use of virtual reality in video games another more controversial example from an ethical standpoint. It may be the case that responses to virtual ambience and stimuli are more highly researched than our responses to natural stimuli due to the commercial interests of the highly lucrative game industry.

However, it is important to trust our instincts here; as Heerwagen et al identify, our intuitive preferences frequently articulate a deeper survival requirement. There is a fundamental difference between natural and ‘synthetic’ or ‘artificial’ stimuli. It lies in the ability for adaptive response and effect. In the case of the synthetic and the artificial, the ability of the system to react will be limited to the parameters initially programmed by the designer and the parameters of the designer himself, as a person. No matter how complex these interactions become in an ‘invented’ system they will ultimately be recursive. The unfathomable depth of diversity in nature, and the genetic history we carry of our evolutionary relationship with it, is impossible to fully comprehend or replicate. The importance of this relationship in stress reduction and heath, in the most universal sense,

Figure 11: ‘Virtual nature’: a trick with mirrors.

Image from Eliasson’s WEATHER PROJECT at the Tate Modern, November 2003 (the author, 2003)

is immeasurable. It appears that the effect of this relationship in our lives is so obvious that we are blind to it.

Eliasson’s Weather Project, currently on exhibition at the Tate Modern, communicates this message with arresting effect. In a true example of ‘virtual nature,’ an artificial sun has been created involving a trick with mirrors that easily could have been staged by ‘the wizard of OZ’ himself.

As fascinating as the public’s sun worshipping response (seen in figure 9)

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

59

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

to the most visited exhibition since the opening of this museum is the research documented by the artist and others in the exhibition catalogue. It is interesting to note Eliasson’s use of the term ‘mediation’ in his description of the city as the ‘interface’ or littoral zone between its inhabitants and nature. An excerpt:

“More than any other element in the history of spatial awareness, the weather

Figure 12: ‘Synthetic ambience,’ images from Eliasson’s Weather Project at the Tate Modern, November 2003 (the author, 2003)

and climate have been central to deciding the location of cities, the development of urban strategies and the forms and structures of habitation…

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

60

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Every city mediates its own weather. As inhabitants, through our progressive experience of city space, we have grown accustomed to the weather as mediated by the city. We experience the weather through the ‘city filter’…These range from hyper-mediated (or representational) experiences such as the television weather forecast, to more direct and tangible experiences like simply getting wet while walking down the street on a rainy day. A level between the two extremes would be sitting inside, looking out of a window. The window, as the interface and boundary of one’s tactile engagement with the outside, mediates one’s experience…”

(Eliasson 2003) Perhaps the most significant aspect of our growing tendency to replace natural ambience with the artificial and synthetic are the energy demands of this approach.

“We have made a strong case for environmental diversity – is it justified and if so how is it to be delivered…(?)...Rendering this question especially relevant is the fact that the majority of global energy use is used to reduce the impact of the natural environment on us… (or to replace aspects of the natural environment that we miss, a ‘multiplicity of associated stimuli.’

Eliasson’s WEATHER PROJECT, wittingly or unwittingly, represents the folly in this behaviour)

This suggests that the answer to the question could make a major contribution to the sustainability, as well as to the health and well-being of people…It is hoped that this paper…will help make the case for a new field of cross-disciplinary study, bringing physics, biology, psychology and

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

61

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

sociology, into the architecture and engineering of the built environment�.

(Baker 2002, parenthesis the author)

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

62

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Adaptation or Addiction

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

63

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Green buildings, grey occupants “It is a person-centred architecture where the context of the centring is the natural world and the building is seen only as a mediator. And the contextual awareness does not stop at the site boundary; it is reflected in a concern for the global environment – the choice of materials and a responsible attitude to the use of energy and other resources (Baker, 2002)

This clearly articulated definition of ‘green’ architecture refers to the altruistic vision of design mentioned by Heerwagen where social and organisational systems are integrated in the holistic design of a building that communicates the ethic it stands for.

At the same time the quote exposes the cultural obstacles to a healthy interactive relationship with nature alluded to in the previous three sections. Though the problem may well only be semantics, the suggestion that we need a ‘mediator’ implies a need to protect or defend our position in relation to a hostile natural world. This quote, taken out of context, most certainly does not communicate what Baker intended, but the language he has used belies how deeply this position is entrenched in our psyche, as Eliasson describes:

“…we are aware that mediation can be, and to some extent always is, inflicted upon us through our surroundings (e.g.: our Architecture and Planning). If mediated via a third party with intentions that might deviate from our own, our surroundings can obscure our means of social, moral and ethical responsibility. This happens when, in our ongoing negotiation

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

64

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

with space, we are led to believe that something is less mediated than it is.

In other words, when there is discrepancy between the levels of mediation experienced by our consciousness and our physical body. Consequently, one could argue that what happens is a displacement of our consciousness, a displacement in time (as defined by natural cycles), or rather out of time.

One might mistakenly take a situation for granted as a ‘natural’ state of things, being unaware of the constructions lying behind this situation”.

(Eliasson 2003, parenthesis the author)

Though the elegant solar driven efficiency of a sailing vessel is often used to communicate the aims of bioclimatic design, our singular concentration on energy ‘harnessing’ is still programmed to achieve the bland consistency of Fanger’s ‘universal optimum’. This design brief tends to obscure any potential for the adaptive relationship essential in successful navigation where the sailor is an integral part of the system. The multisensorial benefits of the sailing experience are often conspicuously lacking in the mechanically deployable design of bioclimatic buildings.

When working in relation to nature, substance is gained through an ongoing, emergent process. Each experience is dynamic, reliant on a complex system of relationships, and although the departure and arrival points may always be the same, the journey is always different, the behavioural element being as important as the logistics.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

65

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Again we return to the enrichment of the ‘adaptive’ experience and the multifaceted benefits built into the intuitive action of opening a window as demonstrated in the TEACH and Cullinan projects where students manually adjusted the building climate and enjoyed learning in the process, discussed further in the conclusion.

Exposure to the power and inconsistency present in nature in the extreme provides a test of one’s wits and ability. On a less dramatic level it offers an ‘outside of self’ experience, a benefit often referred to in therapeutic horticulture. A healthy respect for forces greater than us promotes a sense of humility, a useful quality for application in many areas of our lives, but most importantly in design. Surely this is one of the reasons why the Greeks considered this lesson important enough to incorporate it into a goddess. From our contemporary state of remove we increasingly choose to visit wild places and experience the humbling11 sensation of awe, bordering on fear (as described by Nietzche).

The multifaceted psychological basis for health and productivity in relationship to place has hardly been explored. A limited number of postoccupancy surveys are produced and, as discussed previously, our testing

11 “Humiliation is a perpetual risk in the world of men. It is not unusual for our will to be defied and our wishes frustrated. Sublime landscapes do not therefore introduce us to our inadequacy.

Rather, to touch on the crux of their appeal, they allow us to conceive of a familiar inadequacy in a new and more helpful way. Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.” (De Botton, 2002)

methodology has not been designed sensitively enough to guide us toward a better understanding of this phenomenon. If the uniformity we strive for is an unnatural state and fails to provide the ingredients necessary to generate a sense of well-being, the motivation behind environmental design needs to be re-aligned.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

66

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

In a passionate statement Portoghesi blames our obsession with the technical on our philosophical grounding and the Cartesian split that ultimately led to modernism, calling for a ‘listening, feminine’, architecture.

Heerwagen tackles the reactionary aspect of our green strategy when she refers to “grey occupants …in buildings that ‘green’ individual systems rather than the environment as a whole,” emphasising the social and organisational aspects. Baker stresses that human tolerance ranges diversely in relation to place, context, and mood, with higher tolerances when adaptive opportunity is present.

In fact all the issues relating to our need for diversity described in previous sections could be explained by the biological theory of autopoesis, the strategic activity involved in evolution, and the original learning process, as

by Maturana and Varela in the Santiago Theory, to be elaborated on further in the next section. Our need to synchronize our ‘biological clock’ with circadian rhythms could be used as an example to conceptualise the relationship described by this theory.

“According the concept of autopoesis, a living system couples to its environment structurally, i.e. through recurrent interactions, each of which triggers structural changes in the system. For example, a cell membrane continually incorporates substances from its environment into the cell’s metabolic processes. An organism’s nervous system changes its connectivity with every sense perception.” (Capra, 2002 p 30)

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

67

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Our need to learn in relation to our environment, and adapt, has always been a fundamental aspect of our existence from a molecular level up. If this is the case, the theory of autopoesis could be used to analyse the logic behind what we now call ‘preferences.’ The theory of biophilia (and biophobia) could be considered the study of another level in this process, one that is focused on human survival needs in relation to our longstanding relationship with nature.

Testing a cocktail of parameters Socio-biological theory is arguing that the need to adapt in relation to nature, as our support system, is a basic requirement of life. If so, it is vital to ask why our preference for natural ‘ambience’ has been internalised so deeply into our subconscious that we find ourselves fearing it as mere sentimentality and feel the need to perform tests, and develop theories, to justify its existence or replacement.

The answer must be a cultural one. Architecture and planning are the ultimate example of artificial and synthetic ambience on an environmental scale, now designed to support the steady growth of urbanization, in a direct ‘cause and effect’ relationship with receding biodiversity.

This considered, one could argue that almost 60% of the global population are primarily adapting in relation to manmade environments (cement, steel, and glass). Our experience within this recursive cycle may explain the detachment that has led to our blinkered belief in the technical, artificial, and synthetic, and our addictive dependence on ‘human’ solutions.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

68

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Evidence of a diminished ability to think outside the box can be found in our testing methodology. Most of the documentation evaluating human responses to nature and landscape by Ulrich, Heerwagen, Kaplan, et al has been performed using two-dimensional testing material (e.g. photographs, slides, paintings) making it similarly defective to that of Fanger. Again, adaptive response was not factored in.

In this case the dissimilarity to reality went further, as multi-sensorial threedimensional material was substituted with exclusively visual, twodimensional, material (presented in laboratory conditions!). Additionally, it is important to clarify that photographs, and paintings, are, in fact, human interpretations of nature, or ‘virtual’ nature. For this reason their use in testing is complicated further by the subject’s personal associations with the medium, precipitating unreliable results.

Although the reductive approach in testing has been productive in many areas of science it should be argued that this approach may not be appropriate in studies that involve behavioural elements. Anthropologist Gregory Bateson has compared this mistake to the use of hedgehogs and flamingos in the game of croquet in Alice in Wonderland. Heerwagen expresses her dissatisfaction:

“Despite the intuitive appeal of “prospect refuge” theory…(the theory that we prefer a view from within shelter with a view of any oncoming threat)…research on refuge preferences has produced some mixed results (Woodstock, 1982). This is partially due to the fact that it is difficult to

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

69

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

assess refuges in photographs (the preferred medium for landscape studies). A cluster of bushes or a thick stand of trees is certainly a refuge once one is inside, but they may be hazardous to approach, and they also block potential views in a photograph. The use of behavioural analysis to assess responses to a refuge may yield quite different results, in part, because one may have to experience a refuge to appreciate its value” (Orians and Heerwagen, as in Barklow, Cosmides, Tooby, 1992)

As discussed in with regard to ‘virtual nature’, flaws in the test expose the limitations of the individual/s who designed it. Gregory Bateson12 and fellow anthropologist Margaret Meade observed this phenomenon fifty years ago in their studies of primitive cultures. They became concerned that the ethical and cultural programming of the researcher most certainly coloured and more often limited the validity of the research (an example of this was mentioned earlier in relation to Darwin’s exchange with an indigenous native). For this reason they called for an open-ended research

12 Gregory Bateson, son of a biologist, began his career as an anthropologist in Bali and New Guinnea in the forties. Over the years his disparate projects included psychiatric work with schizophrenia under the title of ethnologist (cultural anthropologist), exploring communication with dolphins, and early work in the formulation of cybernetics .. After thirty years of experience in a diverse range of seemingly unrelated projects Bateson finally grasped the hypothesis that would pull his life’s work together and became one of the first to intentionally experiment with biological models as a philosophical framework in the development of “systems” thinking.

framework that acknowledged (as much as possible) these limitations. It entailed: 1. The honest presence of the researcher (his cultural and ethical leanings, and their influences on the subject) in the research.

2. A process driven approach (allowing openings for the study to break free of the limitations of the researcher), rather than a goal oriented approach (which would hone the information to a specific conclusion), the difference between proving a theory and observation (Bateson, G, 1972).

The ability to design appropriate tests reflects the maturity and cultural

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

70

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

make up of the researcher. Our search for the ‘universal optimum’ is not limited to pinpointing our thermal requirements; it has infiltrated the whole of contemporary culture. As much as is possible we edit out discomfort and ugliness. Though we are beginning to realize that the blanket installation of predictability and convenience in our urban lifestyle is having serious repercussions in the biosphere, we are slower to see how this attitude is affecting our own personal ‘system.’ Taking Bateson’s theory to the extreme one might argue that a two-dimensional culture will produce a two-dimensional researcher who will produce two-dimensional tests.

This may be why Ulrich’s 1984 study, ‘View through a window may influence recovery from surgery’ has struck such a deep chord across diverse disciplines. Although it focused on the visual, the test was carried out in a ‘real’ situation with accurate parameters. It was holistic and contextual in nature, and appears to realign us with a primal need.

The popularity of the test may lie in the fact that it breaks set from our addiction to the clinical cartesian approach (body separate from mind), providing learning that is reinforced by and builds on previous learning (genetic memory). This syndrome is what Bateson has called ‘deutrolearning’

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

71

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

The biological model Over the past forty years the use of biological models to explain the form, process and organization of systems has gathered momentum, generating a fertile cross-disciplinary area of collaborative research and development.

Heerwagen has remarked that the most important function of the biophilia (or biophobia) hypothesis has been its provision of a structure upon which to hinge research. Before Wilson presented his theory random studies on aesthetics and preferences were taking place but no cohesion was possible.

All knowledge seeking begins with the initial ‘shock’ of the unfamiliar, whether physical or conceptual; it is at this moment that discomfort, conflict, comparison and learning take place, stimulating the adaptive process. The field of biology itself is unusually multidisciplinary and one of the few frontiers left where we are still routinely ‘shocked’ by nature first hand.

A fresh understanding of biological concepts and principles has inspired new areas of research across many disciplines: science, philosophy, and mathematics included. The application of biological theory in the field of design has prepared a new space for projects that emulate aspects of natural systems and often employ them in working partnerships. These developments strengthen the proposition that an adaptive relationship with nature is still a significant, and perhaps our primary, creative resource, essential to our intellectual and, as vitally, our emotional, development.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

72

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Autopoesis The mention of our ‘emotional’ development is a key element in the argument for the utilization of biological theory as a guide to explore our multidimensional needs. The way in which biological concepts will perform with identical efficiency in a philosophical context to describe our ‘nature’ is striking. In fact our customary use of the word nature to describe behaviour is an immediate reference to this intimate relationship.

An example of this is represented by the theory of autopoesis. When defending the importance of nature as teacher in design Portoghesi refers to the primordial and universal logic behind form, ‘expression mobility,’ changing, or designing, for survival. Autopoesis is a model of the adaptive logic as used in the evolutionary design process by living systems. It works on two levels and is continually in motion:

Cyclical or self-renewal: Every living organism continually renews itself, as its cells break down and build up structures, and tissues and organs replace their cells in continual cycles. In spite of this ongoing change, the organism maintains its overall identity (form), or pattern of organization.

Linear or evolutionary: Developmental changes (genetic) that take place continually over time, either as a consequence of environmental influences or as a result of the system’s internal dynamics.

Both the cyclical and linear aspects of autopoesis in living systems are dependent on recurrent interactions with their environment for structural

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

73

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

coupling in an adaptive process. The phrase homo ‘faber / homo fabricatus’ could be considered a philosophical interpretation of ‘Structure determination’:

“Continual structural changes in response to the environment – and consequently continuing adaptation, learning and development – are key characteristics of the behaviour of all living beings…an organism records previous structural changes, and since each structural change influences the organism’s future behaviour, this implies that the behaviour of the living organism is dictated by its structure…(or) ... structure determined.”

Maturana and Varela use autopoesis to explain the development of intelligence in living systems in their Santiago Theory of Cognition, uniting science, psychology, and culture:

“Cognition… is not a representation of an independently existing world, but rather a continual bringing forth of the world through the process of living…The relationship between mind and brain, therefore, is one between process and structure. Moreover, the brain is not the only structure through which the process of cognition operates. The entire structure of the organism participates in the process of cognition, whether or not the organism has a brain and a higher nervous system.” (Maturana and Varela as in Capra 2002)

Cyclical and linear patterns and the interactive/interdependent relationship they depend on are mirrored in a variety of forms and intensities throughout society.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

74

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

The cyclical is represented by our need to recreate new versions of the familiar as represented in symbolism, mythology, metaphor, and analogy, used in human communication (language/art) and design (architecture/technology). The comforting effect of fractals, holons, and metamorphic forms may trigger our memory of this (similar but developing) characteristic and link us to our historical relationship with nature.

Our need to realign ourselves with circadian rhythms is just one example of our physical dependence on the cyclical. As mentioned earlier, these relationships may be present on many levels not yet understood by us (Young, 1988). Bateson’s theory of ‘deutro-learning’ and the biophilia hypothesis, where behavioural experience reinforces established genetic learning, are more complex versions of this concept.

As individuals, and as a society, our innate desire to advance at all cost can be seen as a reflection of the linear or evolutionary aspect of the autopoesis.

At present, western culture would appear to be concentrating on this aspect of the adaptive process over the cyclical, as present in our concentration on economic growth/development and our fixation on technological progress.

A spin off benefit of our return to the study of nature’s design principles could be the ‘outside of self’ perspective. This may generate the philosophical shift Portoghesi and Wines feel will be essential for the advancement of green architecture toward a position of ‘structural coupling’ with the environment, what Portoghesi has called, ‘expression mobility’, or, as defined for this paper, the littoral zone.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

75

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Time

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

76

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Is convenience the enemy?

As demonstrated in its most extreme form by evolution, the ability to design ‘in relationship’ requires time, is benefited by an archive of experience, and depends on an interactive relationship with the surrounding environment for feedback. Yet, in contemporary western society, there seems to be an inbuilt resistance against looking back and rethinking a design process. The assumption is that an application of increasingly sophisticated technology will ensure a swift and efficient solution. As mentioned previously, this could be considered a legacy of our recent recursive learning experience, shaped by the urban environment.

The pressures of our contemporary lifestyle demand an immediate solution to problems. This often leads to the domino effect, in a series of decisions based on crisis management, which may only address individual aspects of a problem, and ultimately extend the life of a flawed concept. In western culture convenience is equivalent to time and money saved and immediately conjures up an image of gadgetry. We seem to feel we have only two choices, the high tech solution or a retrograde step back to earth dwelling, but the linear characteristic of evolution, as demonstrated by autopoesis, always pushes us forward. Going back is not a natural step for living organisms.

At the same time it has been documented that less gadgetry, or more adaptive opportunity, is preferred, gives purpose, pleasure, and allows the individual to experience multidimensional feedback that leads to learning and a sense of well-being (Dudek, Baker, Heschong, Cullinan, et al). This makes sense when you acknowledge that, in nature, adaptive opportunity

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

77

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

is the most fundamental feature of the design (creative) process and cognitive development, both basic human needs.

The element of time signifies a crucial point of difference in our design methodology as relative to nature. In nature time (design + labour = form) is abundant and materials are expensive and limited13.

In our industrially led culture, time (design+ labour = form) is expensive and materials are considered relatively cheap and inexhaustible, although this attitude is beginning to change with increased environmental awareness and the advent of concerns around our dependence on dwindling reserves of fossil fuel.

13 “In nature shape is cheaper than material…manifested in the remarkably high performance, both absolute and specific, of biological materials (wood is one of the most efficient of materials: antler bone is tougher than any man-made ceramic composite). This is achieved, not by high performance components but by the degree of detail and competence in their design and construction…animals have to work hard to win their raw materials…but their control over the assembly and shaping is much more complete than ours…cellular feed-back mechanisms direct the accretion of material to places where it is most needed, resulting in adaptive structures.” (Vincent as in Beukers and van Hinte, 1999)

Observing how nature uses time and the presence of obstacles to its advantage in an adaptive process has inspired a new realm of systems based design methodologies. Where our more recent use of nature as inspiration in design has concentrated on form, these principles and strategies are focusing on the study of the processes and organization within nature, hence the necessity to develop new terminology for what has been a historic relationship. The origin and outcome of these relatively new fields varies but their principles (a categorisation of natural functions) overlap and are unified in their philosophical foundation.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

78

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Permaculture: PERMAnent AgriCULTURE: “the conscious design and maintenance of sustainable human settlements and agriculturally productive systems which have the diversity, stability, resilience, and creativity, of natural ecosystems – cultivated ecosystems.” (Gamble, 2003),

Biomimicry: an in-depth study and mechanistic emulation of natural design solutions on a variety of scales from the molecular up.

Ecological Engineering: Sustainable infrastructure (e.g. waste systems, roads, energy systems, etc.) designed to work in partnership with the local topography, biodiversity, and social systems.

Living Technologies: Hybridised versions of natural ecosystems used in the design of task-oriented mesocosms with robust self-organizing characteristics.

Permaculture, biomimicry, ecological engineering, and living technologies have emerged as designated fields of study over the last thirty years. All, in their own way, endeavour to address aspects of the challenge, as set by Ian McHarg in 1991 (as in introduction), to create a synthesis of physical, biological and social process in the establishment of ‘human ecology.’ The following table shows the overlapping qualities of these four methodologies, which embody the “aboriginal view that a symbiotic relationship with nature means becoming part of its fabric, not resisting its forces” (Wines, 2000). It is interesting to note the presence in this scale of several of the ‘preferred’ design features previously mentioned by Kaplan, Heerwagen, Ulrich et al (diversity, scale, natural light, communication, etc.):

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

79

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Design Strategies Based on Biological Principles Permaculture

Biomimicry

Ecological Engineering

Living Technologies

Gamble and Evans, 2003

Beynus, 2003

Van Bohemen, 2002

Todd and Josephson, 1996

Diversity

Variety

Competition Diversity is the basis of the resilience of ecosystems

Mineral diversity Animal diverstiy

Edge Effect

Communication

Symbiosis Buffer zones Corridors or connections

Biological exchanges beyond the mesocosm Steep Gradients High Exchange Rates Periodic and Random pulsed exchanges

Energy Planning

Solar Energy

Use of energy from the sun and other natural resources Energy does not produce any waste matter

Solar-based photosynthetic foundations

Self-reliance An ecosystem does not produce and waste matter – material is continually recycled through the system.

Recycling systems to channel the flow of waste towards other processes, multiple use, downcycling

Nutrient reservoirs

Sufficiency

Nutrient cycling

Benign manufacture Waste equals food Death is part of life

Microcosm, mesocosm, macrocosm , relationship

Cellular design and the structure of mesocosms

Scale

Modularity Right proportion

Biological Resources

Self assembly

Incorporation into natural systems

Microbial communities

Multiple Elements

Differenciation Community

Application of the link between patterns processes and design

Mineral diversity Animal diversity

Multiple Functions

Smart design

Thinking about linking functions.

Incorporation into the socialcultural context, whereby ecological principles are put on an equal footing with social and technical basic assumptions

Minimum number of sub-ecosystems

Natural Succession

Realism Feedback Conservatism Resilience Stewardship Place based

Less displacement of problems in time or space Beginning of the pipeline approach

Relative Location

Resourcefulness

Decentralized solutions

? (Lacking in 1996 in tank systems. Incorporated in new restorer technologies!)

Figure 13: Design strategies based on biological principles table constructed by the Author. (Gamble and Evans, 2003, Beynus, 2003, Van Bohemen, 2002, Todd and Josephson, 1996)

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

80

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Perma(nent) culture The successful application of any of these systems lies in the adaptive process of observation, and response, and in particular, observing and responding in relation to nature as mentor. This skill is visualized in its broadest sense by permaculture, a commonsense approach to human ecology, merging human, animal, and plant requirements into a balanced, but flexible, system of cohabitation. Although permaculture was inspired by the traditional farming cultures of Asia, India, and Africa, the practice (or, equally, philosophy) was established 25 years ago in Australia and mirrors the aboriginal concept of ‘chameleon meaning,’ a “genetic code of territoriality’, where shelter (settlement) draws sustenance from its immediate surroundings and, as a result, is in a constant state of renewal”.

Permaculture principles are applicable to any scale or circumstance (balcony, farm, city, wilderness), as are its skills. The cyclical design sequence is holistic in its application, taking into account every element contained in the system (>identify > investigate > evaluate > list possibilities > research alternatives > concept design > implementation > observe > review, revision >). Location (zone), pattern, and observation (feedback), are integral and repetitive components in a process that aims for flexible (adaptive) long-term solutions. A revised sense of time is derived from nature where the multidimensional approach may or may not be time consuming in the short term, but is time and resource efficient in the long term, avoiding malfunction and subsequent revision. Although this philosophy has primarily been used in an agrarian context it could equally well be applied to architecture and planning.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

81

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Ecological Succession Ecosystem Attributes

Developing Stages Type 1

Mature Stages Type 3

Food chain

Linear

weblike

Species diversity

Low

High

Body size

Small

Large

Life cycles

Short, simple

Long, complex

Growth strategy (how to multiply)

Emphasis on rapid growth (r-selection)

Emphasis on feedback control (k-selection)

Production (body mass and offspring)

Quantity

Quality

Internal symbiosis (cooperative relationships)

Underdeveloped

Developed

Nutrient conservation (closed-loop cycling)

Simple

Complex

Pattern diversity (vertical canopy layers and horizontal patchiness)

Simple

Complex

Biochemical diversity (such asplant-herbivore "arms races")

Low

High

Niche specializations (jobs in ecosystem)

Broad

Narrow

Mineral cycles

Open

Closed

Nutrient exchange rate between organisms and environment

Fast

Slow

Role of detritus (dead organicmatter) in nutrient regeneration

Unimportant

Important

Inorganic nutrients (minerals such as iron)

Extrabiotic

Intrabiotic

Total organic matter (nutrients tied up in biomass)

Small

Large

Stability (resistance to external perturbation)

Poor

Good

Entropy

High

Low

Information (feedback loops)

Low

High

Figure 14: Ecological Succession table adapted from Braden R. Allenby and William E. Cooper, “Understanding Industrial Ecology from a Biological Systems Perspective”, Total Quality Environmental Management, Spring 1994, pp.

343-354 (as in Bueynus, 1997)

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

82

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

In nature expense is measured by the amount of materials used to produce the energy required. In what might be viewed as laziness, but is actually a supreme example of energy efficiency, design intelligence is governed by an acute sense of ‘necessity’, maximizing the productivity of every input

Figure 15: Examples of the modules in Odum’s energy circuit language and a diagram of "Man in a system of industialized, high-yield agriculture. Energetic inputs include flows of fossil fuels which replace the work formerly done by man, his animals, and the network of animals and plants in which he was formerly nursed”.

(Odum, 1971)

and output. ‘Ecological succession’, the process through which ecosystems mature, can be used to distill and illustrate this process. In the last ten years this model has been successfully used as a tool in the development of industrial ecosystems. The table below compares type one, a transient meadow ecosystem, to the type three stage, a mature forest where energy flows are maximised.

Howard T. Odum’s book, In Environment, Power, and Society , provides a graphic system for diagramming the energy (power) flows evident in the table above. Written in 1971 (the time of the first oil crisis) this book attempts to regroup and acknowledge all forms of energy as the basic currency in an economic system. Using a style similar to electrical mapping, these diagrams illustrate the degrees of complexity present in the symbiotic relationships between natural and manmade systems. His work gives weight to the efficiency of biologically based design strategies/principles (as in table 14) and energy factoring as a foundation for design.

Here we return to the importance of the littoral zone. All of the biologically based design principles and strategies described previously are pushed into accelerated activity at the boundary between two systems where they both stimulate and support each other, influencing productivity in relation to

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

83

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

time. In fact, many of these characteristics are properties exclusive to the boundary environment where edge and relative location are maximised.

To give a physical illustration to what might appear abstract, brief descriptions of ‘edge’ and ‘relative location are given :

Edge Edge creates active surface area between two systems. This facilitates the opportunity for communication between elements, accelerates exchange levels, produces fertility, and promotes learning.

Two very different examples of how more ‘edge’ can produce a more efficient use of time and space follow.

In the design of living technologies John Todd finds that the edge effect can accelerate productivity dramatically in waste processing and restorer technology, achieving performances rarely found in conventional systems.

This is achieved because the microbial communities learn quickly when ‘shocked’, adapt to new challenges, and acquire higher levels of functionality in order to survive. (Todd and Josephson 1996)

Lisa Heschong refers to this phenomenon from a very different perspective with surprisingly similar results. She mentions that there is not enough ‘edge’ in contemporary architecture to provide the necessary benefits of natural lighting in schools. As previously mentioned, studies have shown a seven to forty percent increase in productivity from students working in day

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

84

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

lit conditions. Again edge equals accelerated productivity and learning.

(Heschong, as in Collaborative for High Performance Schools 2002).

Relative Location The search for a building material with the appropriate thermal qualities for a specific climate could provide a simple demonstration of ‘relative location.’ In this permaculture principle as many needs as possible are met by what is available locally or, in the reverse scenario, one positions one’s self as close as possible to what is most essential. In many cases this place driven resourcefulness can produce an integrated solution almost intuitively14.

It is remarkable how local natural materials automatically supply the thermal properties required plus produce knock-on benefits that manage other important environmental considerations, e.g. the healthier environments achieved through the use of natural materials, and the ability to limit ‘embodied’ costs through reduced transport of materials (reducing costs, fuel use, and pollution).

By attempting to understand the vernacular use of a material, we again

14 “Clay and stone…high heat capacity materials,…are plentiful in the desert….adobe, mud and rubble masonry, and thick clay mortar on twig mesh are found in the American Southwest, in the Middle East, and across Africa from the Nile delta to the Gold Coast (where thermal mass is required to maintain thermal comfort). Conversely, hot, humid tropics…(are abundant in)… light materials such as bamboo and reeds…(which)…avoid significant reradiation of heat (and facilitate ventilation)…A particularly ingenious response to climatic needs is seen in the Eskimo igloo in the cleaver use of the insulating qualities of snow…the value of this (snow block) shell is further improved by a glaze of ice that the heat of an oil lamp and the bodies of occupants automatically add to the inner surface. This ice film seals the tiny pores in the shell and…acts as a radiant –heat reflector…finally, the Eskimo drapes the interior of his snow shell with skins and furs, thereby preventing the chilling of his body by either radiant or conductive heat loss to the cold floor and walls.” (Marston, J, as in Heschong, 1979)

stumble on the historical relationship behind ‘preference’ in the intimate relationship between elements and the function of survival. The traditional materials and techniques of a locality represent a body of distilled memory, archiving generations of successful utilization of a material for the task at hand, that can lead us to multipurpose solutions.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

85

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architechture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Cultural integration The principles itemized by the new wave of ‘systems’ based design methods do not represent breakthrough discoveries and should not be viewed as dogma. Versions of these techniques guide, often unwittingly, all successful designers. An extreme illustration of the full integration of these principles is demonstrated in the lifestyle of indigenous tribes who do not have the word ‘work’ in their vocabulary, but exist solely in response to ‘edge’ activity.

Each of these methodologies is merely a stage in the interpretation of a universal knowledge that has always been freely available to us through observation. The obstacle has been our concept of time in relation to design, the reality of which changed abruptly during the industrial revolution, from the model used by nature to the ‘industrial’ version dominant today.

The new systems based design methodologies are leading us back to where we started, the natural model. The difference between this moment in time and previous periods is cultural. We now have the advantage of a trans-contextual perspective (having stepped back and tried independence from nature), more sophisticated appreciation of technology, and the urgency of our ecological crisis. This brings us back to the prime factor in the adaptive process, ‘necessity’.

“Let us beware of saying there are laws in nature, There are only necessities: there is no one in command, no one to obey, no one to

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architechture as the Littoral Zone

86

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

transgress. When you realize there are no goals or objectives, then you realize too, that there is no chance: for only in a world of objectives does the word ‘chance’ have any meaning.” (Nietzsche as in Wines 2000) Here Nietzsche has touched on observations made by Bateson and Meade.

In pure research, as in nature, goals and objectives must be put aside to free the power of observation. At the same time this does not imply anarchy. The most vital lesson nature has to impart is humility, the value of limits, and the existence of an implicate order that is greater and more complex than the sum of its parts:

“that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.” De Botton, 2002)

This aspect of the psychological benefit of ‘the importance of a view’ was not touched by Ulrich’s research.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

87

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Nature Redefined

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

88

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

In the chapter Adaptation for Survival, in Nature: Mother of Invention, Paturi describes the ability of plants to adapt to life on the ‘edge,’ in a diverse range of hostile environments from the lip of volcanic craters to existence in frozen gravel under the grinding pressure of glaciers for thirty-three uninterrupted months, displaying phenomenal technical skill15.

The Irish animal ecologist, Dr. Sean Nee remarks that research into biodiversity today is only as advanced as astronomy was in Galileo’s day, concentrating, almost exclusively, on what is visible by the naked eye. Animals, fungi, and plants represent only a tiny fraction of the Eucarya branch (organisms made up of cells with a nucleus), one of the three branches (the other two: Bacteria and Archaea, bacteria that live in extreme conditions) of our current version of the tree of life. The microbial communities that created and maintain living

15 (The biblical “burning bush” or) “Dittany (Dictamnus albus) grows sporadically around the Mediterranean and in Central Europe on dry, calcareous or volcanic soil… On hot windless days it discharges a highly volatile oil which can easily be set alight. This oil burns with a blue flame, without the bush being damaged in any way. In intense heat there may even be spontaneous ignition.

The biological significance of the oil exhalation (for which the plant possesses special glands) has not been exactly established, but we may conjecture that it is a case of ‘fighting fire with fire.’ Strangely enough, the emission of light inflammable oil effectively protects herbaceous plants against being burnt up in hot regions.

First, heat evaporation through the emission of oil lowers the temperature in the leaves; secondly, spontaneous combustion in great heat, where it ignites a carpet of dry grass, protects the plant against flames from fire in the vicinity, just as forest fires can sometimes be checked by a burnt-off strip”. (Paturi 1974)

conditions on earth, and are crucial to our existence, remain largely unexplored.

“Modern techniques and technology combined with a new interest in microscopic life by geologists, oceanographers and even civil engineers…are revolutionising things…(he predicts) We will find whole new lifestyles, (commenting that)… microbial communities have been living in rock,…pressurised water heated to 120 degrees…and that the dead sea is actually teeming with life.” (Nee 2003)

American biologist, John Todd, who has been studying microbial behaviour for thirty years in the development of ‘living technologies.’ agrees. Based

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

89

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

on his experience he believes we have only scratched the surface of what biological systems could teach us.

At the same time Todd would support Bateson and insist that if we approach our research into the microbial world with an agenda (goal, objective), solely regarding it as a source of technical information or spare parts, we will only repeat our previous mistakes. This is the fundamental lesson nature can offer as mentor, the experience of merging the ethical and technical in one action.

What follows are observations of littoral activity, cross-disciplinary research and development taking place today on the border between technology and nature, offering insights as to how an adaptive design process ‘shocked’ by exposure to nature can offer previously unimaginable multifunctional solutions.

The lateral characteristics of this work hint at the advantage of bringing “physics, biology, psychology and sociology, into the architecture and engineering of the built environment” (Baker 2002) for the redevelopment of architecture as a littoral zone of communication or fertile edge, strategically placed between the manmade and natural world, a ‘learning environment.’

Conflict and resolution Taking full advantage of the diversity found in areas of competition, nature uses conflict to lay its cards on the table, realize necessity, and find resolution. In this way conflict is not only good, it is essential, or ‘normal.’

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

90

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

With the advantage of new technology, we are beginning to observe more intimately, and subsequently understand, this cooperative phenomenon in nature better. Richard Mabey uses a description of the study of forest behaviour to illustrate:

“There is a new gateway into this virtually unexplored world, via airships that fly in inflatable plastic rafts, and float them down onto the canopy as softly as settling moths. Their crews have already discovered that, up in the heights, leaves have nothing to do with the raging competition that is the stereotyped vision of forest existence.

The growing tips of trees respect each other’s personal space, a phenomenon which has been touchingly christened “crown shyness”. Even Darwin saw competition and “the struggle for survival” as more of an abstract framework than a literal battle. The real business of struggle was resolved by cooperation, negotiation, adjustment, symbiosis, and general tacking.” (Mabey 2003)

In contrast, western culture generally regards conflict as a flaw to be edited out or treated as a disease. In the Netherlands, where nature is at a premium, conflict of interest regarding the use of land has reached crisis proportions. In response Delft University of Technology have applied nature’s strategy, taking adversity on as the incentive for progressive research into sustainable urban redevelopment. For four years, beginning in 1997, The Ecological City Research Programme has employed a multidisciplinary team to come up with an ambitious plan. “A factor 20

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

91

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

increase in the city’s environmental efficiency is aimed for by the year 2040, equalling a 95% reduction in environmental impact.” (Hendriks and Duijvestein 2002).

Hein Van Bohemen is one of the team, an engineer who works in the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works, and Water Management. The expansive brief of this project has led him to redefine his identity to that of an ‘infrastructural ecologist’. One of his discoveries has been that approximately 800 of the 1400 plant species found in the Netherlands grow on roadside verges, and approximately 1000 along railways16.

The discovery of this fascinating example of a littoral environment, with diverse life populating the area between two systems, has led him to a new

16 “(among these) less common and even fairly rare species have been found.

Approximately 160 plant species can be found almost exclusively in roadside verges. Roadside verges are clearly fulfilling a refuge function for a number of plant species…(as well as providing)…a suitable habitat for certain groups of creatures, including butterflies, grasshoppers, beetles, and dragonflies” (Van Bohemen, 2002).

interest in the cultivation of ‘edge’ environments, the de-fragmentation of nature (reconnecting nature disconnected by human infrastructure), and the concept of travel as an ‘experience’ of nature. In his research he is developing the practice of ‘visual ecology’, an aesthetic that will teach people about the value of nature and the symbiotic relationship between culture, nature, and design, through everyday experiences. He believes that artists have an important role to play in this process because of their keen sense of intuition.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

92

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Figure 16: Ecological engineering, the merging of infrastructure ecology, and art: A variety of images from Ecological City: Impressions (Van Bohemen, 2002)

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

93

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Van Bohemen quotes Wang and Yan (1998) emphasizing that the domination of separatism in our society must give way to the expression of competition, symbiosis, and self-reliance. He is a permaculturalist at heart, promoting the advantages of multipurpose solutions and the use of natural topography and material and energy flows, in a holistic design process. A very simple practical demonstration of this application in infrastructure is the use of existing structures (subterranean tunnels) and recycled natural materials (discarded tree stumps) to create tunnels that continue to fulfil human needs, but function equally well for certain fauna (amphibians,

Figure 17: Subterranean wildlife tunnel (Van Bohemen, 2004)

lizards, insects, and weasels).

It is significant to note that reestablishment of natural habitats where the design of infrastructure integrates with the local topography/geology, and facilitates defragmention of nature, almost assures a pleasing (human) aesthetic. The ironic aspect of this notion is that we rarely consider the ‘natural’ habitat of humans (ourselves!) in our urban landscape, which

Figure 18: Wildlife bridge: widely shaped at entry and exit to encourage use, cultivated with native flora to recreate the natural habitat of native fauna (Van Bohemen, 2004)

brings us full circle to the concept of using ‘aesthetics’ or ‘preference’ as a mechanism17 to assure survival:

If aesthetically pleasing environments are, in fact, ‘health inducing’ environments, an underlying governing factor or code of ethics is implied.

Limits A standard device of environmentalism is to claim that the human race

17 “(the creature) enters the world “programmed,” as it were, to seize the advantages offered by the environment while avoiding its disadvantages…This pattern of actions is indispensable. They must be put into operation if the creature is to survive, and this means that there must be some mechanism which ensures that there are. That mechanism is what we call, for want of a better word, “pleasure.” There are plenty of other words like “desire,” “drive,” or “libido,” which one may find employed in the literature. In plain language we do all these things on which our survival depends because we want to. That is the force which impels us to do so.” (Appleton as in Hidebrand, 1991)

alone has been endowed with the gift of reason and the ability to make decisions based on ethical imperatives. This rationale has been the logic

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

94

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

behind the guilt and responsibility we have felt as custodians of the planet18.

Socio-biologists and eco-psychologists make the assertion that our guilt regarding the environment is unproductive and unhealthy, responsible for the sense of detachment and feeling of disempowerment within society.

They suggest that re-establishing our position ‘within’ nature could release us from this burden and revitalize our perspective as a productive member of a greater system.

18 “We might like to think that, by exercising these choices, and in particular by being prepared to make personal sacrifices for the greater good, we are demonstrating our ability to rise above the brutish world of the wild, where the fittest survive and the meek are shown no mercy.

Tempting though it is to anthropomorphize this behaviour, there is very little likelihood that ethical choices are involved. Animals act in the way that will serve their interests best. Many kinds of cooperative or apparently selfless behaviour are surely programmed into the animal’s genetic make–up, because in the end these seemingly generous acts are beneficial to the chances of the individual’s genes being propagated.” (Ball 1999 p 233)

Mabey argues that we are not in fact so special, attempting to realign our assumptions, in his description of ‘crown shyness’ in the forest and nature’s use of conflict as a tool to instigate “cooperation, negotiation, adjustment, symbiosis, and general tacking”. In fact, in interactive populations animals often help or cooperate with others, animals with whom they have no apparent kinship, displaying a sense of being part of the larger ‘community’. This is a trait we often appear to have lost.

In response to criticism, biomimetics have become interested in the limits recognized in nature. As we begin to look more closely at natural systems on a microscopic level the temptation to continue manipulating nature, as has become our habit, to ‘encourage’ results, is ever present. Two contrasting outcomes of biomimetic research and development illustrate:

a) The injection of genetically modified fertilized golden orb weaver spider eggs into the wombs of goats to produce offspring who will ‘milk’ a

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

95

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

profuse amount of spider web silk essence, five times stronger by weight than steel. (Robbins 2002).

b) Decoding the microstructures on the surface of lotus leaves and moth’s eyes and developing methods to reproduce them on glass to create self cleaning surfaces (the ‘lotus’ effect) or microscopic daylight focusing structures (‘motheye’ effect) to redirect daylight into basements or catch light from several directions to increase the efficiency of photovoltaics. (Etsuler 2000)

Figure 19: ‘Lotus Effect’ self-cleaning lotus leaf microstructure.

(Phillip Morris as in Etsuler, 2000)

The latent ramifications of the first example are at the heart of the most important debate in science today. The second implies a safer ground that promotes ‘emulation,’ or the development of a symbiotic relationship with, nature rather than ‘modifying’ or ‘harnessing’, a fine line to negotiate.

John Paul Frazer feels that the difference between these two examples is best explained by categorizing observations of nature in relation to scale.

Micro scale providing ‘materials and parts,’ and macro scale providing organization and systems that guide the use of these parts and the

Figure 20: REM recording of a holographically produced self-cleaning surface (Fraunhofer ISE as in Etsuler, 2000)

restrictions nature would impose. As Bateson and Meade elucidate, the individual character of the designer/researcher, and the culture he has come out of, also has a critical bearing on the interpretation of these observations

Most of us would agree that limits must to be set, but it is extremely difficult to implement a blanket ethical structure that will spontaneously

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

96

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

probe into the implications of each project from the onset and guide the process. Nevertheless, nature does appear to do this, intuitively agreeing on what it will accept as ‘appropriate’ behaviour, allowing entropy to eliminate the unsuitable. Although we are present in this cycle, we appear to remain curiously ‘outside’ or ignorant of it.

Biomimetics research suggests that a solution to our dilemma might be found in the simple question:

What would nature do here?

(or, more importantly)

What would nature not do here?

For this to be enough we would need to cultivate a profound understanding of nature, not, as Nietzche and Todd insist, as a set of ‘laws’, or spare parts (as in example a)) but as a universal and innate sense of order.

This issue has implications for the whole of society, not just the scientist or designer. Wilson, Kaplan, Ulrich, et al use this as strong justification for more stringent preservation of ‘wild’ places, as the origin of all information, for research. They also argue for the need to bring biodiversity closer to the urban population, to stimulate environmental awareness and reduce the stress imposed on wilderness by tourism. On a much deeper level, they feel a more intimate relationship with nature may restore our innate sense of appropriate behaviour.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

97

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Some of the most innovative biomimetic discoveries are the result of respecting limitations observed in nature. One thing we do that nature doesn’t is, what Janine Beynus has termed, ‘heat, beat, and treat.’ The use of brute force is generally a given in our fabrication techniques. Yet by experimenting with this restriction we are now discovering methodologies previously considered impossible. One example of this is a potent glue that works underwater modelled on one secreted by blue mussels:

(it is)“based on cross linked protein molecules…But iron (found in sea water) is the curing agent that sets it solid…The glue – or a synthetic version of it – would be a valuable asset to surgeons. It is compatible with biological tissue, and forms a strong bond in wet conditions.”

(Hopkin 2004)

The argument in favour of ‘distributed energy’ generation (Lovins, 2002), as found in natural systems, is a good example of respecting nature’s solutions, and a poignant message today after the ‘outages’ in New York State and around the world due to overloaded centralized energy hubs.

Necessity “Forcing yourself to use restricted means is the sort of restraint that liberates inventing. It obliges you to make a kind of progress you can not even imagine in advance.” (Picasso as in Wines, 2000)

In their book, Lightness: the inevitable renaissance of minimal energy structures, Beukers and van Hinte put it differently: “The good kitchen uses

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

98

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

poverty as an inspiration”. In other words, restricted resources maximize the creative process. As mentioned previously, this principle strategy in nature is also considered a ‘given’ by any experienced designer. Today concern for our health is generally the only motivation for limiting intake for the general good of the system (dieting), yet design is at its most successful when it responds to ‘necessity’ effectively.

The life’s work of John Todd, biologist, agrarian, and designer of ‘living technologies’ illustrates a progressive consciousness of this principle over time.

In the research for his PhD in biology Todd was alarmed by the detrimental effect relatively low, legally accepted, levels of pollutants in water had on the memory of catfish. Subsequently, overwhelmed by the ‘Doom watch’ mentality of his first few jobs as an environmental consultant, Todd decided to take a more constructive approach to ecology and began experimenting with ecological engineering principles.

He was not alone in pursuing this direction. Several radical thinkers of the time (1970’s), among them, Buckminster Fuller, Felix Paturi (Nature – Mother of Invention – study of engineering in plant life), and Howard Odum (Environment, Power, and Society: the principles of energy and energy flow), were developing research that would support his work.

His focus ever since has been on the design of ‘living machines’ that employ a variety of ecosystem attributes and the cultivation of microbial communities in hybrid food production and waste processing systems.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

99

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Todd’s early designs display a tentative diversion from the prevailing engineering practices, materials and technologies of the day. There was a strong incentive for research into alternative energy sources at that time due to the oil crisis. Most of Todd’s systems were intended to run, as much as possible, on renewable energy sources, solar and wind. Yet, in his early work, nature was almost viewed as a source of spare parts ‘contained’ in geodesic glass structures. A variety of ecosystems (anaerobic, aerobic, aquatic) were placed in tanks reminiscent of test tubes, and linked with recognized technologies. There was logic in this cautionary approach, however. Todd found it difficult to win the confidence of funding agencies without some application of popular technical ‘gadgetry.’

Figure 21: Early examples of John Todd’s ‘living machines’ where eco-systems where controlled in ‘test tube’ environments (Brown, 2002)

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

100

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Was this gadgetry necessary? Over the years the inevitable accidents occurred. It was through these incidents, tests that Todd himself would never have orchestrated, that he discovered the true resilience of these systems, how microbial communities learned, and would adapt rapidly to extreme conditions clearing excessive levels of pollution, including PCBs and heavy metals (which could then be extracted and recycled!).

This situation was echoed in his career. As is common in research-led business, funding often fell through. Todd was often forced by circumstance to explore new directions with his work. He and his wife and business partner, artist/eco-psychologist, Nancy Todd, have been instrumental in their ability to accept change and continue to push forward with restorative system development.

Over the years their technologies have moved outdoors, merging with the landscape they sought to improve. An impressive example of this, their

Figure 22: Todd's sewage processing plant in Burlington Vermont, USA. More like a tropical rainforest, the opulent plant-life is beginning to escape from its tanks (photos by the author)

most exciting work to date, are the floating ‘restorer technologies’ which emulate the healing characteristics of fertile littoral communities that inhabit shoreline wetlands19.

19 Restorer Technology is borrowed from an analogous component in nature known as the floating island. These islands are formed as dense mats of vegetation – typically made up of cattails, bulrush, sedge, and reeds– that extend outward from the shoreline wetlands. As the water gets deeper the roots no longer reach the bottom, so they use the oxygen in their root mass for buoyancy, and the surrounding vegetation for support to retain their top-side-up orientation. The area beneath these floating mats is exceptionally rich in aquatic biota.

Eventually, storm events tear whole sections (sometimes several hectares) free from the shore. The islands migrate around a lake with changing winds, occasionally reattaching to a new area of the shoreline, or breaking up in heavy weather. …Floating islands act like kidneys in a system providing the oxygen rich surface area that keeps the ecosystem in balance during extreme Seasonal Fluctuations.”

(Ocean Arks International 2004)

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

101

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Figure 23: A selection of images from John Todd’s floating restorer technologies with examples of the native plant-life used in the reclamation process.(Ocean Arks, 2004)

“Restorers are an assembly of engineered ecologies incorporated into floating rafts to perform three main tasks. They can treat wastewater and sewage in constructed lagoons or canals. They can help maintain pond or reservoir health. Additionally, they are used to “restore” stressed or polluted bodies of water back to health. These “floating islands” are not only functional, they are also quite beautiful.

Acting as chemostats, Restorers utilize the widely recognized benefits of fixed bio-films to accelerate the natural processes found in a river, lake,

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

102

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

pond, or constructed lagoon by: Introducing oxygen and circulation to the stressed environment that often lacks sufficient oxygen-rich surface areas necessary to maintain a balanced ecology

Utilizing native higher plants and artificial medial as bio-film substrate to support rich microbial, algae, and animal communities

Acting as a chemostat and incubator by producing great volumes of beneficial microorganisms that flow into the surrounding water and feed on excess nutrients and organic pollutants

Providing opportunities for benthic communities to establish themselves in the bottom areas that were once oxygen poor.”

(Ocean Arks International 2004)

Restorer Technologies are capable of reclaiming lifeless bodies of water, but unlike the earlier ‘contained’ systems, they also are capable of carbon dioxide sequestration in urban areas (as suggested in ‘Greenbacks From Green Roofs: Forging a New Industry for Canada’). Todd’s pilot project in Baima China, reclaiming canals contaminated with sewage, is doing just this. His ultimate ambition is to bring a third element to the process, the cultivation of medicinal herbs as the ‘higher native plants,’ creating a marketable product.

Throughout his career, Todd’s ultimate objective has been to manifest nature’s most significant accomplishment, the conversion of waste into food, in compact agricultural systems for integration in the urban context.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

103

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

According to research recently released in the US it may soon be possible to add a fourth element to this process. It appears that microbes strip electrons off organic matter in order to consume it. These electrons can be harvested and used to generate electric current (Ball, 2004).

Todd’s natural reclamation processes, based on photosynthesis, enhance the landscape in which they are situated, integrate seamlessly, and are, inevitably, aesthetically pleasing. As Ulrich and research into therapeutic horticulture has demonstrated, the psychological benefits in the urban context would be dramatic. The aspect of ‘human restoration’ has not yet been documented in Todd’s analysis, although he certainly alludes to it.

“Living systems, whether plant or animal, can be a substitute for energy, hardware, and manufactured chemicals. There is an analog that we can find in the natural world to carry out functions that we currently carry out with brute force”.

…(The) marriage of nature and aesthetics encapsulates many of Todd’s ecological beliefs and designs…(as a result of his work, he hopes)…“The connections between other forms of life and our own lives will be rendered more visible” (Todd as in Brown, 2002)

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

104

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

The Littoral Zone

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

105

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

The emotional and psychological perspective that nature can offer, as educator, is rarely highlighted by the new cluster of systems based design strategies. Ulrich’s discovery in 1984 opened the door to an aspect of this when he explored the benefits provided by the observation of nature to physical health, inspiring its use as a clinical tool and an environment for interactive therapy. Nevertheless it primarily remains the responsibility of artists and philosophers to communicate the psychological and emotional benefits of exposure to nature.

The main theme of this paper is to argue that we have become increasingly estranged from nature. As a result we are in the process of adapting in relation to our own design (‘virtual’ or ‘artificial’ ambience), materials, and technologies, in a recursive manner.

Our pervasive ignorance regarding the intricate mystery and mastery found in natural systems, and our own role within them, is preventing us from truly understanding the potential of architecture, infrastructure, and planning, to meet our ‘survival needs’ in the fullest sense (integrating the social, psychological, physical, material, environmental, etc.).

Contrary to the history of architecture as craftsmanship, which began with apprenticeship to nature and produced tactile forms based on function, our design is now almost exclusively computer lead and visually dominant.

In a design process where we rarely handle materials, or engage in the deeper aspects of place, the ‘cocktail of parameters’ necessary for well-

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

106

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Figure 17 Greg Glynn's Embrionic House

being remain illusive. What inspiration we do glean from socio-biological systems today for application in architecture are more commonly translated into programming language, as demonstrated by the provision of coordinates for the algorithms used to manipulate (organic, zoomorphic, biomorphic) architectural form. The following description of Greg Glynn’s ‘blobitecture’ illustrates:

“A biotech aesthetic for an age that dreams of cloning humans and computing with bacteria, blobitecture springs form the computer, specifically from CAD/CAM systems, 3D modelling programs such as Maya and Catia, and the 3D –rendering programs, appropriately known as “blob” modellers. Using calculus to plot complex surface geometries at superhuman speed, these programs manipulate building blocks called “splines,” “meatballs,” and “Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines,” (nurbs, to the uninitiated) to create pulsing, protoplasmic forms.” (Dery 2002)

Though these programs emulate the evolutionary process present in nature

Figure 24: Greg Lynn's Embrionic House (in various stages of development) gained international attention at the 2000 Venice Biennale. (as in Dery, 2002)

they lack an intrinsic element, the DNA of shelter, the complex synaesthetic memory of humanity’s adaptive relationship with environment. Studies by Heschong, Portoghesi, Heerwagen, et al, suggest that vernacular

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

107

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

architecture contains a more accurate database, capable of generating a ‘behavioural,’ in contrast to a purely ‘genetic,’ model of adaptation20.

Human restoration The observation that ‘living’ technologies or ecologically engineered solutions, sensitively applied to assist nature in resolving crisis’, can almost intuitively match our aesthetic preferences mirrors research recognizing a genetically based human instinct favouring environments that have historically contained the elements necessary to sustain ‘life’.

20 “The main difference between the genetic and the behavioural levels of adaptation is this: mutations at the genetic level are not only aleatory, but also completely” blind”; they are not directed towards an end, and the survival of a mutation can not influence in the posterior mutations…In the behavioural level trials are also more or less random, but they are not completely “blind”…they are directed towards an end, and in the second, animals can also learn from the production of a trial. According to this, the swarm model could be compared to some extent with the behavioural model of adaptation…behavioural adaptation is in general an intensively active process: in the animal –especially in the play of the young animal - and even in the case of the plant, which investigates actively and constantly its environment” (Carranza Coates 2001)

Baker has commented on the paradoxical consequence of our desire to bring nature closer (plants made to suffer, as second-class citizens in the design strategy, while we extract enormous pleasure from their presence).

The research presented in this paper would imply that this situation indicates a serious flaw in our design strategy rooted in denial and displacement. Surely an environment that nurtures human health should also nurture plant life in a symbiotic balance.

If we were to aim to design our architecture for ‘human’ restoration, how we do we begin to define the guiding aesthetic?

The answers lie, as Todd implies, in rendering the connections between other forms of life and our own more ‘visible’ or, more precisely, ‘palpable’.

Bateson and the eco-psychologists insist that we bring clarity to our anthropocentric position, inserting the researcher back ‘inside’ the research. Portoghesi and Wines argue we need to engineer a philosophical

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

108

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

realignment to support a ‘feminine architecture’ with the ability to listen and respond. These are all qualities cultivated by life on the edge, in the ‘littoral zone.’

In contrast, we increasingly choose to live our lives at remove, ignorant of where the necessities for survival come from, and where our waste goes.

Or do we choose this, is this evidence of recursive thinking, perhaps we see no other option? The rise in depression alludes to an overriding futility wrought by our inability to contribute to the larger picture, as global issues become inescapable. Studies into the psychology of ‘need’ (Mazlow, MaxNeef, Daly and Cobb. Dag Hareide, Ruut Veenhoven, Michael Argyle, Michael Jacobs et al, as in McLaren, Bullock, and Yousuf, 1998) verify that in wealthier societies (as defined by the GPA) the quality of life has reached a plateau. Our sense of well-being has been dampened by concerns regarding social inequality, the environment, job dissatisfaction, and upwardly spiralling crime.

Signs indicate that we are in a period of transition. The repositioning of our culture in relation to nature may be happening in spite of us (represented in everything from evidence of climate change, to oil depletion, to the ‘outage’ in east coast America 15/8/03). This situation implies the logic in diverting our main focus from the simulation, prediction, and control, of a natural environment we cannot fully quantify, to better understanding the conditions necessary for human well-being. After all we are endowed with the best equipment for the job.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

109

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

The obvious omission in Fanger’s search for the ‘universal optimum’ and Heerwagen’s criticism of two dimensional testing, point to the need for research to be conducted within an ‘actual’ environment (place, time, and scale), with adaptive opportunity present against the environmental diversity of the ‘every day.’ In this case, Bateson’s rule would automatically apply, the researcher would, inevitably, be part of the research.

Distributed cognition How do we conduct the experiment?

If conceptualised as the littoral zone, “facilitating dialogue, exchange, and the adaptive relationship, between the manmade world and nature,” architecture, in its broadest sense, is the most appropriate scientific instrument with which to test human well-being.

It is possible to compare the design of a precision scientific instrument to the design of a building. Art and craftsmanship meet in the execution of both. The difference in design strategy and use might only be a philosophical one. If this is the case there is nothing stopping us from recognizing the opportunity. New methodologies for post occupancy testing of buildings could be developed based on the research Ulrich et al. In this way feedback could be integrated into the occupant’s system of use by following a cyclical process of reassessment (as in the permaculture design process).

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

110

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

From a social perspective, buildings also contain all the advantages of distributed cognition and constructionism21 offering new depth and scope to the testing. In a building, cognition or learning (the continual bringing forth of the world through the process of living in a relationship between ‘process’ and the entire structure of the individual in a participatory relationship) involves the distributed opinions of many individuals (occupants, community, society), all of which could contribute to an accurate vision of human health. Through this process a holistic definition of energy efficiency in relation to environment could be defined.

21 “Distributed constructionism extends constructionist theory, focusing specifically on situations in which more than one person is involved it the design and construction activities.

It draws on recent research in “distributed cognition” (salomon, 1994), recognizing that cognition and intelligence are not properties of an individual person but rather arise from interactions of a person with the surrounding environment (including other people and artefacts...Distributed constructionism asserts that a particularly effective way for knowledgebuilding communities to form and grow is through collaborative activities that involve not just the exchange of information but the design and construction of meaningful artefacts”.

(Resnick1996)

Michael Resnick’s experiments with the concept of ‘distributed constructionism’ in the work he does for the ‘Lifelong Kindergarten’ and ‘Epistemology Group’ at Medialab USA have taken a step in this direction.

In experimental educational projects he has asked children to build their own scientific instruments. The purpose in this is to:

“expand the traditional landscape of informal instrumentation design, and (on the other) intensify the individual relationship between user and instrument, making it possible to weave scientific inquiry into personally designed (or personally meaningful) artefacts and everyday activities” (Resnick, Berg, Eisenberg 2000)

Resnick’s asserts that investigations will arise naturally in the course of the design process and that these impromptu investigations will create more intimate links with scientific concepts. The intention of this hands-on approach, now well established in the field of sociology as ‘active research’, is to stimulate a healthy scepticism (through questioning the

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

111

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

accuracy of these ‘home made’ devices) and progress programming away from the “exclusive focus on simulation to a deeper involvement with the tangible world outside the computer screen”.

This methodology is reminiscent of points made earlier by Cullinan and the TEACH project where children involved in gathering information, and the adaptation of a building in response to energy requirements, become enthusiastic, involved, and learn/retain more.

To facilitate a fertile area for communication and enquiry, we could design to maximize social and environmental exchange in the redefinition of architecture as an instrument to test for restorative qualities. This strategy would automatically produce many side benefits; others could be designed into the experiment.

Observations:

a) Multidisciplinary teams would be essential in the marriage of art, design, and science

b) There would be less emphasis on the ‘visual’ as the complete ‘cocktail of parameters’ would need to be considered

c) Attention would be brought to ‘place, time, and scale’ on both a social and environmental level

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

112

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

d) Emphasis would shift from the satisfying the ego of one designer to the function of the test

e) ‘Active’ or ‘experiential’ models would be encouraged and adaptive opportunity maximised

f) Multidimensional testing of materials could be used to establish a taxonomy of vernacular raison d’etre

Information transfer is implicit in this concept of architecture designed as a finely tuned sensor to encourage dialogue between social and ecological systems. How this communication manifests itself could vary widely. It might be as low tech as project where children and parents build a temporary classroom using straw bale techniques, providing tactile knowledge transfer and the individual empowerment that providing shelter involves, or as sophisticated as a biomimetic membrane designed to emulate the energy responsive qualities of human skin.

This concept should not be confused with recent biomorphic projects, such as the ‘communication display skin’, by Cook-Fournier’s Kunsthaus Graz, which transforms the building façade into a low-resolution computer screen, another permutation of ‘filtering’ under a shallow guise of communication.

Educational institutions would be most effective place to begin this experiment. There are existing projects that are moving in this direction. A high profile example would be the Environmental Studies building at

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

113

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Oberlin University, conceived by a dream team of radical academics pushing the environmental agenda (David Orr, Amory Lovins, John Todd, William McDonough). Hospitals, though a far more complex model to work with, would provide a rich testing ground, and it would appear that the potential for immediate financial feedback is high in this sphere (as in Ulrich et al).

Change of focus from architectural expression to testing instrument would place different demands on the use of technologies in the design process, shifting the emphasis from genetic to behavioural models. An existing example of this is ‘MEDIA’, a visioning tool developed for the Ecological City project at Delft University, Netherlands, used to integrate environmental and infrastructural elements with the diverse requirements among individual community members, in sustainable urban redevelopment. (Hendriks and Duijvestein 2002, full report available 2004)

It is in the urban context that the fundamental difference between ‘natural’ and ‘synthetic’ or ‘artificial’ stimuli will come strongly into play in the, often unconscious, ‘mediation’ of the testing material. As Eliasson remarks, weather is the only way we experience nature in the city and, even then, under highly ‘filtered’ circumstances. Hence, testing an adaptive relationship within an urban habitat is significantly influenced and limited, by the parameters of the urban system and the society that has designed it.

In order to accurately explore the elements of place, scale, and time, in the assessment of human well-being, recognition of the system/subsystem

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

114

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

relationship22 would be essential, extending the research beyond the city into nature as the ‘super-system,’ and life support.

Lost in translation?

Again, this highlights the technological dilemma. Situated in isolation (having fallen out of Eden) we no longer trust our intuitive awareness of the critical role of system/subsystem exchange. Technology now ‘mediates’ our

22 Based on the biological model, the systemsubsystem relationship is universal. The concept has been applied liberally in everything from economics to software design. The basic rule of this relationship is that every system is a subsystem of a larger system and dependant on the larger ‘super-system’ in which it is contained in for sustenance. In return the subsystem must supply something back to the ‘super-system’. If this does not happen the ‘super-system’ will no longer need the subsystem, or nourish it. At this point entropy takes place and the subsystem dies, becoming food for some aspect of the larger system. Feedback is the essential mechanism used to communicate the respective needs, between systems.

dysfunctional relationship with the ‘super system’. Computer simulation is the most popular tool used to interpret the complex language of interdependence between social and biological systems. Using this medium we play with models of our interaction with place, at varying scales, over time, giving us the ability to speed up the feedback process and observe emergent patterns23.

Subject to the imagination of the designer and the quality of the information input, specialized software is a useful tool with which to

23 Example: Grand Canyon River Trip Simulator software has been designed to monitor and project potential scenarios in the interaction between social behaviour and ecological systems at the Grand Canyon National Park in the USA, making it possible to tweak the patterns of use and minimize the effect of visitors on the park (Ball, 2003).

conceptualise and stimulate awareness, but we are finding that technology can quickly become more familiar than the ‘real’ thing. There is temptation to depend on these systems to predict the future in the same way we assume we can predict the weather. Younger designers who have known little else feel an obligation to translate or ‘enhance’ (filter?) the ‘actual’ (personal) environment, falling into the trap of the ‘virtual,’ exponentially building on the recursive experience. The danger in this spoon-feeding is that a personal opportunity for ‘experiential’ learning is lost in the translation24.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

24 Example: “Everyday Learning,” computational tools to support: personal creativity and meaning making, seamlessness between physical and virtual worlds, learning through life and lifetime; across generations and cultures, is a project currently under development by Medialab Europe (European based projects done in collaboration with universities). Their objective is to provide wireless interpretation of the environment (they propose everything from city, park, to wildlife sanctuary) using transmitters planted in the landscape. These nodes will broadcast local stories, logistics, and environmental and social information, etc., to and from an individual’s handheld device as they pass through the environment (Strohecker, 2003).

115

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Living and learning Despite the diverse range of analysis detailed in this paper presenting a compelling appeal for the reinstatement of a productive relationship within nature, our genetic need is often overshadowed by the lure of the screen in a design strategy that renders outside contact (and an adaptive relationship with nature) inert.

Figure 25: Details: Ozone Maker, Jeffery Miles, project 1993 (as in Wines, 2000)

While the star wars meets Leonado da Vinci fantasies of architect Jeffery Miles, USA (Ozone maker, Balloon town, Artificial Island), or the ‘blobitecture’ of Greg Lynn, predict something quite different, the concept of autopoesis hints at a future scenario in which ‘necessity’ may ultimately direct us ‘home.’

Activity on the ‘edge’ is where the communication (feedback) necessary for survival takes place spurning evolutionary and behavioural development. In

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

116

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

contemporary urban architecture feedback has, as much as possible, been edited out, the ‘universal optimum’ reigns, and parameters have become muddled. Nevertheless, the relationship between human health and our extreme dependence on fossil fuel may force clarification and negotiate unforeseen change.

Our food system represents the principal link to our ‘super-system’, nature.

It is largely unknown that more than seventy five percent of domestic energy (higher than space heating or car use) is devoted to maintaining a food industry in which the items for a conventional meal travel an average of fifteen hundred miles from field to fork. Forty one percent of London’s ecological footprint is generated by food, and eighty one percent of that is imported, representing an alarmingly high component of embodied energy (City Limits. 2002).

‘wild’ wheat (seed production with residual energy) Low yeald

‘improved’ wheat (seed production with residual energy)

aquisition of nutrients planting soil treatment

the farmer takes care of: pest defence competition with neighbours plant spacing planting aquisition of nutrients soil requirements

feeding fungi and micro-orgainisms

Through the use of fossil fuels

necessary functions: pest defence competition with neighbours

Figure 26: Improvements to domesticated plants and animal s have often involved an increased dependency on fossil fuels.

(Gunther as in Douthwaite and Jopling, 2001)

Experts confirm that fossil fuel availability is in decline and predict an energy crisis in or around 10 years from now (Douthwaite

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

117

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

2003). This knowledge combined with a multitude of concerns

kWh 50000

regarding the future viability of industrial agriculture (Mac Connell, 2004; Feehan, 2003; Kimbrell, 2002), its petrochemical dependency, and pollution (particularly concerning the adverse

40000

30000

effects of petrochemically based fertilizers and pesticides on water and biodiversity), could provide the motivating force necessary to bring this situation to a head.

20000

10000

0

Swedish human ecologist, Folke Gunther25, has conjured up a transitional model of ‘ruralisation,’ which promises to cultivate a contemporary version of symbiosis with the ‘super-system’. As a chemist, field ecologist, and agrarian, his primary interest is in the efficient use of energy/material flows, and nutrient cycling. Ruralisation combines sociology, ecological engineering, permaculture, industrial ecology, and eco-psychology, in new vision for the city. Derelict urban sites are reclaimed as ‘green,’ areas for carbon dioxide sequestration and psychological benefit, hosting ‘microcosms’ or ‘micro reserves’ of wilderness as advocated by Wilson26 (Wilson, 2002). The city is encouraged to grow out in finger like extensions bringing the benefits of civilisation with it. Food systems take advantage of the city’s nutrients (organic waste), thriving in between fingers of community where they also provide water purification, run off and flood absorption, and recreational amenities.

house

car

food

Figure 27: A rough breakdown of the energy use of a family of four in sweden. The single largest energy user is the food system which is where the greatest potential for increased energy efficiency lies (Gunther as in Douthwaite and Jopling, 2001)

25 Folke Gunther has an MSc in Systems Ecology from Stockholm University and lectures in Human Ecology at Lund University. His specialist area is the ecological adaptation of human settlements in response to ecological factors. He is also involved with ecological engineers and permaculturalists working on biological water purification.

26 “The micro wildernesses are more accessible than full-scale wildernesses. They are usually only minutes away, waiting to be visited by microscope instead of jetliner. A single tree in a city park, harbouring thousands of species, is an island, complete with miniature mountains, valleys, lakes, and subterranean caverns.

Scientists have only begun to explore these compacted worlds. Educators have made surprisingly little use of them in introducing the wonders of life to students. Microaesthetics based upon them is still an unexplored wilderness to the creative mind.

A strong case can be made for the creation of microreserves. A one-hectare patch of rainforest still clinging to a Honduran hill-side, a roadstrip of native grasses in Iowa, and a muddy natural pond on the edge of a Florida golf course are to be valued and preserved even if the large native organisms that once lived in and around them have disappeared”. (Wilson, 2002)

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

118

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Figure 28: Ruralisation (Gunther, 2002) In this scenario, the following things are supposed: 1. The city is inhabited by decision makers who have the capacity to make far-sighted strategic decisions.

2. They have an understanding of resource management, ecology, and the rules necessary for long-term survival.

3. Furthermore, they understand that the city is not static, but dynamic.

Derelict buildings are torn down and new ones are built (The average lifespan of a building is 60 years, which gives the city a 1.6% rate of change).

4. Instead of rebuilding on derelict inner city sites, eco-units are built in the periphery of town.

Starting point: The centre of the municipality has a population of 33,000 and peripheral area is inhabited by 3,000.

After 12 years: With the given rate of change, the centre of the municipality has a population of 24,000. The peripheral area now has a population of 12,000. Local parks replace derilect inner city areas.The town boundary is developed into clusters of eco-units. Each group is inhabited by approximately 800 people.

After 25 years: At this stage, the centre of the municipality has a population of 12,000.

The border area of the city is now inhabited by 24,000. Reversed ditching is used to bring underground streams to the surface.

After 50 years: At the end of the ruralisation process the centre of the municipality has diminished to a population of 3,000. The undulating boundary area is inhabited by 36,000. This area is integrated with agricultural settlements. Population density is close to 500/km2, for the benefit of nutrients cycling.

Many characteristics of the area (P/R-ratio, nutrient retention capacity, mutualism, biodiversity) resemble those of mature ecosystems. There is minimal dependency on fuel storages due to localised food-systems and renewable energy: use of wind, solar-power, and biomass

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

119

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Gunther’s vision is one of many potential futures where design and planning could be used to maximize the ‘fertile edge’ that lies between concentrated human settlement and the natural environment. Critics might claim this design strategy would eat up landmass, diminishing levels of uncultivated land. Gunther argues the opposite. He claims that if designed with integrity his scenario would accelerate urban energy efficiency, cut pollution, improve the quality the urban experience, diminish the need for holiday homes and travel, relieving the pressure on protected wilderness.

Crisis and confrontation are the critical ingredients in any philosophical shift. The crux of our dilemma may be our cultivated instinct to smooth over discomfort at every turn. As previously mentioned we now spend the majority of global energy on reducing the impact of the natural environment on us, or in the synthetic and artificial replacement of a ‘multiplicity of associated stimuli’ present in nature, now lost to us in our predominantly urban existence.

Pushing our luck to the point of an environmental catastrophe may ultimately force us to look away from the immediate techno-fix, and embrace the task of detoxifying and localizing our food systems while developing a more accurate understanding of the complex issues involved in energy efficiency. These initiatives could be woven in to the research presented in this paper and used as a catalyst for the development of an infrastructure for human survival. Recent projects in the Netherlands, where environment is at a premium, offer a premonition of this scenario.

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

120

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

As a foundation to design and planning, this realignment would combine the two levels of adaptation described in the theory of autopoesis, the cyclical (deutro-learning, a reaffirmation and improvement on the vernacular) and the linear (necessity redefined), in a blueprint for ‘restorative’ design pitched to provide:

“a state of complete physical, mental, and social, well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity” (World Heath Organisation definition as in Wilson, 2002).

The fact that we have reached the point, as a society, where we need to justify a relationship with nature, the importance of which any kindergarten student intuitively understands, is a shocking prospect. Yet, relative to the rooted limitation of plants, humans have an enhanced ability to adapt, what Portoghesi calls ‘expression mobility,’ changing or designing for survival.

By maximising life on the ‘edge’ we would begin to value our intrinsic role in a symbiotic relationship between social and biological systems. This would inevitably expose the true cost of our current lifestyle and help us renegotiate an economic system defined by the coordinates of preventative medicine.

If the theories of Heerwagen, Ulrich, Baker, Resnick, et al, could be applied to the formulation of architecture as a sensitive scientific instrument to test these coordinates, the tools offered by Todd, Van Boehmen, Gunther, et al, would be an essential dynamic in the process. Design strategies based on

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

121

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

natural principles/systems would facilitate an infra-structural shift from defensive filtering and mediation toward the fluid exchange of a littoral zone.

This new vision for an adaptive relationship with our support system would take full advantage of the wisdom gleaned from exercising our ability to separate in order to connect. By acknowledging nature as mentor we could break set from our recursive technological addiction, negotiate the subtle interconnected characteristics of natural energy transfer, and work in the collaborative development of progressive models for human restoration.

“We could begin with the assumption that geomorphology integrates the physical processes of geology, meteorology, hydrology, and soils. We can extend this with a proposition that plant; animal ecology, limnology and marine biology represent a second level of synthesis of matter and life.

How can we proceed to the synthesis of physical, biological and social process? Incrementally. Expand ecology to include behaviour as an adaptive device and incorporate ethology – animal behaviour. Add ethnography, the study of “primitive” cultures, next augment with anthropology, emphasizing contemporary societies and, finally close the circle, returning to climate, geology, hydrology, soils, plants and animals through the perspective of epidemiology, oriented to human health and well-being.

In this way ecological planning method becomes human ecology”.

(McHarg,1991)

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architecture as the Littoral Zone

122

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architechture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Bibliography Aldersey-Williams, H. (2003) Zoomorphic: new animal architecture, Laurence King

Alexander, C. Ishikawa, S. Silverstein, M. (1977) A Pattern Language, Oxford University Press

Alexander, C. Ishikawa, S. Silverstein, M. (1979) The Timeless Way of Building, Oxford University Press

Alexander, C. Silverstein, M. Angel, S. et al (1975) The Oregon Experiment, Oxford University Press

Alvenäng, A. Interview with eurythmy therapist at the Vidarklinik and ex-wife of architect Steen Kristiansen, Asmussens’s closest collaborator with Kaethe Burt-O’Dea, authors notes, Jarna, Sweden, 26/10/03

Baker, N. (2002) Designing for Comfort – Recognising the Adaptive Urge, Paper given at the: Cool Buildings Conference, Arizona University, Arizona, USA, 2002

Baker, N. (2001-2004) ongoing conversations in person, by phone, and email, Authors notes

Ball, P. (1999), Self Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature, Oxford University Press

Ball, P. (2003) Mathematicians find path less travelled, Nature: Science Update, news service, http://www.nature.com/nsu/030113/030113-1.html, accessed:16/9/03

Ball, P. (2004) Sucking energy out of the drain, Nature: Science Update, news service, http://www.nature.com/nsu/040223/040223-10.html

Barklow, J.H., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J. (1992) The Adapted Mind – Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, Oxford University Press

Bateson G, (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 2nd edition with forward by Mary Bateson 2000, The University of Chicago Press

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architechture as the Littoral Zone

123

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architechture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Bateson G, (2002) Mind and Nature: a Necessary Unity, (first ed.1979) Hampton Press, Inc. and The Institute for Intercultural Studies

Benson, C. (2002) The Cultural Psychology of Self, Routeledge

Best Food Forward, (2002) City Limits: a resource flow and footprint analysis of Greater London, Chartered Institute of Waste Management, Environmental Body

Beukers, A. and van Hinte,E. (1999) Lightness: The inevitable renaissance of minimum energy structures, 010 publishers

Beynus, J (1997), Biomimicry: innovations inspired by nature, William Morrow & Company

Brophy, V. (2002), BedZed – Beddington Zero Energy Development – Case Study by Vivienne Brophy, Sustainable Architecture The Breaking Wave – RIAI Conference – June 2003,reproduced from Irish Architect Magazine, September 2002,

Brown, D.E. (2002), Inventing Modern America, Massachusetts Instutute of Technology Burt-O’Dea, K. (2002) Biophobia: Can ‘virtual’ nature satisfy the adaptive urge?, Coursework for MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Burt-O’Dea, K. (2002) Star Wars: Can ‘swarm intellegence’ save us from the blob?, Coursework for MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Capra, F. (2002), Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living, HarperCollins Publishers

Capra, F., Crabtee M. (2000) Ecoliteracy: A Systems Approach to Education, Ecoliteracy: Mapping the Terrain, Learning in the Real World

Carlsson-Kanyama, A. and Faist, M (1999) Energy Use in the Food Sector: a data survey, Stockholm University and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

Carranza, P. M., Coates, P. (2000) Swarm Modelling. The use of Swarm Intelligence to generate architectural form, www.uel.ac.uk, accessed:13/3/02

CHPS VIDEOS: Collarborative for High Performance Schools Video Series (CD-ROM) (2002) Division of the State Architect, Produced by iShow,com, D&R International, S. C.EASLEY & Associates (producer) Available at: www.chpsvideos.com

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architechture as the Littoral Zone

124

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architechture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Coates, G. J. (1997) Erik Asmussen, Architect, Claes Dymling

Darwin, C. (1872), The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,1965 edition, University Press of Chicago

Davies, C. (1997) Changing space, VR as a philosophical arena of being, Conference proceedings of Consciousness Reframed:1st International CaiiA Research Conference, University of Wales College, Newport, 5-6/7/97

De Botton, A. (2000), The Consolations of Philosophy, Penguin Books

De Botton, A. (2002), The Art of Travel, Penguin Books

Dery, M. (2002) Curvature of the Spline, April Issue, International Design (I.D.) Magazine

Doody, L (2003) How good design could give us healthy hospitals, The Irish Times, Architecture section, September 18, 2003

Douthwaite, R. and Jopling, J. (2001) Feasta: the foundation for the economics of sustainability, Review number one, Feasta

Douthwaite, R. ed. (2003) Before the Well Runs Dry: Ireland’s transition to renewable energy, Lillput Press

Dudek, M. (2000), Architecture of Schools: The New Learning Environments, Architectural Press.

Dudek, M. (2000), Kindergarten Architecture: Space for the Imagination, Second Edition, Spon Press

Dunne, L. ed. (2002) Biodiversity in the City:Proceedings of a one-dau international conferenceheld in Dublin 12 September 2002, Urban Institute Ireland, University College Dublin

Eliasson, O., May, S. (ed.) (2003) Olafur Eliasson: The Weather Project, Tate Publishing

Etsuler, M. (2000), Surface Technology: Clean through mcrostructures, Fraunhofer magazine 2.2000, pp. 42-43

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architechture as the Littoral Zone

125

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architechture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Feehan, J. (2003) Farming in Ireland: History, Heritage, and Environment, Faculty of Agriculture, University College of Dublin

Frazer, J. P. (Winter 2003 – 04) Ongoing conversations on Biomimetics and the importance of scale, with Kaethe Burt-O’Dea, Author’s Notes

Gamble, M and Raymond, E. (2003) Teaching Programme as for “Design for Life”, Permaculture, Biomimicry, and Sustainable Living Course Schumacher College 9-28/3/03

Gombrich, E. H. (1979) The Sense of Order: a study in the psychology of decorative art, Phaidon Press Limited

Gunther, F. (1994) Self-organisation in systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium: some clues to the structure and function of biological systems, Licenciate in Philosophy Thesis in Systems Ecology, Department of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University, www.holon.se accessed:5/6/03

Gunther, F. (1995) Hampered effluent accumulation process: Phosphorus Management and Societal Structure, Ecological Economics 21 (1997) 159-174, Elseiver

Gunther, F. (2002) Ruralisation : integrating settlements and agriculture to provide sustainability, Ireland’s Transition to Renewable Energy, Conference Powerpoint Presentation, http://www.holon.se/folke/index.shtml, accessed: 30/4/04

Gunther, F. (2003) The Hampnas Project: Sustainability through local self-sufficiency, Holon Ecosystem Consultancy, www.holon.se, accessed:5/6/03

Gunther, F. (2002-2004) Ongoing conversations in person, by telephone, and by email, Authors notes

Heerwagen J.H. (1998) Design Productivity, and Well Being: What are the Links?, The American Institute of Architects Conference on Highly Effective Facilities, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, March 12-14 1998, http//uth.tmc.edu/ut_general/admin_fin/ss/bubl/hefaia.html, accessed: 13/22002

Heerwagen, J. (1999) Towards a general theory of the human factors of Sustainability, paper delivered at the AiA-USGBC Conference on “Mainstreaming Green” Chattanooga, TN, USA, 15-17/10/99

Heerwagen, J. (2000) Green Buildings, Organizational success, and Occupant productivity,

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architechture as the Littoral Zone

126

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architechture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Building Research and Information: Special Edition Volume 28/5, 2000:353-367

Hendriks, Ch.F. and Duijvestein, C.A.J. ed. (2002), The Ecological City: Impressiosn, Aeneas Technical Publishers

Heschong, L. (1979) Thermal Delight, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Heschong, L. and .Easley, S. , Daylighiing in Schools, Steve Easley, buliding scientist interviews Lisa Heshchong CHPS VIDEOS: Collarborative for High Performance Schools Video Series (CD-ROM) (2002) Division of the State Architect, Produced by iShow,com, D&R International, S. C.EASLEY & Associates (producer) Available at: www.chpsvideos.com

Hildebrand, G (1991) The Wright Space: Pattern and Meaning in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Houses, University of Washington Press

Hopkin, M. (2003) Gene tells time for bed, Night owls and early birds owe differences to clock-gene length, Nature: Science update, Nature News Service, http://www.nature.com/nsu/030616.html, accessed: 6/23/03

Hopkin, M. (2004) Superglue from the sea, Nature: Science update, Nature News Service http://nature.com/nsu/040105/040105-13.html accessed: 12/1/04

Hughes, R. (1997) American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America, Alfred A. Knopf

Ishow.com D&R International, S.C. Easley & Associates, (2002) Lighting Schools, Interview with Lisa Heschong,CD ROM, CHPS, Collaboration for High Performance Schools Video Series, DGS, CA Division of the Sate Architect

Johnson, E. ed. (2001) Russle Wright: Creating American Lifestyle, Harry N. Abrams Inc.

Kellert, S. R., Wilson, E. O., ed. (1993) The Biophilia Hypothesis, Island Press

Kimbrell, A (2002) Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture, Island Press

Kosuda-Warner, J. (2001) Landscape Wallcoverings, Scala Publishers

Leech, N. ed. (1997), Rethinking Architecture: a reader in cultural theory, Routledge

Lovins, Amory, (2003), Small is Profitable: 207 Benefits of Distributed Resources, Rocky

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architechture as the Littoral Zone

127

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architechture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Mountain Institute

Lynn, G. (1999) Animate Form, Princeton Architectural Press

Mac Connell, S (2004) Crisis facing world farming, The Irish Times Newspaper: Weekend Review, February 28, 2004

Marchand, A., Findeli, A. (2003) Sustainable consumers: An exploration of beauty, visual culture, and the meanings of objects,Proceedings from Sustainable Innovations 03 Conference: Creating sustainable products,servies, and product-service-systems, CD ROM The Centre for Sustainable Design, Stockholm Sweden 27-28/10/04

Matheck, C. and Kubles, H. (1998) Wood – The internal Optimization of Trees, Springer

Maybey, R. (2003) Biophobia the trivialisation of nature, The Guardian Review, Guardian Newspaper UK,15/03/03, pp. 5-7

McHarg, I. (1992) Design with Nature , John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

McLaren,D., Bullock, S., and Yousuf, N. (1998) Tomorrow’s World, Earthscan

Miller, W.I. (1997) The Anatomy of Disgust, Harvard University Press

Mollison, B. (1988), Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual, Tagari

Ocean Arks International (2004) Natural Treatment Systems: Restorer Technology Overview, Ocean arks International, http://ww.oceanarks.org/restorer/section7, accessed: 15/8/2003

Odum, H.T. (1971), Environment, Power, and Society, John Wiley and Sons

Paturi, F. (1776) Nature: Mother of Invention, Harper and Row

Portoghesi (2000) Nature and Architecture, Skira Editore S.p.A.

Read, A. (2003) Science Feature: There’s more to nature than the eye can see, The Irish Times Newspaper, September 18, 2003

Resnick, M , (1994) Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architechture as the Littoral Zone

128

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architechture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Resnick, M. (1996) Distributed Constructionism, www.media.mit.edu/groups/el/papers/distrib-construc/distrib-construc.html, accessed: 21/5/02

Resnick, M., Berg, R., Eisenberg, M. (2000) Beyond Black Boxes: Bringing Transparency and Aesthetics Back to Scientific Investigation, Journal of the Learning Sciences, http://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/2000/bbb, accessed 21/5/02

Robbins, J (2002),Second Nature: More and more, innovative scientists are turning to the natural world for inspiration and design solutions, Smithsonian Magazine, July 2002

Sather, I. (2001) Trees and Communities – what is the connection? powerpoint presentation, USDA Forest Service, May1. 2001, Urbanforestrysouth.org accessed 31/8/03

Schiermeir, Q. (2003) Setting the Record Straight, Nature, Vol 424, p 482-483,

Sever,M.J., Weisser, J.T., Monahoan, J., Srinivasan, S. & Wilker, J.J. (2004) Metalmediated cross-linking in the generation of a marine-mussel adhesive, 2000352759, Angewandte anie

Sprangenberg, J.H. (2001) Investing in Sustainable Development, Internatioanal Journal:Sustainable Development, Volume 4 No 2 pp 184-201

Steemers, K. and Steene, M. A., eds. (at press 2004) Environmental Diversity in Architecture, Baker N., Human Nature: responses to the built environment, E and FN SPON (in press)

Sterling, S. (2001) Sustainable Education: Re-visioning Learning and Change, Green Books Ltd.

Strohecker, C. (2003) Everyday Learning, Paper made available at the Convergence Conference, Dublin May 2003, Media Lab Europe

TEACH: Training pupils for energy analysis in school buildings (CD-ROM) (2000-2001) A project for the SAVE actionof the European Union, Available at: www.museoscienza.it/progteach

Todd, J. (2001) Ecological Design: Reinventing the Future, Twenty First Annual E.F.Schumacher Lectures Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts October 2001, E.F. Schumacher Society and John Todd

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architechture as the Littoral Zone

129

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea

MSc Architechture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies

Todd, J. (2002-2004) Ongoing conversations in person, by telephone, and by email, Authors notes

Todd, J. and Todd, N, (1993), From Eco-Cities to Living Machines, North Atlantic Books

Todd, J. Josephson, B. (1996) The Design of Living Technologies for Waste Treatment, Ecological Engineering, vol. 6, pp. 109-136, Elsevier

Today, Tomorrow, Toyota, I.D.: The international Design Magazine, Design Review, August 2001 pp. inside front cover

Ulrich R.S. (1984) View through a Window may influence Recovery from Surgery, Science, vol. 224, pp. 420-421

Van Bohemen, H. (2002) Infrastructure, Ecology, and Art, Landscape and Urban Planning, issue 59, p 187 – 201, Elsevier

Van Bohemen, H. (2002-2004) Ongoing conversations in person, by telephone, and by email, Authors notes

Viola, B. (1995), 1973 – 1994, Writings – Reasons for Knocking at an Empty Door, MIT Press

Wilson, E. O. (2002), The Future of life, Alfred A Knopf

Wines, J. (2000), Green Architecture, Benedikt Taschen Berlag GmbH

Wright, R., Wright M. (2003) Guide to Easier Living, Gibbs Smith

Young, M. (1988) The Metronomic Society, Harvard University Press

Kindergarten Lessons: Man, Nature, Adaptive Opportunity, Architechture as the Littoral Zone

130