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The Integration of Architecture into the Natural Environment

The Integration of Building and Site,

with a broad view of Existing Site Systems and Conditions to include Biological and Environmental Systems and Processes

The Integration of Building Systems and Natural Systems

A System is a set of interacting or interdependent entities forming an integrated whole

In order to survive, organisms evolved to fit into a role or niche within natural systems that exist in their environment

Buildings are entities that should interact with their environment

Buildings should become nodes where many systems intersect

Interaction can be parasitic or symbiotic

Architecture should be symbiotic

Buildings should use local materials

Buildings should dissemble when they are no longer needed

Building materials should become entities within new systems when disassembled

In "Program Primer v1.0 A Manual for Architects," program is defined as being the formal written instructions from the client to the architect. However, unwritten and alternate requirements are also a part of the program. The article claims that the most important author of these alternate requirements is the architect.

The article introduces performative requirements in addition to the proscriptive requirements of the traditional definition of program. Ultimately, it is the architect's responsibility to actively redefine the program by considering performative requirements, as well as other issues that are relevant to the project.

The performative requirements imposed by the architect represents an extremely important part of the architects job. Many people could take a list of programmatic requirements, organize them, and erect a building to suit those needs. It is the experience and skill of the architect that allows him/her to identify and resolve all those additional issues that the project requires.

Undoubtedly, different architects will make different interventions and decisions on what is relevant. This is because each architect works with a different set of experiences and values that filters what he/she perceives as required by the project.

This idea to me is very closely approaching the idea of the diagram, an intrinsic base of knowledge carried within the architecture, the blueprints of how it works. Earliest forms of architecture were mediators between people and the environment, responding by necessity to the pressures of the outside world. An example of this are the many forms of passive heating and cooling that have been around for centuries. Similarly, contextual analysis can seen as reading or deciphering the diagram of forces (physical, social, environmental, etc...) that exist within the environment.

It is this analysis that begins to shape the performative requirements of a project. Without acknowledging and engaging in a dialogue with these external pressures, it is impossible for a building to be truly successful.

concept sketch

Response to "The Muses Are Not Amused"

Silvetti begins his essay by stating that architectural form is the result of every form of energy that exists within a place. Cultural, social, economic, ideological, technical, methodological... etc.

Later in his essay, describing programism, thematization, and blob architecture, Silvetti claims that these methods of "form finding" leave the architect's opinion out of the equation. In programism, for instance, Silvetti claims that by organizing vast amounts of programmatic data, one is left with an organizational strategy that almost directly transfers to architecture. In thematization, Silvetti's criticism is that architects simply copy older trends and themes to recreate an idyllic setting from the past or the imagination, requiring not only a suspension of belief but also amnesia as a necessary condition in order to submit to the theme. Silvetti continues on to criticize blob architecture as creating forms simply because we can, without any guiding principles. He goes on to say that with the advent of digital fabrication techniques, "Freedom from semantics, history, and culture was perhaps made possible for the first time in civilization." Lastly, Silvetti criticizes literalism as the "most weakening formal development of the last twenty years..."

As a solution, Silvetti looks to the Baroque movement. He sees similarities in that the Baroque style was a amalgamation of different art forms, a metaphor for present times. However, he sees the Baroque style as having a sense of theatricality, a sense of performance which is lacking in todays world.

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Can architecture be symbiotically integrated into the natural world, and if it can, what would it do?

All organisms that exist do so because they fulfill a specific role in a niche of the natural world.

The role that they perform, however small or seemingly insignificant, is performed as a necessary part of a larger system.

Architecture should bear this responsibility as well by becoming a symbiotic part of our environment, not parasitic.

Symbiotic, as it pertains to architecture and the environment, can mean simply being a zero net energy building.

However, architecture has the opportunity and potential to provide significant and necessary functions that will improve the state of the natural environment.

Buildings could also repair the damage that has been done to the natural environment already, in addition to its other programmatic requirements.

Finding new uses for Pittsburgh's old and factories and mills could be an interesting way to explore these ideas.

Adapting these structures to what we need now, reusing these relics as urban farms to make organic produce locally, is a symbiotic use these buildings.

Most buildings today can be considered parasitic, drawing resources from the environment but not putting anything back.

Buildings could start to do even more than generating elecricity or growing food, for instance they could sequester carbon or clean the environment around them of pollutants.

More important than what the buildings would look like, are the types of functions they could provide, the connections or processes they could facilitate.

What are the consequences when you require that architecture be integrated into the systems and processes of the natural world?

Thesis Project

The project that I would like to use as an opportunity to "test out" my convictions is located in the mountainous rainforest of Puerto Rico. The required program for the building will be roughly something like an eco lodge, but one that also incorporates logging, scientific research, art, theatre, and seminars for the local community. This "eco lodge" is a part of Las Casas de la Selva, a bohemian non profit place outside the small town of Patillas, Puerto Rico.

The full extents of this property are about 2000 acres of land comprising three adjacent river valleys in the mountainous rainforest. Las Casas de la Selva operates on about 200 acres of this land, all that rainforest being used for a sustainable logging operation developed and implemented in the 70's by a non profit company called Global Ecotechnics.

Much of their infrastructure was damaged by hurricanes during the last couple decades, and the facilities that support these numerous undertakings have all been repaired as well as can be. It goes without saying that the operation needs a new facility.

It is within these programmatic requirements that I wish to design a new "eco lodge," for lack of better words. In addition, after having spent much time there, I am deeply invested in the well being and growth of Las Casas de la Selva.