Architecture as Nature: A Biodigital Hypothesis (original) (raw)
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Design and Nature: A Partnership, 2019
This chapter provides a historical context to ideas and practices of design and nature, highlighting underlying tensions and problematic conceptions about nature in the Modern West. This history differs from broader theories of sustainable design in that I focus specifically on design’s relationship with nature. I review various attempts to design with nature in past and recent history, with attention to how design and research are still embedded in a Western conception of our relationship with nature inherited from the Scientific Revolution. Despite aspirations of designers to connect emotionally, philosophically and functionally with the natural world, nature remains subjugated: an ‘other’. I argue that with each ‘new’ approach to designing with nature from the Romantic Movement in the late 19th century, through to contemporary design and current design theory, designers inadvertently continue Modernist and colonialist power relationships that place humans at the top of a hierarchy, with nature at the bottom. These conditions are beginning to change as designers explore ecological theory beyond mainstream influences and as they engage with embodied research in direct relationship with nature.
Introduction from Design and Nature: A Partnership
Design and Nature: A Partnership, 2019
Celebrating the 5th anniversary of this publication, we offer an overview of the intentions and the contents of the book. "We now know that ecological urgency demands more than a tweak of designed objects, design processes and even design systems. Partnering with nature therefore is a more disruptive and deeper change for design than many imagine when they read the friendly phrase “design and nature”. Caught as we are in our industrial Modern paradigm, embedded in thousands of years of boundary making, to move design from its human centrings and to begin to imagine what Plumwood (2009) calls positive and multiple centrings is radical, heresy almost." This introduction includes descriptions of how we envisioned the four ways of being with nature, or what the Buddha called the Four Postures.
Developing a Nature-Inspired Model of Creativity in Architectural Design for Novice Learners*
2021
Problem statement: In the architectural design process, creativity plays an essential role in idea processing. Since creative ideas do not emerge without mental background, the ideas of the past contribute to future creations. Given that over years nature has been referred to as a natural selection for its efficiency and diversity, it can serve as a model in the creative process of the architectural design model. This study aims to focus on the creative process, design process and bionic science at the same time. Previous studies have not integrated three components. Research objective: Since architecture is fundamentally interdisciplinary, this research attempts to highlight the role of design process systems, creativity and bionic science. Then it describes their associations in the conceptual and logical systems. It also attempts to establish a meaningful and purposeful relationship between the above-mentioned elements and concepts. The impetus of this study is to understand how ...
Nature As Discourse: A Co-Evolutionary Systems Approach to Art and Environmental Design
ABSTRACT Nature As Discourse: A Co-Evolutionary Systems Approach to Art and Environmental Design by Susannah Hays Doctor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Studies University of California, Berkeley Transdisciplinarity, an international education movement that explores pathways to a coherent epistemology beyond all disciplines, seeks to become a sustaining vital force in human development. To do so, it needs to be complemented by a branch of epistemology called epistemics or self-knowledge. Only if co-evolutionary phylogenetic principles of human-brain and autonomic nervous system functioning are included in transdisciplinarity’s model can individuals experientially evolve to the levels of reality the model entails. An actual, “true to life,” transdisciplinary education teaches isomorphic qualities intrinsic to perception, pattern mapping, language, and aesthetic (non-directive) skills. Curricula utilizing these educational tools will result in indispensable, creative learning environments. A trajectory not yet explored in other literature on Transdisciplinarity is an emphasis on cross-cultural research in human-brain and autonomic nervous system dynamics. Three key understandings that guide human biological evolutionary processes toward higher levels of consciousness are Paul MacLean’s triune-brain neuroethology, Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory of emotions, and G. I. Gurdjieff’s three-centered self-study practice. Each chapter describes a non-profit organization whose goal is to raise humanity’s normative level of participation in environmental sustainability. These organizations demonstrate how Transdisciplinarity can recalibrate human evolution, if the educational movement synthesizes the autonomic/cognitive forces within Homo sapiens’ biological organization.
The design approach advocated in this paper makes one fundamental assumption: the appropriateness of any design is the extent to which it meets human needs and integrates sustainably into the life-supporting natural processes of the planetary biosphere. The author suggests that an aesthetic of health, based on ecological literacy, can inform the evaluation of the qualitative fit between design and its environment. Eco-literacy - a detailed understanding of nature as a complex, interacting, creative process in which humanity participates – results in a shift in perception toward an ecological ethics and aesthetics of participation that considers cultural, social and ecological, as well as economic value. As perception becomes informed by ecological literacy it can begin to bridge the dichotomy between the artificial and the natural, as well as between humanity and nature. Ecological literacy creates awareness of the fact that a disproportionate amount of the artificial environments, infrastructures, artefacts and processes that have been created since the Industrial Revolution are harmful to natural process and decrease the dynamic stability and health of the biosphere. The diversity of approaches within the Natural Design Movement affirms that we can create artefacts and processes that are expressions of appropriate participation in natural process. Sustainable and responsible design is a creative possibility and an ecological necessity. Ecological literacy emphasizes that humanity is an integral participant in natural processes, which are fundamentally unpredictable and uncontrollable. Local actions can have far reaching global effects. Interconnectedness results in cause and effect relationships within complex systems that are not linear but circular, multi-causal, and often time delayed. This awareness confronts us with the need to assume responsibility for the outcomes of our actions and furthermore changes the perception of humanity’s relationship to nature. The aim shifts from control and manipulation to appropriate participation. There is therefore an important ethical and aesthetic dimension to ecologically literate design. The Natural Design Movement shares an ecological worldview. The movement unites diverse disciplines ranging from ecological design, industrial and urban ecology, sustainable architecture and bioregional planning to ecological economics, eco-literate education and green politics. Furthermore it considers the philosophical, sociological and psychological implications of the ecological worldview. Design in the 21st century will be grounded in eco-literacy and aspire toward community-based designs that are adapted to the specific conditions of a particular place and culture. This paper concludes that long-term sustainable design has to integrate into natural processes as the basis for planetary and human health. There is an ecological dimension of ethics suggesting ecological imperatives that transcend the relativistic moralizing of purely socio-philosophical ethics. Eco-literacy creates awareness of these ecological imperatives that will help designers to create responsible and sustainable artefacts, processes and organizations. Designing the artificial as an expression of appropriate participation in natural process has to be based on ecological literacy and supported by the emerging aesthetics of health, also referred to as the ecological aesthetics of sustainability and the aesthetics of complex dynamic systems. Keywords: aesthetics, complexity, diversity, eco-literacy, ethics, health, interconnectedness, Natural Design Movement, participation, uncontrollability, unpredictability, salutogenesis, sustainability