A book on future ecological living / place    

The way I look at Ecological Living / Ecological Place in general

Today when you examine certain architectural interventions, they integrate renewable energy by calculating and calculating the amount of heat and power required by the communities and use neutral energy to meet such demand and they have been successful. Well Done ! and Thank you for projects like BedZed- Beddington Zero — fossil energy development ¹. But vulnerable communities cannot afford to build such projects, I am afraid ! . Continuous Productive Urban Landscape (CPUL) movement believe in vertical and horizontal farming in urban spaces so that food growing is not confined to the countryside but food growing is introduced in buildings ² in the urbanity. However, vertical and horizontal food growing I have noticed is confined to the facades not integrated onto the architectural interventions. For example Shoreditch CPUL. The garden city concept which zones industrial areas, residential areas , green belts ³ etc, wastes so much of energy due to distant travelling from one zone to another, when everything could have been integrated in one place. So called eco friendly products are designed, manufactured in variety of forms using recyclable materials to reduce the impact on the environment. A major company for instance has used recycled material in their product and used sweet shop labour in far-east to assemble the goods. ⁴ This product made out of recyclable material is not been made meaningful to the material culture according to Stuart Walker In his book called Sustainable by explorations in theory and practice Design ⁵. I agree to what Friof De Capra states in The Hidden Connections Book: the waste in one system becomes food for a different system to survive creating an inte-dependent web ⁶ . When one thinks of what Stuart and Capra says, one may ponder, that we are living in world in which companies, urban spaces, buildings, products are depending on one another. But their main intention is not increasing the social economical environmental tie but to increase the quantity of production. So is n' it better to have a Ecological Place / Ecological Living in which the social, economical and environment tie is multiplied and strengthened rather than be interdependent, to multiply the quantity of products as when the tie gets tighter and varied nobody collapses in the web, they survive, they would not compete with one another to full fill their needs. Actually there is a common notion according to the way interpreted, in what both Stuart and Capra states on, strengthening the interdependency of one another. What would be ideal is optimizing the production ⁷ rather than maximising the production. Furthermore sea levels have arisen. People in some parts of the world are frightened by fierce ghastly winds, pouring rain etc. As a result defensive highly controlled strategies are used for example massive banks are built, in coastal areas etc when such forces could be harnessed in a semi — controlled manner in the process of creating an Ecological Place enhancing the tie between the community, economy and the environment ⁸. Today all most everything is focused, around sense of visual including Architecture. Architecture is limited only to the sense of visual dominated by "ever changing programmable image call it digital architecture" ⁹ instead of a place that seduces its traveller, inhabitant with the sense of touch, smell and taste which generates sensory experiences.

So, the way I think of ecological living / Place is a system which has a social , economical (give and take) , environmental integration which always produces shelter and/or food and/or clothing (basic living components) while having a dialogue with neutral energy and creating a sensorial experience (sense of touch, smell, taste) that generates identity within a local community and also generating the identity of such place where such community lives in. The future place / ecological living could be harnessing with neutral forces like the sun, wind, rain and the tide in a natural and semi controlled manner rather than in a controlled way and creating a interdependent livelihood. In the processes of creating shelter, food and clothing this livelihood could be constantly strengthening their tie/bond/dependency thus nobody stands up to compete with one another as their living requirements are fulfilled by the local communities themselves. The future place / ecological living would also be a self built and unbuilt ¹⁰ Place / ecological living system. It is self built because, one , it could be a manuscript which is read by several people who are then been inspired by the possibilities illustrated in this manuscript , getting their places built themselves accordingly or it could be children who grow up to become designers , who design the place/living system and the community designs by themselves accordingly. This future place/ ecological living would be growing too. Growing is referred to a place / system which is always in transformation and never a stable form ¹¹. One process always creates a new life to begin. There is no zoning but everything happens in one place , when the place scatters for example due to a wind or tidal change a new system starts from where the place ended up. Hence it is a growing system not a controlled zoned system. There are no vertical or horizontal facades to cultivate food but food, shelter, textile is produced all over integrated to the landscape. Nobody sits and workout calculations as how many solar panels are needed instead, the local community uses their local skills and local technology and experiment rather than design the place in a office and use professionals to build what was designed in a office. This is the way I look at the future ecological living/place.

Bibliography:

1.     Adam Ritchie & Randall Thomas,2009, Sustainable Urban Design An Environmental Approach, London & New York, Taylor & Francis Group

2.      Andre Viljoen,2005,CPULs continuous productive urban landscapes, Oxford: Architectural Press

3.     Ebenezer Howard,1965,Garden Cities Of To-Morrow, London: Faber And Faber

4.     Stuart Walker,2006, Sustainable by explorations in theory and practice Design, London, Sterling, VA, Earth Scan

5.     Stuart Walker,2006, Sustainable by explorations in theory and practice Design, London, Sterling, VA, Earth Scan

6.      Fritjof Capra, 2003,The Hidden Connections, London, Flamingo

7.      Fritjof Capra, 2003,The Hidden Connections, London, Flamingo

8.      Semini Pabodha Samarasinghe,2011,An Imaginative Guide: On how one could live in an ecological paradise, UK, Author House Publishers.

9.       Robert Campbell, Nov 2007,Vol 195 Issue 11,Architecture Record: Experiencing architecture with seven   senses, not one

10.  Semini Pabodha Samarasinghe,2011, An Imaginative Guide: On how one could live in an ecological paradise, UK, Author House Publishers.

11.   Jurg Spiller,1961, Paul Klee Note books. Volume 1.The Thinking Eye, London: Lund Humphries