Building environmentally conscious requires the architect to think about the relation between the building and the ecological and climatological system within which the building functions. In a wider sense the architect must take a standpoint on the relation between nature and culture.

Opposing nature against culture can never lead to durable solutions for our current environment problems. We have to search for a meaningful symbiosis.

authors: Jacques Vink and Piet Vollaard

Nature versus culture
The first generation of ecological architects have, pretty much without exception, come to the standpoint that nature must be protected against the increasingly destructive results of constructing. In its extreme form this standpoint means: nature - everything that isn't made or touched by human hands - and culture - everything that is - are seen as two separate, mutually exclusive systems.
Nature can't be where culture is. In this perception this is a lost battle in advance for nature. Every human act, and especially construction, nibbles something away from nature. We might be able to slow down this caving in process; we can never reverse it.

At its best we could completely submit to nature. The beginnings of this back-to-nature standpoint are pushing back the human influence on nature as much as possible by letting our current consumption culture take a large step back. A standpoint such as this asks for reducing our economy, our consumption and finally our prosperity. How noble and ethical this might be, it is questionable whether this is a realistic option. Which is also besides the question whether we in the rich West can demand or even expect such a step back from other parts of the world that are searching for our economical model, our consumption level and our prosperity level.

This vision shall therefore never lead to meaningful solutions for the current ecological problems.

Nature and culture can not be considered as mutually exclusive systems. Apart from the large mountain ranges, the deserts and the tropical forests, everywhere on the solid land of the earth we find a certain mixture between nature and the artificial.

The Netherlands is perhaps the most speaking example of this. There is hardly a piece of land within our country's borders that hasn't been determined by human actions. In the strict definition there is no nature in the Netherlands. However the Netherlands is hardly ever seen as a 'natureless' area. We are even experienced in making new nature, sometimes accidentally such as the creation of the Oostvaardersplassen, but nowadays increasingly on purpose such as in the many nature development plans that are on the roll.
We must search for architectonic and city planning strategies that begin a relation with nature in a meaningful way. A kind of 'polder model' with deliberation and mutual profit as starting point.

Making nature yourself
If there would be endless energy supplies and if the construction itself and using our buildings wouldn't destroy the surrounding nature, then there would be nothing against optimally using nature. The signals that the resilience of nature is limited are clear. We must therefore search for other ways of using the climate and local natural circumstances. Especially in the area of energy generation we can profit from nature without doing damage to it. Sun cells and -collectors, wind- and water generators, winning heat from deep ground-layers are examples of responsible ways of 'exploiting nature'.

Perhaps it is, if one wants to optimally use nature, smarter to first make nature; an ecosystem for own personal use. One of the best known examples of creating a closed ecosystem is the proposal by Buckminster Fuller from 1968 to place a glass dome over Midtown Manhattan to keep the smog out. It is unclear how to provide food and oxygen to the inhabitants of the dome. The recent experiments with Biosphere I and II prove that, on a small scale, it is very well possible to make a completely closed system viable. Only the sun is required as external source. Basically it is imaginable to bring homes or estates in Biosphere-like cocoons. It is clear to everyone that we do not want to live in those closed off worlds and luckily we don't have to go that far. For example, in the recently 'finished' IBN/DLO-building in Wageningen, by architect Behnisch & Behnisch the plant-filled atria form an essential part of the building's ecosystem.

This project is one of the examples in which for the actual building a breathing glass skin is placed as transitional area between inside and outside. By doing so a transitional area is made that muffles temperature changes and that can provide extra cooling and filtering of air in the inner climate, especially if it is supplied with plants and water gardens. This intermediary zone is actually a model for the co-operation between nature and culture; the trades zone in which the mutual disadvantages of the transition between outside (climate/nature) and inside (use/culture) are muffled with mutual profit.
Applying such a transitional area between the inner- and outside climate creates an improvement of the physical climate by cleaner air and considerable energy savings. But equally as important are the advantages it provides for the 'work climate', for who doesn't want to work in a beautifully made garden.

Learning from nature
As smart is to profit from nature by learning from it. In the past architects and engineers more often received inspiration from the animal- and plant world. Architects usually didn't go much further than copying nature motifs for decorations. The Jugendstil is the most exuberant, but certainly not the only example. Engineers found motives for developing new carrying-constructions in the structure of trees, plants and animals. But until now things weren't considered much deeper than the outside. Studying the working of biological systems with as goal developing new energy concepts for construction and city is a still an undeveloped area. It's hard to be otherwise, the knowledge about the functioning of biological systems is young and constantly changing while only in the last decades it became clear a better and more efficient energy housekeeping of our buildings is a necessity. There are however examples of biological systems that are used as a metaphor for new energy concepts. The studying of ecosystems or isolation- and ventilation systems in the animal- and plant world as inspiration for applications in buildings and construction-products is meaningful and can perhaps even become necessary.

Symbiosis
Clever architecture profits and learns from nature. If we don't want to give up the positive aspects of our current prosperity and want to share this with the rest of the world, and want to develop the quality of life even further, then it is essential that we look for a symbiosis of nature and culture.

This article was published in the magazine Architectuur & Bouwen (1998)
Image by MVRDV

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