What is Green? by Robert Riversong

   While it's true that any specific design is appropriate only for the specific local ecology from which and for which it was crafted, the principles of ecological design are universal, just as Nature's laws are universal.
    The Sanskrit word "sunyata" (voidness) was mentioned. One of its most respected usages is in the Jewel Tree of Tibet by Nagarjuna: "sunyata karuna garbham", or "voidness with the essence of compassion". Once we let go of labels, names and categories, and discover the void or the place of silence, we experience a deep connection to all things - a connectedness which is the root of compassion. It is this empty-mind felt-connectedness which is the essence of what is truly green.
    The Quechua of Ecuador have a prophesy that one day the Eagle will fly with the Condor.  The Eagle is the technological modern civilization of the North, and the Condor is the indigenous way of the South.  One day, the Iachak (wise ones) say, the modern world will be in harmony with the ancient ways.  
Green is the symbiotic relationship between the photosynthetic bacteria called chloroplasts and the cells which transform that solar energy into blue-green algae, honeysuckle, and white pine.  
Green is the cooperative order of nature that placed the bacteria called mitochondria into harmony with each animal cell so that the chemical energy they produce becomes honeybee, swallow, catamount, and human.  
Green is that one creature’s waste is another creature’s food, that the dying feed the living, that a flowing homeostasis created by the totality of living things maintains the conditions for living things to flourish – and has done so for 3.5 billion years.  
Green, then is the delicate webwork that ties all things, animate and apparently inanimate, into a matrix of consciousness and empathy that both contains and informs all things.  
Green is the cosmic dance of creation and co-creation that is, and has always been, our destiny and our joy. Green is coherence – wholeness (haol, health).  
Green is interdependence (diametrically opposite the American suburban paradigm). 
To the degree that the design/build process is one of perceiving, acknowledging and creating coherence or wholeness, it is green.  
To the degree that it is an imposition of our own ego, it is not.  
To the degree that it is a manifestation of the mechanistic paradigm, that suggests that better technology will solve the problems created by the last new and better technology – it is not.  
It requires seeing, understanding, and a translation – through our hands – into the craft of forging an authentic vision of the living earth into a space for human habitation.  
If you work with your hands, you’re a laborer. 
If you work with your hands and mind, you’re a craftsperson.
If you work with your hands, mind and soul, you’re an artist - manifesting love (or harmony) in material form.  
   Green is the direct conversion of solar energy - of the Cosmic OM - into living things. 
   A green house is a living organism and an extension of our own being.  Our clothing is our second skin, and our home is our third skin – and both must breath (transpire moisture), be flexible and resilient, self-regulating – responding and adapting to its inner and outer environment (including temperature, humidity, pressure, insolation).  
Anthony Lawlor calls the house "the temple of our souls". Religion literally means to bind together what has been sundered.  House-building, ideally, is a religious experience, manifesting the sacred from the profane, crafting an integrative whole from a myriad of disparate parts – binding together.  
Green or ecological architecture is a process of reconnecting to the web of life: a process, not a product.  And this, I believe, is the root of the confusion over what constitutes green design and building.  
Green building has more to do with relationships between the designer, builder and home-dweller; among the crew; between material, method & mindset; than it does with a specific structural or physical outcome.  Just as healthy food must be prepared with love and reverence, a healthy (or green) house must be designed and built with a sacred appreciation of the field of consciousness that it manifests.  
Ecology is all about relationships.  To be ecological – or green – is to shift from parts to whole, from objects to relationships, from structure to pattern.  
Wholeness, relationships and pattern – modeled after what Christopher Alexander called the quaternary archetypes of nature and society, the patterns of patterns, the holographic mimicry of the created Universe.  “Every individual act of building is the process in which space gets differentiated. It is not a process of addition, in which parts are combined to create a whole, but a process of unfolding, like the evolution of an embryo, in which the whole precedes the parts, and actually gives birth to them.”  
A green house does not have to be zero net energy or zero waste, but it has to be part of a community which produces the energy it consumes and recycles all its wastes.  
To be green, a design must (literally) incorporate (embody) the social, political, economic, and ecological relationships it participates in – those interactions with other homes, with places and modalities of employment, with local governance, with schools, markets, transportation routes, forests, fields, farms, recreation & celebration.  
As long as we’re building single-family homes on privately-owned lots, we’re not building green.  As long as we build with materials or methods that are not environmentally benign, non-toxic to humans and other life forms, and fully sustainable and recyclable, we’re not building green.  
A green home unfolds from the place it is birthed, from the dreams of the home-dweller, from the creativity of the designer/builder, from the requisites of the community which enfolds it.  
Green is holographic, reciprocal, participatory, and embedded in cooperative partnership with the totality of the environment.  
 As long as we remain dis-membered from the whole of life, we will be but "troubled guests on the dark earth".  When we re-member ourselves as part of the web of life, then we will become once again green and glorious.  We literally partake of the four winds of the Earth – the four elementals. We are wind and water, earth and fire. We are cells in the body of Gaia. When we not only understand this but feel it in our bones, then we will know what is green.

What new forms will be created by ecological design:economy and ecology

Lets say the business' of the future will have a bottom line in terms of ecology rather than economy because the "growth" doctrine is replaced with the "regenerative" one.  Economic success is based on ecological regeneration to achieve a steady state economy.

What will the industrial forms that arrise out of this economy and more importantly, ecology.  Will the forms found in nature in particular bioregions become the new forms in making things?

Lets look at thatch.
If we used thatch as an ecological roofing solution, how would that change the shape of the shelters we build?  For one, roofs would be steeper.  Roof slopes of at least 45º are typically used in order to preserve the thatch.  Secondly, the texture and color are largely dictated by the actual reed used.
This is a photo of a good thatching reed in Plainfield, Vt. - Phragmites.

And finally, it will be easier and take less time to achieve curved edges and surfaces.  This is not necessarily the case for all ecological materials.

What new forms will emerge depends on both the ecology and the cultural community that forms relationships with it.  Or in other words, what and how a community harvests and builds.  And to some degree, what shapes they collectively are drawn to.  But they will no longer reflect an economic standard in the sense of cheapest cost of US dollars.

Paul Gilding - The Great Disruption

From "On Point" story:

Half a lifetime ago, Australian Paul Gilding was head of Greenpeace International.

Then the lifelong environmentalist went into business.

Now, Gilding is back with a message that the environment, and business, and all our lives are tumbling into a giant change. The tornadoes, wildfire, drought and flood the world is seeing are the trumpet blast, he says.

Climate change is upon us. It’s going to profoundly change the way we live. And much sooner than we think.

He calls it the Great Disruption. He says it’s here.

One of the more important ideas here in terms of transition work is understanding what the next economy will look like and how buildings will fit into the equation.

Paul suggests instead of a "growth" economy, it will be a "steady state" economy.  This idea is not new, actually talked about by early economists of the 1700's.  This idea of a "steady state" can be synonymous with a solar economy.  A solar economy is based on the steady state of solar insolation.

The Ecological House NE will fit into this "steady state" economy.  Inherently, I believe an ecological house will be regenerative as well.  If the design reflects and works with local ecology, it will operate in a regenerative way.   

In the end Gilding says that it's not a matter of making a choice, rather it is an inevitability.  When and how this happens is somewhat of a mystery.  This is why the Ecological House project is so important.  We are on a conservative approach to planning for the next 10 years.

The application of Ecological Design- Is it a universal model?

In creating a resource for ecological designs we are focusing on the NorthEast bioregion because we believe that ecological design is place based.  The unique solutions found in this database will not be useful in other bioregions, in fact they could be counter-productive.
But the concept of ecological design could be universal, no?  Lets take permaculture, which at its root is a design philosophy that was created largely in Australia.  When permaculture migrated around the world, many of its examples came with it, which were ecologically still rooted in Australian ecology.  It has taken a while for the rest of the permaculture movement to fully grasp their own ecology and integrate their solutions with the permaculture design approach.
I believe this to be the case with ecological design.

Śūnyatā 
शून्यता (Sanskrit noun from the adj. śūnya: "zero, nothing"), Suññatā (Pāli; adj. suñña), stong-pa nyid (Tibetan), Kòng/Kū, 空 (Chinese/Japanese), Gong-seong, 공성(空性) (Korean), qoγusun (Mongolian) is frequently translated into English as emptiness. Sunya comes from the root svi, meaning swollen, plus -ta -ness, therefore hollow ( - ness). A common alternative term is "voidness".

When you look at a house, what do you see?  The edges that define the object, or the connections that connect and integrate the house with the environment?  When you no longer view a house or structure as a definable structure, you have understood the concept of sunyata, and the basis of an ecological design approach.

JP Muhly recently stated in a conversation "simply looking a one component -- a house/structure -- is a bit to reductionist. The house/structure might better be put in the context of the community and the spiritual insights and inclusiveness necessary to allow it to survive".  

I believe this is a challenge of the Ecological House model, starting with its title.  In the west, we like to objectify things and deconstruct them into small, distinguishable parts.  But ecology does not work in this way.  Instead, ecology develops in relation to everything else.  That means when you look at one particular element of a system, like a house, in and of itself.  You are missing the big picture.  Not only that but it makes it virtually impossible to practically solve system based design issues such as energy, material selection, water flows or affordability.  That means that ecological cycles such as moisture, resource and nutrient flows, that are not normally considered a part of a house design,  must be a part of any ecological design solution. 
It seems the only thing universal in ecological design, is the emphasis to work with the local ecology.
 
Culture as Ecology
Is it possible for a house to be built without the support of a specific community?  Well, I suppose if you flew in a house with a helicopter and landed in a place that no one cared about, you could. But it is useless until someone inhabits it.  Otherwise, minimally, you would typically need a building permit in order to locate the structure in a community.
What I am trying to communicate is that it doesn't seem possible for a house or building to be "ecological" without being integrated not only to its local ecology but also its local culture or community.  You need people to build it, provide the resources and materials to construct it and the myriad of community connections required to support ecological flows of resources that are held by people.  Nutrient flows in human communities rely on people to close the gap.And every community will work differently and provide different processes and approaches based on who is part of the community.
Therefore an ecological house design needs to be based on and account for the local community.

All of this leads me to believe that an ecological design is not well suited for the idea of a universal design.  Again, this is why this blog focuses on the bioregion of the NorthEast of NorthAmerica.

As a part of the list of resources that should be seen to the right of the blog, "Ecology NE" should be a link to understand the local ecology of your site, which will be the basis for an "ecological house" in the NorthEast, but unfortunately no where else.  On the bright side, you may view this aspect as a wonderful pattern of biodiversity and cultural diversity where distinct vernacular styles can emerge from a place based sense of design.

What Is An “Ecological House”?

 Written by Philip S. Wenz, 2007

Do you want to live in an environmentally friendly house, but wonder what that really means? Does your house have to be loaded with expensive “green” gadgetry, or built with recycled tires? Is it practical to retrofit your existing house? Will your new “eco features” help the environment, or are they just more stuff to consume — trendy, but ultimately damaging to the planet?

Though there is no single, set definition of an environmentally friendly house it's good, at the outset, to think about what you're trying to accomplish. I've found the concept of the “ecological house” — new or retrofitted, big or small — useful for determining project goals.

An ecological house is modeled on the energy and material flows of natural ecosystems, and thus enhances rather than degrades the environment. Like an ecosystem, an ecological house conserves resources (energy, water, food and materials). It also produces resources, or at least gathers and stores more of them than it uses. The “extra” resources are distributed back into the larger environment to support life elsewhere.

A standard house, by contrast, is a resource sink. Life's essentials flow into it, are dissipated or degraded until useless, and are dumped off into the environment, sometimes as toxic waste. The flow is unidirectional, from source to sink to waste.

In an ecosystem, and in an ideal ecological house, there is no waste because the resource flow is circular. Like houses, ecosystems import energy — mostly solar, in their case. Unlike standard houses, however, ecosystems store their energy and reuse it. It's stored first as plant biomass, which is eventually distributed as food to the ecosystems' myriad inhabitants. Further, and this is the real key to the sustainability of ecosystems, the stored energy continues to circulate, as exchanged nutrients, until it makes its way back to the plants. In the scenario known to every sixth grader, plants make animal food and animals make plant food.

Ecologists and ecological designers describe this behavior of ecosystems as the closing of nutrient loops. Human habitation systems — from cities to houses — create one-way energy and material flows, leaving loops open. Ecosystems unconsciously practice the “reduce, reuse, recycle” dictum and have sustained themselves for billions of years. Human systems have been around for only a million years or so, and might not exist much longer if they don't start conforming to nature's rule that “waste equals food.”

How can you mimic nature and close a loop at your house? Compost your food scraps and use them to grow a garden. The standard, open-loop approach to consuming food eliminates nutrient-rich scraps as waste, which requires energy in the form of a garbage truck for disposal. If you turn your unused organic material into plant food and use the sun's energy to produce human food, you've closed a loop and reduced your family's demands on the larger environment.

As well as circulating nutrients internally, ecosystems contribute to life in their region and the biosphere by releasing unused food, water and minerals into their surroundings at appropriate times. Similarly, a “home ecosystem” can redistribute a resource such as “gray water” — for example, shower water, which is clean enough for certain uses — and store that water in plant tissue, say, in fruit trees grown on the property.

At harvest time, some of the water is circulated back to your family as fruit, closing a local loop, and some is expired for healthy recirculation in the atmosphere as the leaves dry up and drop off (as opposed to unhealthy and energy-intensive treatment in a sewage plant). The dried leaves, of course, can be used as compost and mulch for next year's vegetable garden.

The possibilities for creating intertwined closed loops are endless.

Using nutrients from your yard, you can profitably grow products ranging from hardwoods, bamboo and herbs to exotic fish. Your house can produce more electrical energy than your family uses and direct the excess to environmentally benign applications, such as heating a food-producing greenhouse in winter. Or, you can feed the public utility grid for credit toward your monthly bill.

The ecosystem model can be applied to all of the fundamental issues in ecological design. For example, optimizing a house's “life cycle” — the amount of energy and material needed to create the building, its ongoing demand on the environment and its final disposal—can be facilitated by observing how ecosystems use local resources and recycle materials. Nature herself is your best guide to designing and living in your ecological house.
 
 

Partners

What is a partner? And how do you become one?

A partner in the EHNE project is a person or organization that is committed to supporting the project through specific means, such as giving presentations on the project, holding workshops or working with people in some way that results in a documented product that is contributed to the project- ultimately the web based database.
Partners also can be media, or financial supporters.  EHNE needs media support to get the word out.  

To become a partner, please contact ben at bfg(at)naturaldesignbuild(dot)us.

Collaborative Design Project Launched

I have communicated with many different people about the idea of a collaborative design process towards developing an open source database on what an ecological house is, how it is made, what it is made out of and how it performs.  This database is created by the public as a collaborative process and moderated by a "core circle" of people who are facilitating the process.

This project is stored as a database online -eventually on a dedicated website with discussion forums and resources that list materials, costs, designs, etc.  The project also has a community presence through "partners" who host workshops, presentations and other functions that work to further the discussion and resources that are hosted online.

I have started this blog to begin to document ideas and build energy around this idea.  I am currently inviting people to send me blog entries that I will post, unedited.

The project is currently looking for partners to support the development of this process.