Role of NATURE in architecture today
Nature is an important part of the context in traditional architecture, in general. Architecture responds to local conditions such as climate, geology and seismic conditions.
However, architecture has become independent from its natural context since early twentieth century. With becoming an independent art, architecture found references in its own realm. The design does no longer primarily reflect the natural conditions it is dealing with. The materials used do not necessarily indicate the geographical location of the project. The context of the design does no longer include the natural context. The context is based on references in architecture itself.
Man seeking shelter from nature was the start of architecture.
Nowadays we find large densely urbanized areas where nature is almost totally banned. Poorly conceived design visibly divided us in urban areas from our wilds and contributed to our recent ability to see nature as something isolated from us. Yet reinvigorating our bond with nature is a challenge architecture and urban design are well placed to address.
“..architecture is not constituted of buildings or sites but arises from the studied relationship of the two..” quoted in the philosophical text by Carol Burns.
. We acknowledge that man needs a balanced relationship with nature instead of total separation from it and we seek for pieces of nature in our artificial environment.
The separation that we have crafted over the centuries through our isolating designs hasn’t come without costs. Obesity, ADHD, autism, a decline in creativity—these are all connected to a lack of environmental connection. Unfortunately, this estrangement from nature has not only directly impacted our health, it has impacted our ability to respond to crucial modern challenges, such as climate change, because these dire environmental topics feel removed from us.
Green is seen as an essential part of architectural context only after all these consequences came upon us. Designers begin to design places grounded in their own unique environment to revive the awareness of the natural systems that affect us and recover place-based knowledge.
It always sounds sarcastic to an East Malaysian when they are asked with these questions.
“Sarawak has a lot of trees?”
“Do you guys live on a tree house?”
“What’s the transportation that you take from one place to another?”
“Not wrong that we have much more resources (trees) in Sarawak, but isn’t it’s better to have this tropical forest than having the man-made green over here (palm estate)?”
“Even if we stayed in a tree house, it sounds even awful living in the concrete forest with such a high density over here.”
However, it is even more ironic when developers trying to create its own forest because they don’t have it, taking the example of the developments in Johor, the Forest City project.
From these, we could see the desire of urban habitants to live in a green city instead of living in the towers with the minimum 6m setback from the others.
“We have the green sky court, green roof, green bridge, green landscape and etc.”
"We are certified with GBI platinum, not GBI Silver or Gold, it's platinum. Our project is the greenest in the city."
Nature and green are used as the marketing slogan in architecture today.
Being green and interacting with the nature bring us numerous advantages. Beyond technical benefits, feeling the presence of the living world around us elevates the spirit.
Below, we discussed role of nature in different kind of architecture/institutions & why do people prefers or loves nature.
Fuji Kindergarten by Yui and Takaharu Tezuka (School)
Physically encircling a tree, the kindergarten highlights nature as a teacher every day. The children can play on an outdoor structure that surrounds the tree, climb the tree itself, or just admire the tree from every room in the school. The school furthers its connection to nature with lots of glass and open air, which means the outdoors flow seamlessly into the indoors.
It is proven that schools that get children outside into natural places find that their students perform better academically and are more engaged and motivated to learn. These benefits come in addition to decreasing the need for disciplinary action, reducing stress, and increasing student attention spans. But the gains are not just performance-based—it turns out that the outdoors even improves vision and increases Vitamin D levels, all advantages that make students healthier. There are some great schools that strive to put children outside and reflect this philosophy in their design.
Below is the TED Talk video by Takaharu Tezuka and you would wish that you were from this kindergarten,
Hospitals
“What I could see in the ward everyday is just a white ceiling staying dumb to me. Couldn’t it be improved?” I remember sawing this post in my Facebook few years back.
We cannot deny that the spaces in a hospital make the patient sicker, from the hallway, to the consultation room, to the waiting area and lastly to the wards. Hospital should be a place where people heals and evidences show that simple view of nature can radically improve the health outcome.
I would like to introduce the TED Talk by Michael Murphy on the topics “Architecture that's built to heal” to all the professionals or students in architecture field. Butaro District Hospital mentioned in the talk should become the imitations of the hospitals we have in Malaysia.
Selgascano office In Madrid Span(Workplace)
Contact with nature in the workplace has become a central element in the design of healthy office spaces. Various studies have repeatedly shown that access to outdoor gardens or parks, indoor plants, and windows with views of natural places reduce worker stress levels. Beyond manipulating stress levels, it appears that employees are also happier and more productive with a connection to nature. And firms greatly benefit because sick leave and worker turnover is reduced.
Within the urban area of Madrid, the architectural firm of selgascano made waves with their design for their own office. Sunken into the ground, curved glass opens the office up to spectacular and unusual views of the surrounding woods. The space is filled with natural light that bounce of the bright interior colours. Reportedly, employees love working in the space.
Besides from the nature’s physical existence which plays the important role in architecture, nature has also become inspirations to the architecture world known as biomimetic architecture.
"If we could do things and make things as nature doers, we could achieve factor 10 to factor 100 and even maybe factor 1000 savings in resources and energy used."mentioned Michael Pawlyn in his TED Talk on "Using nature's genius in architecture".
It is a contemporary philosophy of architecture that seeks solutions for sustainability in nature, not by replicating the natural forms, but by understanding the rules governing those forms. It is a multi-disciplinary approach to sustainable design that follows a set of principles rather than stylistic codes. It is part of a larger movement known as biomimicry, which is the examination of nature, its models, systems, and processes for the purpose of gaining inspiration in order to solve man-made problems.
Image above shows The Eden project
Video below is the TED Talk by Michael Pawlyn on "Using nature's genius in architecture" and he explains what biomimetic architecture really is.
To conclude, we shall discuss on this quote by Carol Burn, "The past is denied an the future is deemed powerless to change the situation, much less to improve it, " The nature that we destroyed could not be taken back, and the only we could do now is to improve it and comes out with better solution to cope with the nature..
