Pragatigoswami blog :: Architecture Today

Green architecture can help beautify modern houses that are often surrounded by hard surfaces. There is soil somewhere underneath all the concrete, tile and wooden decks. Sometimes a weed manages to grow through and poke its green head out.
But for the most part the emphasis has been placed on not having anything to do in a garden. It is assumed that the people who have invested so much in a house also want a no maintenance garden. In many places gardens are relegated to a strip of lawn and a few pots of succulents.
There are outside spaces sometimes designated as outside rooms and they are usually filled with outdoor dining facilities and a gas or electric barbecue. They are shaded by sails or perspex roofing.
Children may have been given an outside play area but it is most likely set in a deary expanse of wood chips.
If a dog is permitted in this sort of landscape he will be expected to stay in his basket until he gets a walk through suburban streets. He will not be allowed to dig in the sacred lawn if such a thing has been allowed into all this sterility.
It is sad to cruise through our streets and see all these smart treatments of the outside world.
There was a time not so long ago when houses were built on parcels of land that allowed a garden both in the front of the house and the back. Now houses have grown bigger and the land has shrunk so that not even a clothes line can be fitted in.
What madness is this?
Houses that provide great spaces within and nothing without.
We have virtually thrown ourselves out of the potential garden of Eden.
Admittedly we had to work in those gardens but we still could. Even if we feel we have no time we find it for other often more dreary endeavours. We could find an hour or two to give to beauty and the environment.
Gardens can still be low maintenance and productive.
Vegetable gardens can be set up on Esther Dean’s no dig principle which uses newspaper straw and hay together with compost to produce more food than a small family can eat.
Fruit trees are beautiful in all the four seasons of the year.
How much better it could be to shade your outside table with a pergola where grape vines and passion fruit hang in their season.
How beautiful a hedge of rosemary would be and how well its sprigs would flavour your food.
The soil under your home may be heavy clay or light sand but any soil can be turned into the right sort of loam in which to grow your plants.
Take time to plan a garden in whatever you have left after the builders leave. See where the sun is, where the wind blows, where it is shady and where a tree could enhance your world.
Don’t be put off by thinking you may have to sweep up leaves or fallen blossoms or even fruit. You have to sweep all those hard surfaces anyway.
Embrace green architecture give yourself a lemon tree so that in spring you will have the perfume of the flowers and in winter the lovely yellow globes hanging among glossy green leaves. Oh and of course the ability to pick yourself a lemon for your salad dressing.
 

Tags: Architecture, Build Environmentally, Gardening, Green Architecture, Pragati Goswami, Pragmatic Designers, Renovate Environmentally

I am a great fan of the work of American architect Frank Lloyd-Wright, so I was very pleased to know that his work is being preserved.

This month the US-based Martin House Restoration Corporation (MHRC), which operates Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House Complex has received a gift of $2.5 million for its new visitor centre pavilion, designed by Toshiko Mori. Currently undergoing a $40 million restoration to return it to its original 1907 condition, the Wright-designed building is his largest Prairie-style complex of 32,000 square feet. The generous gift from the East Hill Foundation enables the MHRC to begin construction on the visitor centre later this month with planned completion date to be late 2008.

Green architecture applies to us all as we all have to live in the environment we have. It may be a crowded city. It may be a desert. Or we may be lucky and live on a farm or in a village with a temperate climate. Wherever it is, we have to make the best of it. We could live with it, trying to do it no harm, or we could establish ourselves as the enemy and live with every intention of destroying it. The choice is ours. Living with our environment is a whole lot more sensible than trying to destroy it. One doesn’t straddle the wrong side of a bough when we are pruning a tree. Nor should we deliberately destroy when we can nurture.

There is now no doubt that our planet is getting warmer. Whether this happens periodically or not it is happening now to us. We are adding to the problem in a thousand ways. Some of them we can’t do anything about but we can start at home and in our gardens or balconies. Our crowded world is developing an enormous carbon footprint but if we all individually lighten our own treads we will lessen it. Ours may be an infinitesimal help but if everyone does it there is great power. If you live in a city try to lower the amount of driving you do - to work, school, or even shopping.

Try walking wherever possible. If others in your area want to do the same thing you might be able to join forces and walk together. It is certainly possible to walk children to school and back home again if you can arrange it with other parents. All these projects become easier with company. If you live too far from your job to walk there, think of using a bicycle. Modern bicycles are light years away from the way they were even twenty years ago. They are lighter and safer. If there are bicycle pathways in your city try using them. In the home itself, conserve energy in every way you can. Change the light bulbs to environmentally-friendly ones. Turn off lights and appliances in rooms not being used and turn everything off at night. Don’t even leave those red glimmers showing. What’s the point of pulling on carbon supplies when you are not even there.

Learn to use a pressure cooker to save energy. When you know how you can cook food in minutes instead of hours. Fast cooking is also possible in the microwave but that is another item that doesn’t have to flicker away in the 23 hours when you are not’t using it. Recycling is a natural form of energy saving. Whether you are in the city or the country save all food scraps and compost them for your garden. Compost is not hard to make and it is like black gold for pots and gardens. Anyone can have a garden even if they live in a single room. A window sill will provide herbs and a covered bottle is all you need to provide healthy sprouts. Making compost is really just a matter of piling it up, keeping it wet, turning it from time to time and not including meat to avoid putrid smells and vermin digging it up. Compost bins come in all sizes. In a really tiny space a worm farm may be the answer, but keep them well fed or they will migrate to other gardens.

The next thing to do to live well environmentally is to rethink your spending patterns. If you can cut down on over packaged goods in the supermarket and look for organic items, it will be so much better for Planet Earth and, incidentally, for you. But if you can cut down on buying generally you prevent those delivery trucks from thundering around. Even just putting off buying new clothes that you don’t really need it is a step in the right direction. Just try it and see how you go. Doing these things and buy using green architecture we can make a difference to the environment.

Tags: Architecture, Build Environmentally, Environment, Gardening, Green Architecture, Pragati Goswami, Pragmatic Designers, Renovate Environmentally

Interior design is the process of addressing environmental parameters when devising plans, programs, policies, buildings, or products. Classical prudent design may have always considered environmental factors; however, the environmental movement beginning in the 1960s has made the concept more explicit.^[1]

Environmental Design has been defined: "We live in the world by design. Creating the everyday environment in which we live involves complex systems of cultural meaning, visual communication and the use of tools, technology and materials. As a field of study, Environmental Design encompasses the built, natural, and human environments and focuses on fashioning physical and social interventions informed by human behaviour and environmental processes. Design asks us to find answers to the most fundamental of human questions: how should we live in the world and what should inform our actions? This complex endeavour requires an interdisciplinary approach."^{[citation needed]}

Environmental design in the old-fashioned sense develops physical environments, both interior and exterior, to meet one or more aesthetic or day-to-day functional needs, or to create a specific sort of experience - the focus being the human-designed environment. Environmental design includes such specialities as architects, acoustical scientists, engineers, environmental scientists, landscape architects, urban planning, interior designers, lighting designers, and exhibition designers. In many situations, historic preservation can be added to this list. Another recent addition to this general area might be "disability access". In terms of a larger scope, environmental design has implications for the industrial design of products: innovative automobiles, wind-electricity generators, solar-electric equipment, and other kinds of equipment could serve as examples.