Living Buildings posted by Annie B. Bond

By Jason McLennan, and adapted from Sustainable Architecture White Pages from the Earth Pledge Foundation.Series on Sustianable Development

A few years ago I, and a large team of scientists, engineers, and educators were hired to develop a prototype building for the twenty-first century.

The building, known as the EpiCenter, would combine emerging technologies with age-old strategies to generate less pollution than any conventional building, both in its construction and operation, while enhancing the productivity and creative synergy of the students and researchers that would inhabit it.

We had been given the task of designing the future, or at least of showing what was possible if we dared to dream of a future where our buildings no longer took from the environment, but were restorative.

For too long now the machine has been the primary metaphor for our buildings, which implies a relationship with nature that is exploitative and relies on brute force combined with great amounts of energy to solve problems. It is a nineteenth-century model that has been carried forth into the twenty-first century.

I found myself searching for a metaphor that would replace the machine. I found it in a tiny flower. Here was a thriving plant that not only had evolved perfectly to suit its environment, but also enriched it, retaining soil, providing habitat, and storing rainwater as needed. It was a perfect metaphor for the building of the future.

Bucky Fuller once said, “We do not seek to imitate nature, but rather to find the principles she uses.” By following these basic principles we can imagine whole cities operating like complex ecosystems, processing water and waste while generating energy.

I decided to call the future of architecture a future of living buildings. Like their flowering counterparts, living buildings operate from seven simple principles. Living buildings will:

SEVEN SIMPLE PRINCIPLES OF LIVING BUILDINGS
1. Harvest all their own water and energy needs on site.
2. Be adapted specifically to site and climate and evolve as conditions change.
3. Operate pollution-free and generate no wastes that aren’t useful for some other process in the building or immediate environment.
4. Promote the health and well-being of all inhabitants, as a healthy ecosystem does.
5. Be comprised of integrated systems that maximize efficiency and comfort.
6. Improve the health and diversity of the local ecosystem rather than degrade it.
7. Be beautiful and inspire us to dream.

The amazing thing is that we already have the technology necessary to create buildings that can perform like the living buildings I envisioned. From photovoltaics to fuel cells, the technology research we performed and applied at the EpiCenter shows that the future is available, if we only have the desire and foresight to accept it.