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By Mark Lundegren

My title might sound like the beginning of a novel, or the end of a travelogue. Instead, I intend it to introduce an important and often greatly neglected principle or tool for promoting optimal architecture, community design, urban planning, and societal energy use – special care with how we think about, design, and thus must cover the final steps, say 100 or so, to reach our homes and other neighborhood buildings.

As a practical matter, and as a foundation for more conscious architecture and design, there are two basic ways we can take or cover our last steps home. First, we can take them ourselves, on foot, here including using bicycles and other personal mobility aids. Second, we can finish these final steps home in vehicles – in cars, motorcycles, and the like.

This idea might seem obvious, and yet almost no one thinks about it today, including many architects and planners, whereas we, and they, all should. Why? Because the way we take our final steps home significantly determines the basic design and character of our neighborhoods and surroundings – including their scale, their livability, their inherent healthiness, their initial cost, their ongoing resource demands, and their ecological impact.

As my photo above of Serthar Larung Gar in Tibet highlights, when communities are designed so that we take our last steps home on foot, this can greatly change the form and nature of our houses, neighborhoods, and larger communities, compared with designing for the option, or requirement, of covering this final distance in vehicles. Roadways can shrink to footpaths, large labor-intensive yards become superfluous, noise is appreciably reduced, and the natural intrusion and hazard of moving vehicles is eliminated.

Experientially, when the idea of walking our last steps home is part of neighborhood design, our houses and surroundings reliably become rehumanized and far more intimate. Fewer resource are required to create and maintain them. And the density of our neighborhoods can double or more, with no loss of indoor and outdoor living space per home – reducing sprawl, and the ecological harm and health risks associated with sprawl.

Our residential settings in turn become naturally healthier when they are pedestrian-focused – by requiring and thus encouraging adequate walking, by increasing social interaction, and by reducing anonymity and the resulting potential for both increased disaffection and crime.

But what about our vehicles? We still can have them, and of course still need them, directly or indirectly, to support modern living. But by leaving vehicles in small lots 100 steps or so from our homes, or otherwise relegating them to the edge of our neighborhoods, we can transform and greatly improve our communities and quality of life, and in category after category as I have suggested.

I’ve included two sets of photos contrasting pedestrian and vehicular-based neighborhoods to underscore these crucial points, and would encourage you to think more deeply, and more often, about our last steps home – as you plan, design, build, or choose the places where you and others will live. Let me know what you think in the comments section below.

Mark Lundegren is the founder of ArchaNatura. 

Tell others about ArchaNatura…encourage modern natural design!

Photos: Wikimedia

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By Mark Lundegren

Building natural shelters is fairly easy. It’s an innate, or quickly learned, human ability.

With some basic training and a bit of perseverance, most of us can gather materials from the environment and produce sheltering structures that are not only physically sound, but even ones that are often elaborate and quite stunning. This link will take you to some great examples – and again, ones that are within the reach of nearly all of us.

But erecting modern natural buildings is another matter, and a far more complex undertaking. And this is especially true when we define modern natural buildings as not just using natural materials or working with natural landscapes, but also as being wholly or partially off-grid, or having some degree of autonomy or independence from traditional – and unnaturally centralized – utility systems (see Wikipedia Autonomous Building).

In practice, the at once old and new demand of building autonomy often requires far more careful consideration of the building’s mechanical systems than in the case of utility-connected buildings. Unless our budget is unlimited and we can tolerate significant inefficiency or redundancy, autonomous building today almost invariably involves a fairly intricate weaving or orchestration of a building’s mechanical systems.

Of course, the primary driver of the added complexity of modern buildings, at any level of autonomy, is that we ask all modern buildings – whether serving as homes, businesses, or for other uses – to do more than simply shelter us. We want or expect modern buildings to heat, cool, and light our lives. We expect they will keep us and our possessions safe, and even warn us of threats and hazards – from outside the building and within.

We expect modern buildings to power our appliances and tools, and to aid our modern lifestyles more generally. We want our buildings to advance our goals, to make occupants and visitors comfortable, and to fulfill social mores and expectations. And we expect many buildings to be at once restful and enlivening places, settings where we can renew or enjoy ourselves amid the complexity and demands of modern life.

It’s a long list of essential building features for many, if not all, of us. And it is the complexity of modern building, and especially modern natural building, that tends to keep it out of reach for a great number of people. But this needn’t be the case. As I work to showcase through ArchaNatura, modern natural building can be greatly simplified and put within the reach of people of modest means, or ones dedicated to more natural, dematerialized, and intentional life.

Continue reading “Natural Mechanicals Made Easy”

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By Mark Lundegren

A key principle behind ArchaNatura is the idea that we can do more with less – and perhaps much more with much less – through more attentive design, new technologies, and creative uses of existing technologies (via new techniques).

The practical advantages of creating and functioning more generally with this goal in mind can be enormous, especially when our efforts are sustained and diverse. And this is true whether we are the creators or beneficiaries of the value-oriented new designs, technologies, and techniques that reliably result from the approach.

How Might We Achieve Far More With Far Less Today?

In addition to immediate benefits from specific advances, a sustained more with less focus offers a number of practical advantages as a strategic approach or framework for work and endeavor of all kinds. First, it turns even seemingly mundane tasks into naturally engaging and meaningful opportunities for creative action. At the same time, the approach also tends to keep us grounded as creators and more likely to produce valuable, as opposed to merely interesting, breakthroughs.

Third, when sustained and probing, the approach can lead to innovations and learning that steadily and progressively build upon one another, or naturally compound, thereby tending to produce more frequent and important breakthroughs, compared with more piecemeal or less value-oriented approaches. And finally, by stressing resource efficiency and solution effectiveness, the approach naturally promotes greater modern sustainability.

Continue reading “AN Challenge: More With Less”

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By Mark Lundegren

I’d like to introduce you to an alternative building technology of sorts, one called the Y-beam.

Y-beams are fairly easy to use, require no heavy lifting or specialized machinery, and almost always prove unexpectedly powerful when employed in building and design. In practice, Y-beams can be used by anyone and in any type of construction. Indeed, Y-beams even may be the most transformative, cost-effective, and simplifying design and construction technology ever created!

Modern Building Created Without Adequate Y-Beam Use?

Now, you’ve probably heard of an I-beam already, which of course rhymes with Y-beam. But there the similarities definitely end. While I-beams are structural elements that have the shape of the letter “I” in cross-section, by contrast Y-beams have no particular shape. Similarly, while I-beams are usually rigid and straight, Y-beams are completely flexible and can be bent or molded to any design imaginable.

As a practical matter, Y-beams can be used during any phase or aspect of construction. But they are best employed early in the building process. By this, I mean at least beginning with site and foundation preparation, and ideally well before this – in the design and site selection process. On the other hand, perhaps the least desirable use of Y-beams is after project completion, even as this may be their most common use. That said, Y-beams can be successfully used in retrofitting or redesigning existing projects that were envisioned or built without them, or without enough of them.

Continue reading “Modern Building With Y-Beams”

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By Mark Lundegren

Whether we are designers, building owners, or renting space, we all have a waiting, frequently overlooked, and remarkably flexible way to stretch our construction and furnishing budgets.

This nearly universal opportunity – literally to create money and materials from thin air – is waiting in front of all of our eyes. Or rather, it is waiting behind our eyes, in the way we use our eyes to look at the world.

The creativity-requiring but resource-leveraging design tool we have in mind is called Wabi-Sabi, which is a Japanese phrase roughly meaning naturally-aged. The term was coined to embody a design tradition that emerged from and is often favored by Japanese Zen culture, reflecting and embodying its special emphasis on attentive life. Importantly, however, this part aesthetic and part philosophical sensibility can be seen as a re-naturalized design or artistic outlook that has re-occurred in various forms across many human cultures and settings.

Naturally Elegant Wabi-Sabi Tea-Cup

If you are not familiar with Wabi-Sabi, the elegant but decidedly irregular tea-cup above will give you an immediate feel for and introduction to this old and important artistic tradition. It clearly highlights the Wabi-Sabi school’s special emphasis on seeing beauty in things that are natural and aged.

Over time, Wabi-Sabi art and design has become highly elaborated and, with this elaboration, sometimes quite expensive. But this needn’t be the case. In reality, beautiful and disheveled – or beautifully disheveled – and useful Wabi-Sabi objects are usually all around us, are often free or nearly free, and generally can be fashioned with just a bit of curiosity and creativity. All it really takes is an acquired and re-naturalized taste or artistic sense – one that sees natural objects and natural aging as beautiful.

Continue reading “Wabi-Sabi: Beauty On A Budget”