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By Mark Lundegren

Today, we have the opportunity to create far happier and healthier human life.

This goal or desire of course is not new. What is new is our growing modern accumulation of health-related science – physiological, psychological, sociological, and ecological – describing in more certain terms what this effort entails, how it best might be achieved, and where it can begin most easily.

As I will explore with you in concept and practice, and again confirming intuitions we have had for centuries, contemporary science underscores that happier and healthier life for all people is an outcome, endeavor, and indeed created condition that is at once realistic and waiting, with all or most of its needed features adequately understood and within our grasp (for a more careful summary and synthesis of this science, see Our Three Natural Paths and its free companion Three Paths Community Health Program).

Importantly, in our discussion, and as is my custom, I will take happiness as sustained positive feeling or emotion, and health as the more fundamental or ultimately selected natural quality that is sustainability or durability itself – and whether as respects an organism, group, species, or system. As a practical and empirical matter, happiness appears to follow health closely in nature, and also to be a general signal and motivator of health, especially in stable conditions of life.

Overall, the science of creating happier and healthier modern life suggests a three-part approach, or underlying model of action, and one employed simultaneously at the communal or local and societal or global levels. First, and fundamentally, is for us consciously to seek and prioritize these outcomes, and notably above all, which demonstrably is not evenly or even commonly the case today. Second, and unsurprisingly, is for us widely to use available empirical science to guide us in this naturally broad, complex, and overriding effort. Third, and given inevitable imperfection in our understandings and actions, is for us continually to adjust, improve, or evolve our sense and seeking of happiness and health, in order to achieve these core and related natural aims of life more readily, and more durably.

This three-part and only seemingly simple process for progressing modern happiness and health may strike you as obvious, even as it remains largely unused and overlooked in our time – with the natural, and naturally foundational, advancement of our health and ensuing happiness routinely subordinated to other goals, preoccupations, and formulations. As I have written about elsewhere, these alternative aims and efforts can be framed helpfully as surrounding or broadly emerging from the historically new, naturally isolated or indifferent, and discernably less happy and healthy phenomenon that is human competition for wealth. This now frequently dominating state of life in turn is well-approached as occurring in place of and keeping us from more widespread, more naturally advanced and advancing, and predictably more harmonious and enduring cooperation for health. Crucially, and as you can confirm for yourself, our exploration of conscious, scientific, and evolving human cooperation for health reliably leads us to the conclusion that we now collectively must live much more carefully or attentively with our science, with one another, with our natural happiness and health, and with health-bestowing nature.

These critical and observable premodern and modern social dynamics underscore that, although far happier and healthier life may be waiting for us in a scientific age, action in this direction must confront and overcome substantial barriers to realizing our new potential to design and build our communities, societies, and thus lives for transformed, and naturally transforming, happiness and health. As suggested, and as you will see in the science-derived construct or model for happier and healthier human life I will introduce, movement toward appreciably healthier or naturally superior conditions today appears to involve a basic shift and thus change in the general direction or emphasis of modern life and society. In practice, this means stopping a great deal of what we now do, and often making more than incremental or modest adjustments to the ways in which we currently think, organize, plan, design, build, and live.

Making these essential and life-altering ideas more pointed and palpable, and now specifically addressing those of us who plan, create, and finance our modern built environment as their profession, I concurrently and more emphatically would say this: there is something deeply flawed, irrational, self-limiting, far from optimal, recurrently unhappy and unhealthy, and thus unnatural in the ways that we design and build our communities, cities, and societies at present. Around the world, our existing planning, design, and development practices routinely and measurably squander natural resources and human effort, precariously pollute and impair our planet’s ecosystems, and simultaneously diminish our environment and ourselves. Relatedly, and again measurably, our development methods also frequently and now needlessly create insecure and unstable communities and societies, perpetuate strained and unsustainable human relations and conditions more generally, leave us individually less fit and well than we readily might be, and in all produce much less human happiness and health than is possible in our time – and naturally will be necessary in time.

Against these important and intersecting shortfalls in our modern design and development practices, our opportunity to plan and build life in superior and more advancing ways – and thereby naturally or quintessentially to create superior and more advancing conditions of health for all people, and even all of life around us – once more appears to begin from and depend on our new science-enabled ability to understand and construct life in more careful, deliberate, foreseeing, and beneficial ways. For all of us, but again especially those of us in and funding the design and development professions, this inevitably means better comprehending why and improving how we build the structures and thus structure of life, and in turn steadily and ultimately acting in ever more patient, informed, reflective, prospective, and health-minded terms.

To consider these naturally essential and now pressing themes more deeply, concretely, and actionably, I will introduce and explore a science-synthesizing, healthfully-remaking, and far-reaching model for modern design and development, one that I call the natural city. As you will see, this alternative and remarkably simple approach to community and ultimately societal design makes clear, conceptually and practically, that my introductory ideas are substantially true and ready for urgent attention. As part of this discussion, the natural city model will demonstrate how an array of limiting and largely inherited shortfalls in modern quality of life can be simultaneously, systematically, and fairly easily remedied, beginning in our time, and again largely through superior or more health-minded design and development practices.

In keeping with my overview graphic above, and as you will see in our exploration of the city, the natural city is a tangible, practicable, and ready alternative to our dominant modes of community and societal design and development today. In all, the natural city aims at, and appears likely to produce, immediately much happier and healthier modern people, communities, and societies. At the same time, the natural city also aims at, and similarly appears likely to produce, human life that is recurringly or enduringly efficient and effective at achieving these core natural aims, leading to far more stable and sustainable conditions in time than is probable at present. Importantly, this increased stability and sustainability is for our societies and species, and interrelatedly, for all or much of natural life on our planet as well.

As its seemingly, and thus instructively, contradictory name implies, the natural city first is very much a city – though importantly, one envisioned as becoming societal and eventually global in scale – affording the social, economic, efficiency, and intellectual advantages of urbane, interconnected, dense, and cosmopolitan human life. At the same time, and in keeping with its name, the natural city also is an urban entity innovatively placed directly in and subordinated to the natural landscape. Owing to this second essential attribute, the natural city thereby is a construct seeking the reliable physical, emotional, perceptual, informational, and ecological benefits of human life in close proximity to and intimacy with the natural world, and not only to and with itself, as of course was our long, long-evolved, long-enduring, and health-advancing ancestral condition.

Continue reading “The Natural City”

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By Mark Lundegren

There are many reasons we might be interested in ultra-low water use.

To begin a list, we might live in an area which has low rainfall and limited water abundance. We may want to reduce expenses from high water use, wherever we live. We might seek to stop unsustainable draws on local groundwater, and thus perhaps ensure adequate spring and surface water for natural wildlife and the carbon-sequestering ecosystems around us. Or either practically or philosophically, we may wish to build off-grid in as many ways as possible, be free of centralized utilities and their bills, and live with a higher degree of natural autonomy, freedom, and resilience than is typical today.

Whatever our motivations for examining and pursuing this goal, let me say upfront that genuinely radical reductions in water use are normally possible in much of the industrially developed world, without significant reductions in our material quality of life. As we will discuss, thanks to modern technology, and in most areas – and almost always in ones with above 30 cm (12 inches) of annual rainfall – it is possible to live a fully modern life with on-site captured rain and other precipitation as our sole source of water.

Wikipedia: Residential Water Use in the U.S. and Canada (link/credit)

Importantly, while our discussion will focus on residential or domestic water use, all of its its lessons are directly applicable to commercial and institutional buildings. On the other hand, water use in industrial manufacturing is clearly a separate and more ranging topic, with different issues and differing opportunities across various industrial sectors.

However, while we will only briefly touch on this area here, the case of both industrial and domestic food production is worth highlighting as part of our core discussion. Simply put, with careful water consumption, the use of modern permaculture techniques, and movement to more natural and naturally water-conserving perennial food systems (a topic I have summarized here), the above rule of deriving all needed water from on-site precipitation also broadly applies to agriculture as well.

Lastly for this introduction, our discussion notably will assume the presence of abundant low-cost electricity, a proposal that seems reasonable, across the developed world at least, in our era of increasingly low-cost solar collectors and batteries (a trend I have explored here).

Continue reading “Ultra-Low Water Use Buildings”

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By Mark Lundegren

Architects, builders, planners, and developers are doubtless aware that 3D printed buildings and larger communities are on the horizon, with early prototypes now in the popular and professional press. In this approach, large three-axis printers, or alternatives such as ones pivoting from a central point, are used to place materials in a specific order via design and printing software.

While this potential is well-recognized, at least three important aspects of this likely change in construction methods may be overlooked. First is that it will both require and strongly incentivize new Design for Printibality (DFP) standards and practices. On one hand, this will be necessary to enable reliable use of the technology, and also encouraged by the fact that machine-printed buildings with high DFP quotients – from backyard sheds to urban skyscrapers – may become substantially less expensive to construct and maintain than traditionally-built ones.

To Sense Potential Changes, Consider Which Form Is Easier to 3D Print

Second, as my intentionally provocative photo suggests, perhaps few of us have considered how radically DFP may alter building design and engineering, and the typical building shapes and fine-scale design features that we typically employ and take as given today. But to quickly understand this prospect, consider that much of human architecture, historically and in our time, has a low DFP quotient and is likely to be strongly disfavored or disincentivized by 3D technology.

Third, perhaps just as few of us are aware that DFP standards exist already, owing to the rise of desktop and industrial 3D printing, that these standards appear broadly applicable to building design at all scales, and also that they likely offer a significant window onto future building design and construction.

Continue reading “Building Design For Printability”

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By Mark Lundegren

Do you wonder if common building forms or approaches are the most efficient possible?

Since much of architecture and design today, as in the past, is concerned with aesthetics, norms, status, expression, and therefore communication, you may suspect the answer is no, and even strongly no.

But before you answer, let me point out that when we think of form or design efficiency, we can mean more than the direct costs or immediate resources and energy involved in constructing and using buildings, along with the larger settings they create in combination, as important as this is to determining efficiency.

In a complementary and informing way, we also can consider the indirect costs of buildings and developed areas. This crucial but less obvious category of costs or efficiency factors is often substantially overlooked, taken as separate from or beyond the scope of building and development, or expediently treated as “free” to some degree – thereby becoming externalities, or public or unborn costs, in the terminology of economists.

Importantly, indirect building and development costs can be as significant as direct ones. They include the often unexamined costs of pollution, dislocation, future inflexibility, sprawl, resource degradation, eventual obsolescence, and the potential for blight. As a practical matter, such indirect and commonly overlooked costs are essential to understanding the true cost, and thus the true efficiency, of any design, building, or developed area.

Fortunately, we can simplify this complex topic for a general discussion by recognizing that two basic design principles or features often substantially predict both types of costs, and thus the general efficiency of building and development. The first of these principles is that development, buildings, and spaces that are more compact or reduced in scope will tend to be less resource-intensive, less costly overall, and therefore more efficient, as long as they meet essential needs or are effective solutions overall.

The second principle is that buildings, infrastructure, and material inputs using renewable resources – and failing this, readily recyclable or reusable ones – will tend to be less costly and more efficient overall as well, by often producing fewer externalities or indirect costs for others to contend with in time. There are of course exceptions to these two rules. But overall, it is a much more difficult general case to advocate for expansive and non-renewable building and development on efficiency grounds, even as this is still our most common approach to building today.

Continue reading “The Most Efficient Building Form”