For
the Renascense project
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Elevation
Looking North - 1978 |
| This
Elevation, looking North, illustrates the basic grammar
and many of the features of the building and explicates
a number of essential design strategies. |
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Removable
Structure:
| EcoSphere
Garden is designed to rest on a wood and gravel bearing
system. The gravel also acts as a heat sink for the
energy system. Top soil is scraped away, holes are
dug fro the interior platform bearing columns (in
this case, telephone poles), the wood parameter planting
boxes placed in conjunction with vapor barriers and
the gravel. This system was successfully tested out,
as a permanent installation, with the Instead
project in 1980. This site adapting strategy
was conceived for the original
EcoSphere design. The interior “flooring” surface
is brick pavers laid on a sand bed and vapor
barrier over the gravel. |
| When
the EcoSphere Garden site is required for another
use, the structure and materials are remove (most
likely to another site in transition) and the structure
re-erected. Making transportable buildings economical
provides an alternative to the present approach in
real estate development of building inexpensive permanent
buildings on land not yet ready for high-end development.
The in-place land development design strategy is
flawed and leads to land-use economic "boom
and bust”
cycles and unnecessary ecological damage. |
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Interior
and Exterior Garden:
| The
garden is the focus of this project. The concept
of garden, however, is an expanded one.
Here is a garden that is inside and outside
while making one seamless environment. A garden that
is
ornamental and food producing. An environment
to be in a much as to produce. A place to
grow and consume food, as well as, sit, rest, dialog,
bathe. |
| The
EcoSphere Garden was conceived to be an example of,
and a tool for, the greening of the urban/suburban
landscape. It offers an alternative to the damaging
practice
of industrialized food production with its attendant
infrastructure and transportation costs. Food can
be produced economically in small quantities; it
can
be organic;
it can be
produced at “the point of sale” and consumption.
This is far healthier and more ecologically sound
than present practices. The design goal, using a
combination of “French Intensive,” Permaculture and
tank fish farming, is to demonstrate that a balanced
food source can be created in small units, in the
city, all seasons of the year. And, to show that
this can be achieved economically while providing
a recreational community experience. |
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Articulating
Skin:
| The
entire exterior wall/roof of the EcoSphere Garden
is made up of opening and shutting panels that control
temperature, light, radiation and view in and out.
While EcoSphere does not move, what makes it an “EarthShip”
is that its sense of orientation is “controlled”
by how these panels are set. The panels are controlled
by a series of lines much like the rigging of a traditional
ship. Therefore the building is “sailed” like a
ship providing a variety of different interior and
exterior experiences. Since the Renascence Project
was interested (among
other things) in alternatives in energy, food production
and collaborative use of resources, this version
of Ecosphere Garden was deliberately low-tech and
labor intensive. The building is designed to be
worked like a homestead with food production
on the scale of a community garden. The default mode
in
architecture is to make the environment as efficient
(so called),
and requiring as little human participation, as possible.
This puts the user in a passive mode and tries to
turn architecture into merely a visual art. The EcoSphere
Garden
challenges this trend, embraces all the senses, demands
awareness and interaction and rewards involvement.
It becomes an organic bridge between the human-made
world and the natural environment. |
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Functions:
| The
EcoSphere Garden was designed to be a community experience
centered around food, dialog and bathing. The Renascence
Project had restored an old house and in this environment
created library, meeting and eating spaces for Renascence
Library members. The Garden was designed to supplement
these spaces and to provide R&D in urban landscaping
and gardening. It also was designed to be an experiment
in community collaboration and work. In addition
to the food growing function re-creation
is a major concern of this design in the form of
meeting spaces
for reading and dialog, bathing facilities and dining.
At the time this design was created, the Library
served between 8 and 25 dinners an evening to its
100 plus members and their guests. The ceremony
of community food preparation, eating, dialog and
music is the late afternoon and evening function
of this environment while the craft of serious food
production is the day function. Besides these intrinsic
values, this project was designed to be a test of
certain design assumptions, related to the economics
of shared resources, behind the Domicile project.
This greening of the urban
landscape is an essential
concept for revitalizing and humanizing cities and
suburban areas. |
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Matt
Taylor
in flight Palo Alto to Atlanta
May 19, 2001
SolutionBox
voice of this document:
VISION • TACTICS • SCHEMATIC
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posted:
May 19, 2001
revised:
January 11, 2003
• 2001.0519.286311.mt • 20030111.329800.mt •
note:
this document is about 60% finished
Total
time: Drawings (original) and Notes (web page) to date: 32 hours |
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