Mossnets x Radical Intersections

The following images come out of trying to visualize how nature makes it’s way back into these communities in behaviors, structure and culture. I’d like to share this set of images as a way to visualize nature finding it’s way back into these communities in the structural, as well as social and cultural realms. These are photos along the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena.

The rock wall held together by cement is the vision of or current situation with a structure largely defined by the materials of it’s construction, functioning but somewhat inflexible.

In some places along the wall the moss grows out of the cement and branches out to eventually cover the cement portions, leaving islands of stone peeking through. How does this growth of a living colony over a manmade solution function as a methodology for re-designing communities and social interaction? Does it scale up to communities such as the ones in our exercise? Can this vision be seen as a way to re-imagine the growth of these communities over time? Can it happen quickly?

This image is of a work by Gordon Matta Clark and one of his intercuts in to a suburban home on the east coast. I share this image as a way to spark imagination about the possibility of radical intersections in the communities. Can we strip away pieces to reveal or allow new growth to occur. What form does this take or how does it re-define pre-exisiting ones?

Uninventing Suburbia…

There was a page on a NY Times blog this morning about suburbs and energy consumption. There are a number of links on the page that might be of interest. One is to a trailer of a film called the End of Suburbia which examines the evolution of these systems. A paper on the concept of retrofilling and a lot of the positive work being done to adapt these existing structures. There’s also a link to a website on dead malls. It seems that in trying to adapt these systems to deal with the fire ecology that modding or solutions will also be tied to other issues with this type of lifestyle.

BIOMIMICRY AND FLOW IN CITIES

Dayna Baumeister is a biologist in the field of biomimicry, an educator and design consultant. She is the co-founder of the Biomimicry Guild.Of course you know my answer, biomimicry! Taking us out of nature and consolidating in urban centers furthers the artificial divide between humans and nature, as if they are two separate things. It does not occur to us that we’ve been on this planet for a mere few seconds if you look at the age of the earth, yet we think that these big brains are all that it takes to figure out how to live. Nature has been around for 3.85 billion years, and that is exactly what we need to do, to ask nature how it does it. We need to ask the whale how to do it. How do you transport such a large biomass thousands of miles on just fractions of energy? We need to ask the gecko how to climb walls without glue. How does an ecosystem filter water? Can we mimic them? With six or seven billion of us, the only way we can live on this planet is to have a substantial proportion in the cities, but cities cannot function like the way they do today. We need to have cities themselves mimic ecosystems. Flow is everything. Ecosystems work because flow is fostered by the form of the system. The forms of our cities today do not foster flow. That is where redesign comes in. I think emergent systems like slumsÑif you aren’t imposing hierarchical human hubris on top of that systemÑwill evolve to become working, functional systems, but we have to create the conditions to allow natural evolution to occur as opposed to creating artificial constructs that hinder flow and the form and pattern that we need.

Here is a link to Case Studies of Biomimicry.