Nature's Return

Our ecosystems that we live in have evolved for millions of years forming complex relationships between plants and animals. To sustain our environment and these ecosystems we need to preserve the fabric of these relationships. No matter how much we ignore, discount, or put ourselves against these evolved ecological relationships, they are the reality of life. 

We strive to change the environment we live in by draining, filling, paving, and building, making our spaces more hospitable to the convenience of man. This is to the exclusion of evolved indigenous species and their relationship to the natural systems of life.

You might ask,"Well what does it matter?. We can create and build what we need to make thing work and preserve life".

Can we really improve on relationships of earth, water, wind, and life that have continually evolved for these eons forming from apparently obvious to incomprehensible relationships unique to their place.

It is said that nothing is wasted in nature. This is a clue to the efficiency of natural systems in our environment. As our human population increases it is more and more important to acknowledge our being within efficient natural systems.

We have changed our life, life on earth, dramatically in the last few hundred years, a minuscule period of our evolution, but with a tremendous global life effect. The results of mans environmental manipulation are obviously very physically evident, but the much greater environmental (earth, water, wind, and life) effects are reflected not only in our perceived time framework, but throughout future geologic time.

Through homoginizing our built environments our environmental, or ecological sense of place is lost. In nature, sense of place is everything. This seems the reason why people, now feel a sense of loss with nature.

A sense of place is a vocabulary unique to an environment , a culture, a history. A strong element of design not only reflects a cultural history, but an evolved ecological history unique to that place, preserving and continuing the diversity of life on the land. If man is to be within nature on the land, this sense must be acknowledged in the architecture and implementation of man in his development of built land.

Given our current methods of human land planning, development, and use, preserving or restoring a site's sense of place is a tremendous challenge. Although even under our current environmental planning practices we can adopt methods, take acts to encourage a sustainable environment.