Nature and architecture

Nature and architecture 

I write here about natural environments but not just as journal entries on tourist experiences. I consider experiences with nature an integral part of architecture. What gives an architect any particular right to have views on the natural environment?

One could argue that quite a lot of what we consider natural is actually designed; also that the current association of the natural with the virgin, the unmolested by humans is rather recent notion and a very biased one, too. Living in the dense, small-scale Dutch suburbs of the Randstad I'm constantly amazed by the resilience of the flora and fauna, and their ability to come back and occupy even more than what we make available to them, so I'm disinclined to view my environment from a god-like perspective of human supremacy or to adopt sharp distinctions between the built and the natural environment.

We're just part of the environment, admittedly a very influential species, yet often powerless against e.g. a swarm of insects or a river flood. So, even though I keep writing about "the built environment" I acknowledge the unity of the environment and our partial role in it. Nature is not an accessory of architecture but the wider framework within which architecture and the rest of our culture exists. To understand better human foibles and achievements one needs to see the environment as a whole.

Yet another reason is that our perceptual apparatus has been formed by millions of years of interaction with environments where out influence has been minimal. Over these years deeply ingrained prejudices have developed, which often remain unaccounted for in architecture. Just think of the many buildings with visual cliffs in them and how often some people refuse to walk there. There's a lot to be learned from a less architecture-oriented view of the environment.