on the way to work, a sunny morning -

Sharp shadows are cast from buildings plumb and flush, strike lines and areas accross our land, I see my sillouette follow a journey line, but slip into darkness suddenly into the cool of un-sunned places. A map made of the land showing only these crisp black edges may reveal or conceal the landscape we live among.

Cader Idris and near Tal-y-Llyn

Current paradox for an ecological designer...

It is my firm belief, that the only way for humankind, to live sustainably as civilizations within this world, with the future necessity to adapt to climate change and our exponential population growth, is as mid-dense city/nexus all connected on a greened, closed loop grid. (This is due to many reasons including but not exclusive to: the one-planet living calcs for space per person, then thinking about space to leave as nature and space needed for food, adding in the efficiency of grid living and the concept that in order for closed-loop a city to work, the built environment model must be thought of as one organism, not many separate bits.)

However, it is then currently impossible to design an on-grid building that is as ecological as it could possibly be, as the grids themselves are still in the age of fast-track linearity, so, in order to design a sustainable building, or group of buildings, one cannot currently think of it as a part of the city/town organism whole, but as a separate entity that must in itself be a smaller version of the organism. It must be designed such that, when the grids finally catch up to good-looped, as they will when they have too, that the building/s could feed into it and be fed by it, thus enabaling the city to be that whole organism. But this, design not-for-the-green-grid, means that the development of it will be perpetually put-off untill the very last push. How then to design in an ecologically sound manner. On-grid, for the future grids, or off grid for the ecological singular now?

Transitions Towns St Albans

Down with Energy Bills!

Transitions Towns St Albans held an ideas generating session on wednesday night for an eco-open-house programme that might run next year. Inspired by the success of open house movement across the globe, especially the event that has taken place in Brighton for the last few years. This is BrightGreenHomes project, that one of TTSt Albans' energy group’s members volunteered at.  He gave a short resentation about what they acheived during the event, how and any outcomes from the feedback.

An interesting and animated group of people form this group who came up with many ideas and interest for the upcoming project, they meet again on the 17^th October to discuss further the practicalities and possibilities for this scheme in St Albans...good luck!

Circle...

"ANY ITEM OF WASTE CREATION CAN BE SEEN AS A FALIURE, DUE TO INEFFICIENCY IN THE SYSTEM, ESPECIALLY WHEN COMPARED TO NATURAL SYSTEMS..." (Harris and Borer, 2005)

Man is nature..?

Man says to nature: 'you are organic, you grow naturally you are unpredictable and powerful, how did you become to look so perfect?' Nature says to man: 'Nature is according to rules both mirco and macro, what is this distinction between man and nature? man is of nature, you are according to these rules too.'

SPIN, patchwork farming, transitions...

Came accross this post today on Transition Culture site: (See post here.)

Transition Cultures, whose phrase is: 'an evolving exploration into the head, heart and hands of energy descent' is about how we can action our society to transition into sustainable communities. It is a global organisation with local groups that meet, discuss, organise and action things within their community. I havnt been involved with them in the UK yet but in Alpine, Texas there is a thriving group who helped us on some of the projects at La Loma Del Chivo, (link here for post.)

Their post today is about SPIN farming group, who take a re-look at the way people think about bringing local small-scale produce into the urban place. SPIN's website 'Thinking of Farming, Think again' is an exciting wealth of knowledge and advise for creating local produce and creating an income from it; 'patchwok farming.' As is described in transition's post post today:

'SPIN farming strips out any talk of politics or ideology that underpins approaches such as organics or permaculture, stating “think in terms of a production system, not a belief system”, although it doesn employ organic techniques.  It can start on parcels of land as small as 1,000 square feet, and can be spread across a number of pieces of land.'

This method of farming could alter the ways that planners and architects are currently trying to implement spaces for small-scale farming and urban food production into the scene to one that can operate in a de-centralised and less-space-organsied way, a move from the allotment designated region and a move towards the use of SLOAP, front gardens, un-used lawns for not only the hobby-orientated veg-garden and unemployment to the local food network and self-employed work community.

Pies! The fruits of Don's Garden...

Blackberrys  (from St Albans hedges,) apples (from my mums garden,) plums and redcurrents (from my Grandpas friend Don's garden) turned into pies, although we have only used about a sixth of the fruit so far...

New Compost bins and leaf moulder...The Garden see's no waste...

3 little composts's standing in a row...The product of cutting back the paths and clearing out the pond for maintenance in the St Albans Garden...Hopefully, with the help of the kitchen remains...next springs allotment will have first class soil and mulch.