Architecture Addiction, The Official Blog of

Deborah Coburn of Natural Home fame wrote an article called “Mother Knows Best: Home Design Inspired by Nature.”

It’s about biomicry.

Which is one of my favorite subjects!

Biomimicry (from bios, meaning “life,” and mimesis, “to imitate") is a design principle that seeks sustainable solutions to human problems by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies. Janine Benyus studied the concept in her book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature(William Morrow, 1997). Today, industrial engineers look at mussels that cling to ocean-pounded rocks to learn about water-resistant, nontoxic bonding agents; inventors base designs for fans and pumps on the spiral shape of the nautilus shell and the vortex of a tornado. Even an exterior paint, Lotusan, is designed to simulate the lotus flower’s water-shedding surface.

Biomimicry’s core idea is that nature, imaginative by necessity, has solved many of the problems we grapple with in modern design. Organizing our homes to reflect nature connects us with the wisdom of 3.8 billion years of what works. Biomimicry in interior design borrows not just nature’s look but the solutions embedded in its laws. Follow nature’s wisdom and try these seven design principles to make your home more vibrant and beautiful.

I just came across this article by Carol Steinfeld called “Grow With the Flow: Legal Uses of Graywater.”

So now you can come out of hiding. You can stop pretending that you didn’t know.

Preparing graywater requires a few basic steps: draining it from the house to your graywater system via pipes kept separate from toilet drains; filtering out fibers and greases; then disinfecting the water and treating its carbon. You can take care of the last two parts—disinfecting and treating carbon—by setting up a system in which graywater drains under a few inches of soil, gravel and plant roots. The plants and soil will naturally treat the carbon and disinfect the water.

Though kept separate from what’s flushed down the toilet—called “blackwater"—graywater still can contain bacteria and pathogens that could cause illness, although the small amounts present in most graywater are a low risk, according to a University of Massachusetts study. Graywater also contains carbon from oils, soaps and skin. As in all organic compounds, that carbon will decompose, potentially causing odors and clogging the air spaces in the ground. Health officials advise draining graywater under three to 18 inches of soil, where soil bacteria decompose carbon and destroy pathogens—and where plant roots can drink it up.

State regulations for graywater vary widely, so check with your municipality to be sure your system is legal. Some states consider kitchen-sink and dishwasher drainage blackwater because it contains grease, nutrients and food bits.In most states, graywater cannot be used above ground without a special permit. In nearly all states, a graywater permit requires submitting results of a soils test and an approved plan.

(Have I mentioned how HAPPY I am now that I’m finally receiving my Natural Home subscription?)

I just read this article in the LA Times by Ann Japenga called, “More stark than the desert around them – Many midcentury modern enthusiasts are extending the spareness of home interiors into the garden, and wiping out natural habitat in the process.”

One neighbor ripped out the fig and lemon trees planted there 40 years before by the original owner. To the north, modernistas tore out a jungle of honeysuckle vines and asparagus ferns weaving in and out of an old fence.

All around my neighborhood, new owners are hacking off the blond skirts of the Washingtonia filifera palms and amputating tendrils of black dates. In the latest development, they are even shaving the rough bark of the palms, leaving a shiny blood-like surface.

Shaving…the bark? Excuse me?

But it wasn’t supposed to be this way. The giants of modernism wanted their open floor plans and walls of glass to bring the outdoors in. One of the pioneering modernist landscape architects, John Ormsbee Simonds, aimed to work with the “want to be” of the land, just as Alexander Pope – an 18th century English poet who protested an earlier wave of sterile landscaping – urged consultation with “the genius of the place.”

A man who understood the genius of the desert was Albert Frey, one of this region’s most famous of modernist architects. When I moved here – before the rediscovery of modernism – he was a somewhat obscure eccentric who lived in a house on the hill with a boulder in his bedroom He stood on his head daily, and studied the position of the sun for a year before deciding where to put his house.

Let me say that again.

He studied the position of the sun for a year before deciding where to put his house.

When asked his guiding design principle, Frey once answered: “The respect for nature.”

That is the beginning and end of what you need to know, architect or not.

But now new midcentury moderns are extending the spare aesthetic of their interiors into the garden, rather then letting nature work its way in. Vickki Schlappi’s yard has a lawn and two geometric rows of desert plants, topped off with a single skinny shaved palm. “I like clean, straight lines and I just wanted everything to pop,” says Schlappi, a real estate agent. “I feel like I’m trying to set an example on the street.”

Can you maybe stop?

My tree-stripping neighbor, Dan Bunker, has his main residence in the city – San Francisco – and was not aware of all the things that live in and around the palm trees.

“Being in real estate, I see a lot of newly landscaped yards . . . so I just went with what I saw as being fashionable,” he said in an e-mail. “That said . . . I wouldn’t have shaved the palm trees if I’d known they were bird habitats.”

This gives me hope. Maybe we don’t have to wait generations for another shift from minimalism to something more hospitable. Maybe one day soon I’ll look over the fence and see orange orioles again weaving nests in the unruly, unshaven, palm trees.

I just read this artilce in the New Statesman by Joanna Moorhead
called, “Reclaiming the streets.”

You probably know about Mexico City.

I mean the pollution.

The traffic.

The nasty nasty smog.

Now imagine the eco-dream…

It’s 9am in the centre of one of the busiest, most traffic-clogged cities in the world, and I am cycling, entirely alone and without a car in sight, along its central, tree-lined, four-lane boulevard. I brake as a roundabout approaches, but a police officer is waiting, whistle between his teeth, to beckon me across: he is holding up a barrage of traffic on the intersecting road, entirely for me.

I sail past, registering as I do the hundreds of vehicles backed up to north and south. Only when I am safely across the roundabout does the policeman give them the go-ahead to inch their way along the overburdened minor avenue, while I continue freely along my generous expanse of empty, exhaust-free highway.

What is this, an ecowarrior’s dream? Well, it could be: but no, it was a recent Sunday morning in Mexico City. I was cycling along the main traffic artery, Avenida Reforma, a road built by the Emperor Maximilian during a spell of French rule in the mid 19th century. Usually, the scene on Reforma is of nose-to-tail cars, most of them clapped-out, pre-1990s models. Vehicles move slowly, exhaust fumes cast a pall over the road, and there is a constant backdrop of noisy horns and aggravated shouts from angry drivers, punctuated from time to time by the sickening crunch of car on car as a roadway altercation goes awry.

On a normal morning, this road is an environmentalist’s worst nightmare. But not so at the end of each week, because, for the past few months, traffic has been banished from Reforma each Sunday between 7am and 2pm. It’s a bold move, and the brainchild of the city’s mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, who has gone green big-time (certainly by Mexican standards). In another headline-making move, the mayor and his closest advisers now cycle to work on the first Monday of every month - no mean feat for Ebrard, a 48-year-old smoker who, by his own admission, doesn’t exercise as much as he might.

Ebrard is talked of as a presidential candidate in 2012, but the Reforma cycling initiative certainly can’t be dismissed as populist. Local people, on the whole, hate it. “It’s all very well for tourists like you, wandering out of your hotels on Reforma and enjoying the rare smell of fresh air and the eerie silence because there’s no traffic,” says Mirella, who lives in Mexico City. “But for a mother like me, based slightly out of town in the suburbs, what it means is I can’t bring my kids in to the city-centre museums on a Sunday the way I used to. The traffic in the smaller roads off Reforma is simply too chocka.”

Mexico City - DF, for Distrito Federal, as the locals call it - has grown quickly. In 1950 it had roughly three million inhabitants; today there are more than 19 million. And, tragically, that mushrooming population has been starry-eyed about the benefits of car use, as demonstrated par excellence by their North American neighbours. The Mexicans might be scathing about the folks who live in the country next door to theirs, but when it came to cars they swallowed the American dream hook, line and sinker. Which is doubly sad given that their city centre is so compact and would - were it not for all those cars making the place dangerous and unpleasant for walking and cycling - be perfect for ambling and pedalling round.

I just read this article in the Star by Christopher Hume about a proposal from SmartCentres to build a huge shopping mall with parking for 1,900 cars.

People are lining up to voice their opposition. Architects, former mayors, local residents, councillors and the mayor himself, David Miller, have denounced the project.

As well they should; it has no place in Toronto. It was ex-mayor David Crombie who pointed out that we didn’t go through the pain and expense of taking down the east end of the Gardiner Expressway just to make room for Wal-Mart and its ilk.

The promoters would tell us that this is not just another suburban mall, that it’s “architectural,” that the parking has been “hidden,” and therefore, that it’s urban.

“Architectural.”

Like, it has columns?

A really big soffet?

What does that mean?

But SmartCentres appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board, which agreed to hear its case. Then the board decided that a second site next door could be added to the ruling. If the one gets approved, so does the other.

The OMB will hear the case in May, which means the two sides are preparing their arguments now. Lawyers are lining up their experts, who will testify on cue.

“Going to the OMB has become an industry for lawyers and planning consultants,” says Toronto’s former chief planner, Paul Bedford. “It’s part of the suburbanization of Toronto. What’s happening on Eastern Ave. is all being done for the benefit of car people, but the city’s about foot people.”

May I recommend a book we read in Urban Theory & Issues,
Street Reclaiming?

Little wonder then that there’s such shock over the contempt for the city shown by the proposal and the OMB’s response to it. After modest gains on the urban file under Premier Dalton McGuinty – City of Toronto Act, the Planning Act – Torontonians were rudely reminded of how powerless they are. In the end, these decisions will be made by that remnant of 19th-century paternalism, the OMB.

But for its fear of action, the province would have abolished the board long ago. In the 21st century, there is no place for a body that’s unelected, unaccountable and unwanted. Everything about it offends; it very existence smacks of frock coats, top hats and public hangings.

Except for lawyers, we all have better things to do with the time, energy and money we devote to battles like this. The city – and the province – would be much better off not having to fight endless rearguard actions such as this.

Some weeks ago Miller wrote a letter to Ontario Municipal Affairs Minister Jim Watson, asking him to declare a provincial interest in the matter. That would allow the province to overrule the board. A spokesperson for Watson will say only that the minister can’t comment because the issue is before the OMB. How limp is that?