permaculturearcology-blog

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An inspiration for yesterday's Gene Logsdon story is The Man Who Planted Trees, a 1953 short story by Jean Giono. In 1987 it was adapted into a gorgeous short animated film. This story explores the territory of how humans can intentionally intervene in a landscape using permacultural techniques (small and slow solutions) and turn degraded, brown, unproductive deserts into regenerative, green, wealth-creating forests.

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Gene Logsdon's eight-thousand word allegory "The Man Who Created Paradise" is a perfect example of how we should engage the landscape- intervene heavily in the most degraded, damaged, polluted areas to bring them back into natural abundance. It also touches on local economic models, and tells a lovely story that I hope will be created again and again throughout the world in real life.

Gene Logsdon is a national treasure.

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Fascinating story on the results of China's campaign to wipe out the sparrow during the Great Leap Forward. 

Leads me to think about other possible unintended consequences of ecological intervention, even within the permaculture world...what are the possible negative effects of extensively swaling a watershed, or introducing novel species to an ecosystem? What is the balancing point between intervention and letting Nature take her course?

My answer is that Permaculture techniques rehabilitate landscapes that are already damaged, which would further degenerate and erode if left alone. We should focus our PC efforts on land that is already so damaged that it would not be able to regenerate quickly if left unattended. Functioning ecosystems should be engaged with a minimum of disruption and intervention.

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Laurie Baker's thoughts on architecture. Words to live by.

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In 1975, Christopher Alexander and his students went to Mexicali, Mexico to implement their ideas by building a group of houses, along with a group of students from the Autonomous University of Baja California. They worked with the families who would go on to own the houses, guiding them in using the pattern language to design and build together. The process they elaborate in the subsequent book (The Production of Houses) is very similar to Hassan Fathy's approach in Architecture for the Poor. They use local labor, local materials, and a collaborative design process. Alexander and his team also had many of the same setbacks, including owner/builders who weren't "with the program", government interference, and supply problems. 

The takeaway of the last few posts is that the approaches of Alexander, Fathy, and Khalili are facets of the same idea- it is evident that home-scale construction can happen exceedingly economically, providing people with stability, community, safety and resilience. However, local building codes (if any) must be adjusted so that as long as a valid sequence of patterns is followed, any building the sequence generates is approved. 

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Christopher Alexander is THE architect of natural building. In the 70s (the same time that Permaculture was being developed), he and his students at Berkeley developed the Pattern Language- a way of looking at designing and building as a holistic process. The architect starts with a site and an idea of what the client wants, and the building generates itself through a dialogue between the architect/builder and the site. "Patterns" are ways of looking at architectural or planning problems, in which the Pattern includes the problem, a discussion of the problem, and a way to resolve the problem, along with "links" to related questions, or the next step in the building sequence.

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Mr. Money Mustache reminds us that using machines to do all of our work for us makes us weak and flabby. Mustachians and permaculturalists agree that getting out and moving around doing things is good for the planet and good for the body. Excuse me while I turn off my computer and go do things outside. Planting...chopping and dropping...maybe just wandering around and reading from the book of nature.

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Nader Khalili (1936-2008) was an Iranian-American architect who developed techniques to build structures from local earth, using similar methods to Hassan Fathy. Where Fathy used mud brick, Khalili used long tubular sacks filled with dirt, tied together with barbed wire, then plastered over (this technique is called Superadobe). This process creates beautiful, stable, ecological structures, with materials costs of a few thousand dollars per house. Khalili utilizes Timeless Materials (earth, air, water, and fire) and Timeless Principles (Arches, Vaults, and Domes).

Khalili's design has been evaluated by NASA for possible Lunar and Mars shelter, as it is composed of predominantly local materials. As a practical solution for both emergency and permanent architecture on Terra, Superadobe is one of many necessary solutions.

RELEVANT TO THIS BLOG- Khalili's Cal-Earth Inc. is teaching a combined Permaculture Design Course/Superadobe Course this October.

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Now we're going to dip into architecture for a little while, and loot at some links between permaculture and the "built environment".

Hassan Fathy developed a very permaculture-looking architecture system in Egypt in the mid-20th century. His system used local artisans and laborers to design/build beautiful mud brick structures, stimulating the local economy and using local materials. In reading his book on the project, "Architecture for the Poor", you see how a creative mind can design a project that incorporates all aspects of a community's needs.

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Majora Carter- Greening the Ghetto

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DJEB over at Permaculture Tokyo has an amazing dive into "patterns", one of the more esoteric areas of Permaculture. Patterning covers how mathmatics intrudes into reality, and is revealed through algorithmic structures, whether in cloud trails, sunflower spirals, romanesco fractals, or in human structures like flowforms.

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To finish up Bill Mollison Week, we have Part 2 of Frank Aragona's Agroinnovations interview from 2007. Bill is spirited, and they get in to some heavy topics. 

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Day 6 of Mollison Week. The inestimable Frank Aragona of the Agroinnovations Podcast SOMEHOW got an interview with Bill, and they had a great conversation. Part 2 tomorrow.

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Mollison Week Day Five! This interview from 1980 with Mother Earth News gives a great introduction to Mollison and his ideas soon after they were initially developed and published.

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The fourth and final segment of Bill Mollison's Global Gardener program, this time focusing on Urban Permaculture. Follow this up with Geoff Lawton's Urban Permaculture video and you've really got some ideas to work with.

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Part Three of "Global Gardener", this time focusing on temperate environments.