Article 3, GAIA “The Second Law of Architecture” presented by a future educator. Feb. 1, 2014




Watching this video is optional!
Very creative video based on
 Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis 

Here it is, my third Architect Denied article, trying to improve architecture and people’s understanding of it. More obvious and not so obvious stuff to learn and read about lies ahead. I have been thinking about who am I writing this blog on architecture for; is it for other architects, laymen, homeowners, who? The more I think about it the more it makes sense to me that this next so called “law” answers this question best. It should be the foundation of every architectural student, homeowner and anyone interested in bettering the world through the built environment. Hold on there you say, there’s no “S” on my chest, I’m not out to save the world; besides I’m so busy trying to get my ragged life in order I just don’t have the time. That’s fine I say. I’m not asking you to save the planet but if you follow this rule on architecture maybe it will help you and not in the cosmic “I’m saving the world” kind of way. So don’t stop reading because you think this is an article on Global warming or the Green movement or Save the whales. No, it’s about your home and how architects go about designing it. You paid good money for that sucker so listen up. (My apologies to the earth activists, I mean no disrespect, march on)  Enough small talk, so what the hell am I talking about? I’m talking about Gaia. What the hell is Gaia you may be asking and why should I care? Let me explain what Gaia is to me.

So in my previous article I discussed the need for shelter and how that leads to architecture. I can’t start talking about architecture until I establish where architecture gets done; our sacred and hallowed ground we call my piece of property (or our planet, your borrowed piece of earth etc.) Although every structure gets built on some ones “property” it’s really built into the earth system scientist call Gaia, my second law of architecture. Every design should be born from Gaia but it’s not. You may be upset I led you all this way only to find out this is some crazy green movement but it is not. It’s like this, if you live in a neighborhood where the developer clear cut every tree to build your house and the 50 others that look like your home than that was not Gaia minded. If your home catches fire and produces toxic fumes, it’s not Gaia minded. If your home happens to be 50 miles (just throwing a number out there) from where you work, it’s not Gaia minded. If you are burning fuels that make you cough and you need a big chimney to get them away from you, you are not Gaia minded, if your house does not overlook the most scenic beauty nature has to offer, you are not Gaia minded. If your home looks like pollution to the eyes, it is not Gaia minded. On and on I could go. You may ask, what the hell does this have to do with me and the value of my home.  Read on and I will tell you. 

  
Finally here is a definition of Gaia from that most reliable source on the internet, Wikipedia. (Scoff if you must but hey I like it). “The Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a self-regulating, complex system that contributes to maintaining the conditions for life on the planet”. Again from Wiki, “James Lovelock started defining the idea of a self-regulating Earth controlled by the community of living organisms in September 1965, while working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California on methods of detecting life on Mars.[38][39] The first paper to mention it was Planetary Atmospheres: Compositional and other Changes Associated with the Presence of Life, co-authored with C.E. Giffin.[40]
Holy you know what, Gaia’s originator worked at a jet propulsion Lab and not in some hippie commune? Well, well, well. For architects who ignore Gaia or know nothing about it is sort of like a NASA engineer not really caring about outer space. For home owners I ask you these questions:

-Do I want a below average home in every respect?
-Do I want to look just like my neighbor?  (Changing the color of the siding does not count) 
-Do I want increasing value in my home because it will last longer be better built and create less maintenance?
-Do I want increasing value in my home because it is integrated with nature, a part of it, not destructive of it?

So I’m not asking you to do hours of research before you buy your home. (And no, going around with the real estate agent looking at dozens of houses does not count as research) Leave the research for more important things like which color to paint your walls, or what hotel to vacation at (joke, ha, ha). At a minimum ask yourself some of the questions I mentioned, be Gaia minded and make a better choice when it comes to your dream home. So if the house you are thinking of buying doesn’t fit any of these criteria, keep searching. If people demand better homes eventually builders will have to provide them forcing a better architecture, increasing the value of your home and just maybe as a byproduct the earth.


Disclaimer: I am not a professional writer, so bravo if you caught a grammatical error, spelling mistake etc. Your gold star is in the mail. Opinions in this article are strictly my own and in no way represent me or those that sponsor me. Lewis Portal is a practicing architect in the Hamptons (whoop dee doo) writer of this Bi-monthly blog, ArchitectDenied, author of the book, The Intuitive Architect, and told by someone he was from the future. 

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