With our global emphasis on green and sustainable living, many people are actively doing their part to engage in “green acts”. Whether it’s recycling, toting reusable grocery bags, there are a number of ways to engage yourself in balanced living

Seeing Differently

Step 1 to realigning your lifestyle using eco-principles is to begin seeing differently.  See your entire existence as emerged within eco-living, rather than you as an individual acting out green acts.

Stuart Haygarth would have taken this advice literally, inventing a sustainable eye glass chandelier that uses 620 pairs of discarded lenses to form a globe-like chandelier.  For the designer, perhaps his living art is not only an example of using creativity to craft lifestyle choices, but also symbolic of what visionary work we can accomplish if we begin to see a little differently. 

Turning a Domestic Green Leaf

Turning over a green leaf begins with ourselves, in how we think and then in how we carry out those thoughts.  Once we have internal balance, our focus can shift smoothly to an external balance.  And while you may not be able to go save the rain forest, you can begin by changing how you view your home. 

View your home as an eco-habitat in itself, and once you perceive your home this way, you’ll treat it with more green care.  The simplest way to begin thinking this way is to look at what toxic elements could be in your home – perhaps in your vacuum cleaner, carpet, paint, whether you have energy-efficient appliances, or even checking to see if the plastics you use to cook and eat with are made with toxic chemicals.  It’s really very simple and just takes a small effort in reprogramming how you think.  Once you shift how you think, your new thought patterns become healthy lifestyle habits.

The Mind Body Equation

Equally as important as your home is another vessel that you inhabit daily – your mind and body.  These two are just as relevant in your eco thinking as your actions. When it comes to eco thinking, your habits aren’t just about what products you use or what daily habits you have that save that extra little bit of energy or water.  It’s about how you think. 

Eco thinking is about harmony with one’s environment. And one of the most important things that should be in a harmonious state is our central selves.  If we cannot achieve this, then in essence our eco habits are just frustrated (but not natural) extensions of ourselves.

Achieving an eco balance internally through meditation, exercise and intellectual stimulation is the simple solution to turning a truly balanced green leaf. 

Several decades ago, a few creative thinkers started redefining the traditional idea of home.  From coast to coast, people started looking at their environment and began building with eco-inspired homes. Hawaii’s famous Onion House is one popular example of a creative idea, now a national landmark and a beautiful testimonial to shift toward bio-architecture.  Designed in tune with the curves of an onion, with a layered feel that mirrors the lucid skins of an onion, the house is a beautiful demonstration of the possibilities when nature if design icon.

Further down south in Isla Mujeres, Mexico, the Shell House takes the idea literally by designing a house that looks like a magnified shell.  Senosian Arquitectos has the same idea with their design called “The Nautilus”.  This Mexico-based design firm went beyond a shell exterior and designed an entire home patterned after a shell with a winding organic interior.  

Nature is the Best Designer

A student of the world’s best designer, bio-architecture seeks to emulate the principles in naturally occurring constructions.  In studying the natural principles of the most long-held designs, this form of aesthetic design looks at fundamental shapes in nature – the most recognizable being the seashell. 

The seashell is the best representation of a math-centric natural element that shows why nature is the best designer.  Encompassing the Fibonacci Sequence, or “the Golden Ratio”, a seashell shows perfection in proportion that has been the foundation for some of the greatest designs, including the Parthenon, and by some of the greatest minds, including Leonardo Da Vinci.  The pattern has also been replicated in some of the world’s most cherished poetry by regulating rhyme and meters, as well as in music, such as Beethoven’s Fifth and many of Mozart’s sonatas.  

The term “bio-architecture” is also often referred to as “organic architecture”, a thinking that has gained popularity with the rise in eco-awareness.  A shift toward green thinking took bio-architecture a step further and had creative-minded people thinking of how building could merge with the environment as well as reflect it.

Working with the Environment

Bio-architecture can not only emulate natural designs, but can also become a part of natural constructions. Rather than create jarring buildings jutting out of plains, this type of architecture looks to emerge as a part of natural settings such as mountains, caves, and wooded areas, as well as present a home that uses resources wisely by cutting utility costs.

Even though these newer designs are based on older shifts toward innovative thinking, the earliest and most architecturally stunning design is still the pyramid.  First built in 2700 BCE, pyramids reflect that most natural and easily recognizable natural element, the sun, by building a structure that represents the descending rays of light. These ancient structures are still being replicated today with the Louvre and Kazakhstan’s Palace of Peace and Reconciliation.

 

Bio Architecture: Designing with Nature in Mind is written by freelance writer Shireen Qudosi.  Follow her on Twitter @ShireenQ or email her at shireen.qudosi@hotmail.com 

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