act5_es

“An architecture that’s more integrated with Nature, that recycles to maximize the use of solar energy or the many capabilities of materials to achieve a maximum without using so much energy. An optimal climate control, an optimal way of life, a mutual influencing of the building and its inhabitants.”

“What we cook and eat, what we wear and what we use: everything we consume has a whole chain behind it. There must be a consequence to this. These objects withhold the energy which was necessary to produce them… we could even say each thing we consume has slavery within it. And when you are aware, you pose yourself the question, every time you use something.

In the city it’s the same. Here in the countryside is like a social laboratory. When living out of the city, we’re a bit far away from that dominant culture that influences you. Evidently while living in the city you have to have good protecting mechanisms to avoid such influence, from your own self, from your mind, your emotions, right? Here it is easier; you have Nature that sings you a lullaby every morning. It accompanies you and offers you so much… those birds chirping, the fluttering of the leaves, the air that you breathe… it all gives you so much and puts you in your right place.”

“We take advantage of the available materials created naturally, to exercise the least possible control over Nature. I like that. To work with dirt and straw, materials you can manipulate and mould to your form, right? It’s beautiful and it’s satisfying because you’re exercising very little damage, you do it with your hands and destroy little; we’re not too strong, we shape and notice the creation coming out of our hands.

Architecture in the cities is very much of experts, engineers, architects or technicians, and everything is so hard, with machinery. Self-building is rehabilitating. Building your own housing or participating in the process is a way to tame our control over Nature at a human level, to bring it back to the strength of our hands, instead of to the magnitude of the artefacts we’ve created with our technology, right? We always exercise control, but if we exercised it adequately it would be comparable to that of a wild boar when digging a hole looking for a root or to wallow in, right? This control is related to its strength. Ours could be as such, related to our strength and our needs.”

Contact: Instituto de Permacultura Montsant