![]() Raw elements are those forces and materials which give each place a unique expression. The land can certainly be classified a hill country. ![]() The land is on a ridge from where we can see the Catochtin Mountains. We are inland approximately 100 miles from the Atlantic Ocean and 40 miles from the bay, and the Blue Mountains are approximately 100 miles to our west. This means that we have an abundance of rain. We are in the Chesapeake Bay bioregion on the east coast of a large continent. Then we look at raw elements such as, the Sun (angles throughout the year), Water Cycle and Flow across the land, Winds (hot/ dry, cold, wet), Frost Lines and Sunbelts, and Storm directions. First we have the landform itself, its altitude, slopes (aspect and steepness) as well as location and climate. In Permaculture design processes, we assess the primary elements that will effect our land. WE BEGIN BY ASSESSING, RESEARCHING, and MAPPING RAW AND LIVING ELEMENTS In our process here of evolving a multigenerational land, the human element must include mapping out future scenarios for the children, grandchildren and future generations who will inherit the evolution of the permaculture design. The most exquisite permaculture design will fail, if the human beings who will implement, caretake and evolve it are excluded from the design process and if it fails to embrace their vision for their land. Permaculture design principles do not see the human as separate and apart from “Nature” but a vital and powerful component of Nature. The mind and heart of the human element, their vision for the land is a critical beginning point in this process. The human being has the potential to be the most creative or destructive of the land’s inhabitants. We start with the Human Element upon the land. Permaculture is the result of bringing those fields back together. Originally born out of a discussion between David Holmgren and Bill Mollison back in the 70s concerning why the fields of Landscape Architecture, Ecology and Agriculture are separate rather than integrated with each other. The result are healthy gardens, buildings, and ecosystems. In that definition, post-industrial landscape has the potential of making us reflect upon the fluid and porous distinction between value and waste.Permaculture design is a holistic design process where we work with the natural patterns and expressions of life processes to create spaces which simultaneously meet our needs as human beings while maintaining harmony with the web of life. Such landscapes offer a renewed opportunity to put back the ecological process in order by landscape reshaping which is favorable for the ecosystem, local economy, and improvement of people's living standards. Quarries are a reflection of ceaseless exploitation of natural resources using violent methods such as dynamiting to the extent that the landscape becomes distressed. It proposes re-appropriation and remodeling of the distressed ecological components of an abandoned quarry site into a place for ecological recovery premised on creating research facilities related to bio-resource of the region. It explores the question of survival by discovering what manages to live in the ruins of such a landscape by looking for evidences of collaborative survival there. The studio invites its participants to propose ECOTONE ARCHITECTURE i.e., architecture to act as an inorganic component of a post-industrial multispecies landscape because ecological forces have the agency to subvert any ordered architectural intervention. TA: Ashwatha Chandran Ecotone | The Sentient Ruins: Ecological Recovery at Abandoned Basalt Quarry Champaner
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