Becoming the Land: The Synthesis of Architecture and Nature

Can the creation of natural elements be replicated through our built environment? Can the architecture become an extension of its landscape? Humans have been building and creating architecture for centuries using methods developed throughout anthropological history. However, our earth has been creating and molding itself for billions of years. We, just as the bird, the bee, and the black bear live within the ecosystem created on earth. We borrow the land so that one day another species or another human can thrive within its bountiful offerings. However, our buildings have replaced this land. "What was once open land, filled with sunlight and air, with a distinct relationship to the horizon, becomes a building. The artifices of humans supersede what nature has deposited on a given place."1 We must learn to harvest the primordial and intrinsic principles of our past while constructing future architecture. To build with the land as our ancestors did; to create cohesive ecosystems comprised of both built and natural environments. By designing architecture that superimposes the landscape in which it exists and by consciously creating buildings that diminish our human imprint, we will assure a sustained future of healthy living. Understanding glaciers, climate change, wildlife migration, and park preservation in a facility harmoniously using these ideologies will be a test to its concept. "Becoming aware of the ground we inhabit, we can regain a sense of the reality of place in a culture that is more and more dependent on the abstraction produced by the mass production of real and virtual spaces, instant communication, and digital manipulation." - Aaron Betsk