Green, healthy buildings, sustainability planning and action
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The natural cycles approach
All things in nature must operate within natural budgets. These are limits are set by available resources, competition for those resources, capacity for resources to recover from harvesting and the natural ability of the environment to absorb and recycle waste.
Human-centred economics does not adequately recognize those limits, and therefore we have unsustainable human enterprise.
In our work we use the “natural cycles” approach to design. Every neighbourhood or building is placed schematically in the natural cycles that it depends on. These are typically water cycles, energy cycles and materials cycles.
"At last, we know not what it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more senses than we think. It would be well, perhaps if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies".
Henry Thoreau: 1817-1861
