'Natural' Intervention

Poised at the point where plants and humans meet, I am consistently amazed and surprised wherever I go at the way the man-made world can be so effortlessly overwhelmed by the fecundity of nature. As a conceptualist designer at heart I find myself in fear of this ferocity and thus look for inspiration in the very world that is at risk of extinction – the man-made world. However, insistent repetitive patterns scribed across the earth’s surface – an attempt to tame perceived chaos that is nature – are temporarily set aside. This serendipitous juxtaposition of man versus wild here is serving as a pointed counterpoint - disruption of an otherwise repetitive pattern of nature - that in some way serves to scribe its own narrative on this (un)designed space. Did Olmstead possess the intellectual fortitude to envision this? Was this moment in time where seed found shelter in the very cracks of the world that we designers purport to heal intended? I now find myself being confronted with the moral and redemptive value of ‘natural’ man-made landscapes. Perhaps a more ecologically responsible attitude does lie in the questioning of the honesty and authenticity of a more naturalistic methodology of design which seeks to replicate nature; at the same time never acknowledging that it cannot replace or repair it.





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