Do Architects Really Like Nature?

[Paul_Turner]

Question for the architects:  when you're not working, are you drawn back to the great outdoors?

Is there anything to be gained from just looking at, or photographing, landscapes?

[harley_kruse]

the day I stop getting inspiration from mother nature is the day to hang up the tools and do something else

[paul cowley]

 I have always studied natures elements , particularly vegetation, watercourses, soils, geology and landforms both great and small....seems more and more I hear myself saying when on site 'OK, first lets build a landform that relates to so and so', or 'try to think like a sand dune' or 'pretend you are that little creek over there'......only then we can build or drape the golf hole on or around something that relates 'nature'ally.

[Brian Phillips]

Paul,

That is exactly how I work as well.  My first solo project in Geilo, Norway was up in the mountains at around 1000 m.  The contractor was a local firm and the budget was....low...really low...probably why I got the job..

Anyway, the guys building the course had never even seen a golf course let alone played the game!!  The best way to stop them building round bunkers was to use the shapes of the snow still lying on the mountains.  They thought I was mad but it helped...not perfect but it was a start.

Last week we were on site on another mountain course again with local contractors and one of the 'shapers' had formed one of the streams we wanted diverted.  It was shaped with perfect sides and looked like it belonged next to a roadside.  To explain how we wanted the edges I took him over to another stream and showed how nature shaped stream edges.  To demonstrate it even more I got the guy to drag his heel in the dirt.  He thought I was loopy!! However, when he looked how the sides were formed irratically with his heel it clicked for him.

Brian

[paul cowley]

Brian ...cool, I can just see MacKenzie staring at snow melt on the mountains saying 'wow, thats it, thats Cypress Point', and then off to work....

[Paul_Turner]

Brian and Paul

Interesting!

I've always thought the original, man-made, bunkers at Cypress (like on the 13th and 15th) resemble patches of snow more than anything else.  Certainly more than an eroded sand dune.  But apparently the shapers were using clouds as inspiration.

[TEPaul]

"But apparently the shapers were using clouds as inspiration."

Actually, Paul, the real story is the clouds were just what resulted from the inspiration of the shapers. The real story is some pretty strong hooch was the real inspiration for those Irish guys of the American Construction Co.

[TEPaul]

"But apparently the shapers were using clouds as inspiration."

Actually, Paul, the real story is the clouds were just what resulted from the inspiration of the shapers. The real story is some pretty strong hooch was the real inspiration for those Irish guys of the American Construction Co.