Walden Pond, Thoreau and Thinking Green
and woods, Ernie Seckinger via eserver.org /Artwork: designslinger]
Harvard biologists report that the ecology of Walden Pond is changing due to the
earth's rising temperature. Most people have probably never heard of the pond, or confuse "Walden" with "Walton" thinking it has something to do with John-Boy and his family. But for some, the pond has become a primary link in an environmental movement that began with one man's desire to live a much simpler life. Henry David Thoreau moved out into the woods because he wanted to experiment living with nature, rather than against nature. He lived in a very small cabin near the water's edge from 1845 to 1847, and wrote volumes of journal pages chronicling his experiences, and produced a book, Walden; Or, Life in the Woods. The philosophical treatise has been an inspiration for generations of conservationists and environmentalists.
Living Room, Joe Koshhollek and dgunning.org via Usonia1.com /Artwork: designslinger]
Frank Lloyd Wright was a big fan of Thoreau, and in his own inimitable way adapted many
of Thoreau's tenets into his architecture. Famous for his Prairie Houses, and infamous for his personal life, Wright's practice was on the downswing in the 1930s. Commissions were few and far between, although he never stopped designing. He devised a plan for low-cost, efficient housing that he called Usonian, a play on U.S.A., a simplified version of the original Prairie House. His first clients were Herbert and Katherine Jacobs. The young couple built a house that was revolutionary for 1936. It had no formal dining room or living room just a large open living space. This room, along with the bedrooms, had floor to ceiling glass-paneled doors that could be opened wide in summer to let the air flow in, and visually created very little separation between the outside and inside. The large overhanging eaves cast deep shadows on the glass in the summer heat, but let in lots of solar warming sunlight in winter. The concrete slab floor had the very first radiant heating system ever used in a residence and eliminated, what Wright considered, ineffectual cast iron radiators. The 1500 square foot house cost $5,000 at a time when the average home price was $7500. The Usonian idea didn't take off as Wright hoped, but the Jacobs' liked their house so much that when they bought a larger piece of property, they asked Wright to design another Usonian for them, which was completed in 1948.
via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
A few decades later, a building that took an ecologically sensitive approach to it's site
was Fay Jones' Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Jones, who had been an apprentice at Wright's school Taliesin in the early 50s, was asked to design a small chapel in a heavily wooded area in 1979. Instead of clearing the land and plopping down a building in the middle, Jones decided to use the trees that had to be removed for the structure, as the building material of the structure. Using Gothic cathedrals for inspiration, Jones created a towering, lacy web of wood supports that made you feel like you were still standing amidst a forest of trees. Instead of closing up the exterior walls areas with a solid material, he filled the spaces with glass, providing an almost unobstructed view of the surrounding woodland. Even the floor was paved with local stone slabs acquired from the area. It was a ground-breaking use of renewable materials from a local source with very little environmental impact.
When David Thoreau moved out to the woods around Walden Pond, he was looking for
relief from the life he was living in nearby Concord, MA. His experience generated an examination of how we live in the world and how it impacts our environment. Wright was intrigued by the concept which became the foundation of his long career. Fay Jones took a similar approach with his chapel and it has become his most recognized work. These three men shared a philosophy that is becoming a huge industry today as we come to grips with the havoc wreaked on our planet, as well as the little pond that is the birthplace of today's conservation movement.
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