Lessons from the Masters
It has been many months without words on the page -- days so filled with Odonata and personal activity, a rush in the river of events, that there wasn't quite enough left over to write in our journal. There was plenty to say, but no one disposed to say it. To summarize:
- Our Board of Advisors was brought together at the fine home of a close Friend of Odonata, together with a growing collection of supporters and consultants. We have a short list of developers, designers, architects, permaculturists and financiers, many of whom are weaving themselves into a strong and spirited design team, ready for collaborative work in a design charrette*.
- We have downpayment funds in hand, and our sights set on a few parcels of local land, measuring the pros, cons and costs of each in preparation for purchase.
- This close to being landed, we are beginning our membership drive in the fall, August being the month for preparing materials, venues, and first contacts, both locally and in the region. Of particular interest is the untapped greater Boston area, fecund with liberally-leaning professionals, who must jump at the chance to live in Ecovillage, 1 mile off the freeway, in a seaside town! Membership requirements, already outlined, will be fleshed out, with clear guidelines for both equity and associate membership. A newsletter will be started in September.
- Community tenets for site planning and building design are being scripted, and with land in site, the Odonatian mariners are dreaming more and more vividly of things that don't float, and winds that don't move you...
Lessons, because we know a whole lot and that is scarcely enough. We know what we have lived, believe some of what we have learned through reading, and can only extrapolate into those hazy if not pitch dark areas where we don't supply our own expertise. Site design? Clustered housing? I have lived in hyper-populated central Java, densely-packed urban Brazil, somewhat looser rural Brazil, spider-webby and elbow-to-elbow Central Square in Cambridge, and a 3.5-acre spread in coastal New England: I have never given much thought to the layout of housing developments -- never had much opportunity, frankly -- nor to the structure and layout of my own home.
But now... what an interesting and exotic horizon awaits us! Some Tahitian wonderland for a dried-up Gaugin, or a West Indies-that-ain't-the-Indies for an exploring european. Recently we visited a near neighbor to the south, the Island Cohousing community on Martha's Vineyard. Delightful and well-planned structures, eight years later a visually and functionally beautiful community, with many features and values that we have been nurturing in our own process.
Seeing an inspiring community gets you to thinking... so I bought a couple of books on Japanese architectural design. Speaking around the cliff-edges of my knowledge, the traditional culture in Japan was closely tied to the natural world, and through its continued growth in population and lack of growth in land mass, they have learned excellent ways to live in close community, using land features and social forms in their building and siting.
Since we are born and bred to wide-open spaces (I am from Minnesota, and spent some of my youth in the wheat fields of North Dakota), the intention use clustered development to minimize our footprint, and maximize open space, runs somewhat counter to our sensibilities. Look East. There are truly elegant and powerful patterns of design and style that might feed our imaginations, and soothe our need for wider personal space. If you'd like a few visuals to tease your own imagination to life, take a look at our new Design Gallery, where you can find photographs and review from the book Japan Style, by Geeta Mehta and Kimie Tada.