Last
updated: 25 Oct 07
Strategies A-Z: Integral Architecture
(*Please
send Matthew
Kalman your further strategies, URLs etc to add to the site*)
An Architectural Practice as an Integral
Organisation
By Vernon Collis and Anna Cowen
Introduction
We are an integrally-informed sustainable systems design consultancy
specializing in the built environment - with core training
in urbanism, architecture, engineering (civil, structural
and materials), contracting and legal forensics. We are a
trans-disciplinary practice that draws on a diverse professional
network that includes psychology, anthropology, environmental
and behavioural economics, coaching, art, theatre and filmmaking,
permaculture, the ecological sciences and so on. We use the
quadrants as lenses
to help shape appropriate teams on a project-by-project basis,
ensuring that we include as many disciplinary perspectives
as possible.
We
are interested in, and engaging with emergent forms of organization
and association and are currently exploring a combination
of Brian Robertson’s “Holacracy” model (nested
holons as an organizational model), and Dee Hock’s Chaordic
design process as tools for our own organizational development.
We also use a variety of practices to develop “We space”
within our organization including Almaas’s Diamond Heart
Inquiry process. We have an ongoing inquiry into the shadow
elements of our work, and hold open questions around the “sustainability”
of our own systems, both personal and professional. Importantly,
we each practice some form of personal meditation and physical
discipline.
Purpose
and fields of Concerns
We believe that the design and making of any built intervention
– from a bridge to a bus stop to a city – has
the potential to nurture planetary and human well being in
a dynamic process that serves to both stabilize and raise
the consciousness of all participants. Our purpose then is
to contribute to the creation of a built environment that
nourishes all sentient life. From a right hand quadrant perspective
– our work aims to convert current throughput or linear
economic metabolisms to circular, regenerative metabolisms
resulting in an eventual shift from the current hydrocarbon
economy to a carbohydrate based one.
We
work across a range of sectors and fields – from low-cost
housing, settlement design and rural development, to public
buildings, commercial and upper income development. We also
consult as strategic thinkers to corporate entities and government
around big-picture sustainability initiatives, and teach periodically
at the University of Cape Town.
The
Creative Process + AQAL Mapping
Our design process opens with an in-depth mapping of any context
we work in. The context could be organizational or physical
or both. This mapping process (which could be likened to the
observation phase of Otto Scharmer’s “U” process)
is an AQAL affair. We map as exhaustively as resources permit,
integrating both local and expert perspectives, moving up and
down the spiral, and looking from the 8 'hori-zones'*, as Ken
Wilber calls them. We are engaged with the design of a range
of processes where communities map themselves, and in so doing,
develop tools to drive development from within. These processes
employ all quadrants, effectively cross-training participants
in self, culture and nature through reflection, group work and
systems analysis. We then enter a reflective space (the presencing
space of “U” theory), integrating and synthesizing
learnings from the mapping. From here, action emerges –
design interventions we view as acupuncture1
needles, releasing trapped potentials, and enabling the various
systems to both heal themselves and to thrive. Our work is deeply
informed by many years’ experience of embodying our work
through physically making. Current
and Recent Work
• Consulting to local government, corporates and NGO’s
around sustainability (clients include the Old Mutual Group,
SA Cities Network and ASPO)
• Representing provincial government on a multi-national
team engaged with the sustainable reconstruction of Indonesia
post-Tsunami for nrg4SD (Regional Network for Sustainable
Development – a network of over 30 international regional
governments)
• Research and development with local tertiary institutions
including curricula design for sustainability
• Curating a trust devoted to the development of innovation
in the built environment around sustainability
• Research and development of new technologies and components
like a range of doors and windows using reject timber and
unskilled labour
• A low-cost housing development in Mbekweni near Cape
Town (phase one complete, phase two under construction)
• A rural financial services centre and meeting place
for local chiefs in Centani, Eastern Cape, an economically
and environmentally devastated rural area (for one of SA’s
major corporates)
• A series of up-market houses in a dense urban area
in Devil’s Peak, Cape Town
• An environmental education centre for local government
and a community based organization in Samora Machel, Cape
Town.
We
work globally, and are currently based in Cape Town, South
Africa. We work/play from a studio space that is a living
example of our design philosophy.
References
1. This notion is used variously by Jaime
Lerner and Ken Wilber.
Contact
Anna Cowen: acowen@iafrica.com
*
Matthew Kalman writes: Ken Wilber suggests that there are
8 ‘hori-zones’, or zones, when we combine the
interior and exterior views of his four quadrants (I, We,
It and Its). Systems theory, for instance, is an outside view
of the Lower Right, or ‘Its’ quadrant. Cognitive
science is the inside view of the Upper Right (‘It’)
quadrant. “We inhabit these 8 spaces, these zones, these
lifeworlds, as practical realities. Each of these zones is
not just a perspective, but an action, an injunction, a concrete
set of actions in a real world zone,” writes Wilber.
Further
reading on Collis and Cowen's integral/sustainable architecture
See ‘Waste
gets to work’, Financial Mail (cover story),
4 August 2006, by Sasha Planting.
This article describes the Mbekweni housing development, which
uses “local rock and ‘waste’ building material
destined for the dump’.
“Expecting communities to accept and adopt our way of
building beacuse it’s a ‘clever idea’ or
the ‘right thing to do’ is naive,” says
Collis.
“The ideas has to be supported by its cultural context.
For instance, using waste from industry for construction needs
to be framed within localised belief systems otherwise it
remains an imposed idea and will not endure.”
Copyright
© 2007 Matthew Kalman |
