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Let Nature Bring You "Home"
"Home" connotes the deep and essential, the timeless and the natural.
The American Heritage dictionary definitions of "home" include not only the location where one lives, or one's dwelling place but also an environment offering security and happiness, a valued place regarded as a refuge. It is further defined as "the place where something is discovered, founded, developed or promoted;" it is "the source... the center... and the heart."
In our technologically advanced world, there is a profound need for real connection with each other and the natural world we share. The web of life teaches us we are all connected to every other living being and that every action creates reactions that circumnavigate the globe, yet in our daily lives those connections are all too often compromised. In our dis-"connected" megabyte world, we long for a place where we feel at home.
Where is the map to this essential destination? It is being drawn today by designers with the wisdom to use nature to fuel their creativity and design built environments that reflect nature's lessons.
As a designer, where do you begin? What are the tools? Start wherever you are right now and use what you know about nature:
colors influence the behavior and relationships of plant and animals;
changing light is the metronome for natural rhythms;
theme and variation abound - forms repeat, not as duplicates, but as closely related entities;
similarities of patterns at various scales exist universally - the same designs at the molecular level are repeated in grand scale throughout the heavens, light years away;
shapes and forms are flowing, avoiding straight lines, edges and sharp angles, (a response to the pressures of natural forces);
plant and animal species that integrate best with the natural systems around them thrive throughout the long course of evolution.
By following nature's lessons, designers create spaces that connect us to each other and our roots in the natural world, sending a powerful message about our clients' sustainability missions.
"The lives of biologists and ecologists and builders and designers are beginning to converge because we are having a common dream of who we are as a species. We want to design a world in which we are welcome, no longer estranged from the species that surround us, but, as Mohawk elder Owens Lyons says, 'part and parcel of all creation.'" - Janine Benyus
Spaces that incorporate nature's designs and palette reflect our natural home, a place where we find solace and inspiration. They are a source of rejuvenation. It's time to think beyond paintings on the wall, far beyond... Think of impressionistic "bird wings" filling multi-story atriums created using fabric shapes printed with forms from natural close up imagery, or water walls that cascade over patterns from nature and are surrounded by backlit stone, or board room tables hand inlaid with designs whose inspiration comes from nature's visual rhythms.
When we walk into an interior that makes us feel "at-home" we are entering a space that uniquely inspires innovation, cultivates creativity and universally forms connection.
Take your clients where they most want to be...
Lead them "home."
We can help you read the map and navigate your way there.
"May our dwellings fit their worthy function like a glove -
nurturing people and earth, body and soul." - Janine Benyus
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