The Gardener Architect: designing with the emergent natures of places

This research through re ective practice investigates the relationship between architecture and natures; a nature is de ned as an ecology that is allowed to emerge. It has developed ways of designing architectures with these unpredictable processes. By supporting their agency, places develop their resilience: their biological and cultural complexity and diversity. Processes of growth as well as decay are nurtured and expressed. It has been investigated through contextualising and re ecting on three ongoing series of work in my practice that combine buildings and landscapes, separately and together. Through this process a fourth series has appeared. The tools used are open patterns that fall into two categories: setting – physical – and nurturing – behavioural. They are developed in dialogue with, and within, the ecosystems, especially with the inhabitants. These patterns set situations and tweak the dynamic processes over time. They choreograph the elements of architecture – the void, the climate, the resources and the living – whilst affording them agency. For a gardener architect, architecture is the improvisatory choreography of the elements’ rhythms. The role of the designer is dual: to design patterns that will guide the performance of a place by its multiple inhabitants and simultaneously develop a language of patterns, ecological memes, for use elsewhere. Setting and nurturing patterns grow together in a systemic dialogue. Serendipitously, the gardener architect nurtures natures by creating gardens where they can thrive.