Architecture, as an act of human cultural artifice, has historically maintained an indissoluble relationship with Nature—as a site, enclave, environment, material, or mirror of the habitat for communal life, and as a factor of language. Both the symbolic tradition—monument, tomb, idol—and the typological tradition—temple, hut, theater, palace—form the basis of the elemental corpus of Vitruvian formulation. Whatever the artifact to be built, the natural condition is unavoidable. Fire, water, earth, and air—the elements that compose the universe according to ancient philosophy—are, in turn, constitutive of architectural thought. However, arrogance, success, or disruption over pre-existing conditions have dominated human behavior toward Nature. The current state of extreme intervention on the Earth as a planet, on geography as a foundation, on climate as a resource, or on the atmosphere as a domain, demands a critical review of the diverse perspectives that architecture has adopted according to historical, political, and cultural contingencies and their consequences on lifestyles.
From the use of vegetation in the linguistic system of ancient Egyptian architecture or the construction of the classical orders, to the mimesis of cavernous spaces in modern architecture (from Gaudí to Junya Ishigami), and through the introduction of biologically referenced forms in the various 19th-century modernist expressions (Horta, Guimard) or the attempts at dissolution into the landscape by Wright or Niemeyer, architects have consistently longed for their creations to be, in some way, part of the natural world.
Alberti’s ideas on water and the city; the paraphernalia of the chimneys at Chambord and their enclave on marshy terrain; Ledoux and the efficient layout based on the productive exploitation of the land; Le Corbusier’s geographical perspective on Latin America; the invention of reservoirs and settlements for thermoelectric energy production; the environmental perspectives of Maldonado, Tedeschi, or Ambasz; the wind-focused approach of Murcutt; the articulation between social organization and site materials (Kéré); or the radical connection between parametricism and Nature (Hadid) are just a few examples.
