Rainy days: curling up with Christopher Alexander's 'The Process of Creating Life'.

Rainy day here, good day to curl up reading! So I've been skimming my newly acquired Christopher Alexander books, starting with 'The Process of Creating Life' (The Nature of Order, Bk 2). The Appendix by itself is a beautiful document. Start page 571.

Appendix title: A Small Example of A Living Process.
1/ A Radical New Process.
2/ Finding A Site.
3/ First Analysis of the Site with Rough Twisted Paper and Balsa Models.
4/ Full-Size Tests of Volume and Position on the Site.
5/ A First Sketch.
6/ Checking The Neighbors' Views.
7/ First Emergence of an Internal Plan.
8/ Extension of the Lot: The Little Plum Tree.
9/ Deeper Questions About The Feeling of The Plan.
10/ A Deeper Conception of the Living Room.
11/ Laying the House Out on the Land.
12/ Starting to Get a General Idea of Construction.
13/ Establishing Rooms.
14/ Upstairs Rooms.
15/ Analysis of Cost.
16/ Concrete Wall Details.
17/ Plasterwork Experiments.
18/ Starting Construction.
19/ The Retaining Wall.
20/ Management Agreement That Feeling Must Guide Even the Most Technical Aspects of Construction.
21/ Setting The Main-Floor Level.
22/ Excavation.
23/ Fine-Tuning the Plan as We Fixed Forms for the Foundation Walls.
24/ The Lily Tiles.
25/ Placing and Fine-Tuning First-Floor Rooms. (What in Australia we would call ground-floor.)
26/ Making and Placing the First-Floor Walls.
27/ Fixing the Living Room: Its Door and Fireplace and Windows.
28/ Remaking Other First-Floor Rooms.
29/ Completing the First-Floor Structure.
30/ Pouring and Forming the Garage.
31/ Getting the Entrance Path Just Right.
32/ Remaking the Upstairs Rooms.
33/ The Master Bed Alcove.
34/ The Kitchen Fireplace Shape.
35/ The Kitchen Floor.
36/ Plasterwork.
37/ Window Openings and Windows.
38/ Balustrades of the Upstairs Balconies and the Concrete Frieze.
39/ Front Door Steps.
40/ Planting Windows and Exterior Woodwork.
41/ Flowers in the Garden.
42/ Use of the Fundamental Process.
43/ Common Sense: An Overview of the Process.
44/ End of the Appendix on the Upham House.
Notes (Pg 632)

I do love how in the notes Christopher observes that "the San Francisco City Hall, a rather large building, was built around 1900 from five sheets of drawings - something almost unimaginable today.".

Definitely not today's red-tape, legalistic nightmare of building. I learn yesterday, that if you want to build a new house on an existing site, the regional council (no local govt. here any more, thank you Anna) requires you to demolish the old house first. That would mean living in a farm shed or off site for a year. Renting a house off site sure does a lot for housing affordability.

Does Queensland Government planning suck?

Yesterday on ABC radio there was an interview with a town planner. He was talking about the Draft South East Queensland plan.

Sounds like they want an Urban & empty green space plan. All high and medium density urban or empty green (forest and farmland) space for urbanites to look at on their Sunday arvo drive in the country.

He seemed to think it was a good idea. As someone who would raised on the land and is not a farmer, but wants some room this move sucks.

New development is all small blocks or high raise (urban consolidation etc). Access to larger block (say an ½ hectare to 100 hectares) seems a thing of the past, specifically locking out sea and tree changers. The country looks to be becoming a patch of larger commercial (family & company) farms and small blocks that can't support a family full time. These smaller blocks are effectively frozen, too big to be subdivided unlocking value for the seller, too big for new smallholder to acquire for niche operations.

It leaves the small towns in a limbo of slow death. As the broadacre operations consolidate, towns and districts loose their population base. This lead to the lose of services (teachers, nurses etc to begin with, then schools, hospitals, banks, post offices etc), the start of a downward spiral if left unchecked. The only way to stop this decline is to allow population increase and that is locked out by these new planning trends. People who want to live in country towns don't move there to live like sardines. They want bigger blocks, either serviced town blocks or unserviced smallholding.


Gnoll110

Can Capitalism save the Rain forests?

Tonight, ABC’s Foreign Correspondent is showing a programs entitled 'Amazon Rainforest - Can Money Grow on Trees?'. Without see the program, I going to say yes.

Why? For me it’s a matter of first principles of economics and ecology. The very words themselves point to the way forward. Both are derived from the Greek ‘eco’ (oikos), meaning 'house'.

I will argue the economics is the ecology of human societies. Money is a token measure of energy and materiel. Ecology is a study of the measure and flows of energy and materiel in the wider biosphere. Classical economics is the study competition between individual and organisation. There is cooperation and other behaviors that are seen in ecology. Lots of strategies and tactics are displayed by organisms. Taking these and applying them to economics problems and situation should be the main source for developing viable global warning measures.

Gnoll110

Cycle, it's all cycles!

We’ve all seen the Atmospherics CO2 graph for the last few decades. It’s an upward trending line with an annual fluctuation. The uptrend is largely the result of the burning of coal & petroleum over the last 250 years. The annual fluctuation is caused by the photosynthesis/respiration/decay cycle of vegetation, the bulk of which is in the northern hemisphere.

Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide

Ok, to stop the up trend, it pretty obvious what we need to do. Stop burn coal & petroleum! We need to shoehorn ourselves back into the annuals solar/geothermal energy budgets of the planet.

For some reason that’s beyond me, the knee jerk reaction seem to be to try to ‘freeze’ carbon out of the atmosphere using whatever mean is available. To shoehorn ourselves back into the annuals energy budgets of the planet we need to work with the carbom cycle, even accelerate it, not freeze within parts of it. This topic will be an assay in its own right, for the future. Stay tuned.


Gnoll110

Gnolls 2020 Summit dream team

On Sunday the new PM Kevin Rudd, the Kruddster, announced plans for the 2020 summit on the weekend of the 19 & 20 April.

The summit will deal with 10 critical areas:

1. Future directions for the Australian economy – including education, skills, training, science and innovation as part of the nation’s productivity agenda
   
2. Economic infrastructure, the digital economy and the future of our cities
   
3. Population, sustainability, climate change, and water
   
4. Future directions for rural industries and rural communities
   
5. A long-term national health strategy – including the challenges of preventative health, workforce planning and the ageing population
   
6. Strengthening communities, supporting families and social inclusion
   
7. Options for the future of indigenous Australia
   
8. Towards a creative Australia: the future of the arts, film and design
   
9. The future of Australian governance: renewed democracy, more open government (including the role of the media), the structure of the Federation and the rights and responsibilities of citizens
   
10. Australia’s future security and prosperity in a rapidly changing region and world.
    

The summits has the following objectives:

• To harness the best ideas across the nation
  
• To apply those ideas to the 10 core challenges that the Government has identified for Australia – to secure our long-term future through to 2020
  
• To provide a forum for free and open public debate in which there are no predetermined right or wrong answers
  
• For each of the Summit’s 10 areas to produce following the Summit options for consideration by government
  
• For the Government to produce a public response to these options papers by the end of 2008 with a view to shaping the nation’s long-term direction from 2009 and beyond.
  

Over the last day I've come up with the following names. Initially I was going to pull one or two names for each area. But I found many being included in two or three areas. I also had a few generalists too.

A few names that came to mind are either recently deceased or internationals who have returned home.

Anyway here is my list.

• Mike Cannon-Brookes (Co-founder and CEO of Atlassian)
  
• Reverend Tim Costello (CEO of World Vision Australia)
  
• Harry Evans (Clerk of the Senate)
  
• Frank Fenner (Scientist)
  
• Ross Gittins (Political and economic journalist and author)
  
• David Holmgren (Permaculture co-originator)
  
• Father Bob Maguire (Co-founded Open Family)
  
• Joel Malcolm (Aquaponics originator)
  
• Warwick McKibbin (Economist, RBA board member)
  
• Laurel Papworth (Social Networks Strategist, Lecturer at University of Sydney)
  
• Mark Pesce (Inventor)
  
• Andrew Peters (Natural Sequence Farming originator)
  
• Cameron Reilly (CEO of The Podcast Network)
  
• Rory Robertson (Economist, Interest rate strategist at Macquarie Bank)
  

I'll be adding more manes as they come to mind.

Here are two places worth keeping an eye on.
2020Summit.org
bloggerati

Lets get this show on the road!


Gnoll110

Sustainable House Day

Sustainable House Day is on the 9th Sept, 2007. That’s this weekend.

House locations are on the site, grouped by state.

This Ainslie house look very interesting. The TV grab says it’s water independent and grid connected. It aims to be energy positive in the summer and have some energy drawdown in the winter.

In Canberra, the open houses are on Sunday. On Saturday, there will be open days at several schools and an office building.

Gong to go to a few, armed with a camera.


Gnoll110

Technorati tags:
global+warming peak+oil water energy carbon building+design permaculture global warming global warming

Permaculture: Doing things with feeling

Been reading the current edition of E. F. Schumacher’s 1973 classic “Small Is Beautiful”.

In chapter 3, “Resources for Industry”, I’ve just found the provoking paragraph.

It is fashionable today to assume that any figures about the future are better than none. To produce figures about the unknown, the current method is to make a guess about something or other – called an “assumption” – and to derive an estimate from it by subtle calculation. The estimate is the presented as the result of scientific reasoning, something far superior to mere guesswork. This is a pernicious practice which can only lead to the most colossal planning errors, because it offers a bogus answer where, in fact, an entrepreneurial judgement is required.

I think this is the beat argument I ever seen for doing things with/by feeling and being entrepreneurial.

It’s interesting to read a pre global warning environmental book. One of the core factors in the current debate just isn’t there. Yet the core logic and directing is as current today as it was then, during the first oil shock.

Well worth the read.


Gnoll110

schumacher small+is+beautiful entrepreneurial peak+oil carbon energy enviroment permaculture

Trains and peak oil

A few weeks ago, at the start of the Difference of Opinion program titled 'Are We Running On Empty?', one of the panelist Professor Peter Newman commented about rural rail line closures.

Here is the whole transcript

PROFESSOR PETER NEWMAN:

…But we are still building suburbs as though cheap oil is going to be around for the next 50 years. We're still - we're about to close down the wheat lines, the rail lines that go out to our wheat-belt areas, as though trucking will be able to use fuel that's as cheap as it was in the last 50 years. These stupid things have got to stop. We have to face up to a future that is much more constrained. It's not going to run out, right, but it will be seriously more expensive and we're not all going to be able to have access to it. A lot of poorer people will really suffer.

My family have always tried to use rail first. It safer. Less people die in rail related accidents the road accidents. The big trucks used to carry wheat are dangerous and they damage the roads far more that cars.

These line closures are an ongoing process. At home they have been fighting a local closure since the Goss labor government.

Labor just don’t seem to understand that the last section of a rail line will generate the least money. That the freight carried will generate usage and money for all sections of line between there and its destination (usually Brisbane). The removal of a tributary means less flow at the mouth of a river.

So with peak oil and global warming, I think we need to go a step further. Once you decide to not close a line, you should be thinking of electofication. Current most country trains still use fossil fuels (diesel). We are still omitting new fossil carbon into the carbon cycle. With electricity, currently, you would still be powering trains with fossil fuels, either coal or petroleum gas. But, electricity is an energy transportation system, not an energy generation system. You can always convert the ultimate power sources over to alternative energy sources on an incremental basis.

An electrified rail system can ultimately be turned into a non fossil carbon emitting system!


Gnoll110

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Rammed Earth: Albury

More about the Melbourne trip (21&22 July).

Drove back from Melbourne on the Sunday afternoon.

Stopped in at Albury to check out the rammed earth building at a Thurgoona campus of the Charles Sturt University and a local church.

The C D Blake Lecture Theatre is pictured in Sticks Stones Mud Homes: Natural Living by Nigel Noyes. This is how I knew these buildings existed. A bit of googling with ‘Thurgoona’ and ‘rammed earth’ also brought the church to light.

The Lecture Theatre building also has an earth roof over the theatre end.

Arrived at the site only expecting the one rammed earth building. Was delighted to find that most of the other buildings on site where also rammed earth.

Do to lack of planning on my part; I had no replacement for the almost flat battery in my camera. So no rammed earth pics.


Gnoll110

Permaculture niche: Dry Climate Trees

Over a month ago, there was an interesting item on Gardering Australia. It featured a visit to the Waite Arboretum in Adelaide.

It highlighted a group of plants I feel fill a permaculture niche not filled by Australian natives, large deciduous dry climate trees. I had been looking to the Med Basin, particularly North Africa.

Here is a batch of links.

Fact Sheet: Californian Oaks

the ecosystems

Wikipedia list 6 ecostytems
* Oregon Oak woodland
* Blue Oak woodland
* Coast Live Oak woodland
* Valley Oak woodland
* Island Oak woodland
* Engelmann Oak woodland

Many species of oak and other tree are listed

The three highlighted species were
* blue oak or Quercus douglasii
* valley oak or Quercus lobata.
* coast live oak or Quercus agrifolia

Imagine these Oaks, in a line north (south in the Northern Hemishere) of the House, shading it in the summer and letting the sun in during the winter. Solar passive design.


Gnoll110

Technorati:
carbon design permaculture solar

A Complete Food Chain and the 12 Permaculture Design Principles

There is an interesting post over on Backyard Aquaponics. It's called Complete Food Chain

In the thread Daniel wrote two posts;

once i have quarantined my shrimp long enough to go into the tank with the fish, i could probably achieve this, but only with a very small stocking density of fish.
Farming fish in farm dams extensively rely on this, and they fertilise their ponds before adding fish to increase algae growth, which in turn supports more microorganisms, and so on

and

wait, if i did what was mentioned in my post above, i couldn't have any plants growing aquaponically with only an input of CO2 and sunlight

well i have confused myself, i have a feeling that there would need to be an input of fish food/nutrients to grow plants aquaponically as well

ah well someone else probably has some more helpful insight, and i will check this topic with eagerness to see if its possible

I'd like to add two comments about Daniels posts.

Firstly, about fish growers fertilizing their dams to increase algae & intermediate organisms before adding fish. This fertilizer is effectively embodied fossil fuel energy. In the systems we are trying to build, we can do these kinda things, but the way we do them means the scale will differ. Our processes will require more labour, land/water area, time and/or capital/materiels so that we can embody solar energy. We can play with the mix, but it won't be the fast easy fix of cheap fossil fuels.

Secondly, Daniel commented about growing algae precluded growing plants aquaponically. True, but another way to think of it, is that the fish components of the system produces a certain amount of nitrogen. It's your decision as the designer/maintainer to determine how much of the nitrogen flow goes to plant production (for human/animal use) and how much goes to algae production (for internal system feed stocks).

After I made my initial post, I was looking for a better way to express additional idea threads.

Then I hit upon the idea of using David Holmgren's 12 design principles as a lens.

1. Observe and interact
   

   Na

   
   
2. Catch and store energy
   

   Developing a system that captures and stores solar energy in usable/valuable forms

   
   
3. Obtain a yield
   

   Developing a system that captures and stores carbon, nitrogen etc as high nutrition food stuffs

   
   
4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback
   

   Using large ponds, with caged off sub ponds and 'side' ponds to for produce feed stocks for the main fish speices. Thus using some of the nitrogen produced by the fish stocks to produce their own feed stocks. The system can also comsume excess output of Terrestial systems.

   
   
5. Use and value renewable resources and services
   

   Produce high omega-3 fish meats, with commerial value.

   
   
6. Produce no waste
   

   Using food stuffs that are in excess (roosters) as a feed stocks for a system that produces food stuffs that are in limited supply (omega-3 rich meats)

   
   
7. Design from patterns to details
   

   Na

   
   
8. Integrate rather than segregate
   

   Meshing the aquaponic system design with terrrestral systems.

   
   
9. Use small and slow solutions
   

   Use many sub pond and 'side' ponds rather than a small number of large ponds.

   
   
10. Use and value diversity
    

    Using many feed stock source to ensure more stable system dynamics.

    
    
11. Use edges and value the marginal
    

    Ulitize and manipulate pond surface & pond walls/floor to increase cumclative total production.

    
    
12. Creatively use and respond to change
    

    Na

    
    

Is it time to draw a mind map?


Gnoll110

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