CONTEMPORARY NATURAL ARCHITECTURE & Design

Ecologically speaking, a home or building is basically a 'den' for humans.  And in the wild, animals often build dens when they are not surrounded by very favorable circumstances.  The den is used to store or concentrate needs and resources (warmth, food, security, seclusion, etc.) when these are lacking in the larger environment.  Naturally, when resources, safety, and at-homeness become plentiful, the fixation on the den diminishes or falls away.  Likewise with human homes… when we design more friendly landscapes and optimal natural surroundings, we get to approach architecture & building in new, refreshing, less-dense, and less-consumptive ways. 

For these reasons, ICO prioritizes whole-system realignment and invites developers to reacquaint with favorable, immaculate, luxurious, and peaceable human habitats—places where people can already procure basic needs (fresh air, clean water, healthy food, hygiene, privacy, ambient comfort, tranquility, etc.) easefully and beautifully, without so many of the hazards or mechanized nuisances that invoke engrained & laborious den-building responses.  Similarly, architectural planning and creativity can start with the foundation of making our ambient environments more safe, uncompromised, unintimidating, bounteous, and serene.  From there, building and construction express as lighter additions, almost as afterthoughts, sheltering and honoring our resplendent environmental belonging.

Architectural styles within ICO templates are very variable—shapes, lines, sizes, and proportions meld to your specific tastes or traditions.  Architectural evaluations and designs revolve primarily around the inputs and consequences of building elements themselves, making way for contemporary structures and sound amenities that peacefully mirror the landscape's tranquility.

The overarching theme is to naturalize the building-concept itself—without sacrificing quality of experience, protection, or hygiene—such that building materials and building structural arrangements can enter and persist on the land with minimal disruption, risk, pollution, expenditure, or diversion of attention from ambient natural harmonies.  In form, building becomes more discrete, efficient, and autonomous—like the other organisms within the living landscape.  Likewise, many such structures can be gently and quietly assembled, raised, or even just stacked—rather than expensively or conventionally "built."

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The essential gist is that any core structure and every single construction material carries an energetic footprint of what it takes to obtain, produce, process, stabilize, maintain, and live within.  By utilizing 

1.) the mechanics of compression, 

2.) natural plant materials, 

3.) impermeable membranes, and 

4.) interlocking elements, 

these structures simply require:

Civilly, and for permitting, these types of buildings can be seen as equivalent to a yurt, container, gazebo, agricultural structure, or even just a 'stack of materials'—yet the overall interior experience is one of freshness, zen simplicity, safety, hygiene, freedom, and easefully maintained spaciousness.  

For such sanctuary buildings, the focus shifts from industrial development (construction/building/domesticity as we've modernly known it) to biological development (elemental simplicity...interrelatedness...and vibrant daily rhythms within the blossoming, maternal 'Edenscape'). 

These distinctions pertain also to the allocation of resources and finances within such alternative-architecture projects—coming out to a fraction of the expenditure, density, cost, pollutions, liabilities, and contingencies of the conventional building scene—even its 'sustainable' or 'regenerative' brandings.  Overall, there seems a growing opportunity to rebalance the needs, habits, and designs of traditional buildings with the primacy of life's nourishing botanical refuge, domestic simplicity, and incomparably verdant luxuries.