The New Pastoralism: Landscape into Architecture

The New Pastoralism is an exploration of a romantic ‘green’ and technological architecture that heals the traditional cut between the city dweller and nature. New, gently engaging architectures are arising that employ biomimetics, hydroponics, cybernetic feedback systems, micro ecologies and traditional construction methods with natural materials and vertical landscapes. These are used to create small, subtle, alive spaces that help remind us of our humanity. These soft constructions fulfil a hard-wired human desire to be connected to and delighted by nature. Unlike our ancestors’ romantic love of the dramatic power of landscape, these spaces offer a more gentle and artificially tamed nature of ‘pastoral’ delight. For centuries, Western culture looked to landscape and the pastoral in particular as a setting for the escapist desires to reconnect with the land and elements. More recently we looked to inner-city underbellies for the same romantic freedoms and wilderness. But these exotic desires are now evolving into more distilled and gentler experiences. The use of the skies, planting, water, wildlife and the seasons is becoming subtly incorporated into building layouts and onto building surfaces to offer a subtle new interface with our primordial desire to reconnect with nature