Restoring nature’s balance: a concept for the future

The most successful communities are often places that have been able to grow organically, removing reactive design solutions. This more sustainable approach creates more lasting solutions to clearly defined existing problems. 

Our vision was to create an inherently sustainable community by introducing guiding principles to ensure balance and stability - necessary for both us as people and communities, as well as the planet, to stay healthy. 

So we’ve gone back to the basics to design a concept that balances the four classic elements; Earth, Water, Air and Fire. The idea is that this will enable a community to exist with nature’s intended harmonious balance, and together have the natural ability to promote wellbeing, sustainability and job creation - helping in a bid to eradicate some of the biggest issues we face today: loneliness and poverty. 

Earth, water and air can be used to create the three activities that shape a community: live, work and play. With fire used to power the communityThe community would start out just using a small portion of the total land available, using the rest to generate power and resources, enabling a zero-carbon community from the outset.  

The whole concept is scalable so that, at every scale, 1/4 of land is used for ‘water’, 1/4 of land is used for ‘air’ and 1/2 of land is used for ‘earth’. This can be applied to an individual dwelling, a plot or the whole site. 

Earth: contributing to 1/2 of our site as it is key for food production as well as space for recreational activities. By creating a community where the people are engaged in growing their own food, across a whole site or within their own plot, resources can be shared and people can come together in this shared vision, helping to combat loneliness. Everyone is given an equal opportunity to provide for themselves, whilst also being able to share and exchange products and skills with others, assisting in the prevention of poverty. 

Water: key to providing both wellbeing benefits to the community and for enabling plant life to grow. It is widely researched that a lot of people living by water feel positive impacts on their wellbeing as well as the opportunity it brings for other health benefits, such as swimming and water sports. We propose that water becomes a key part of the community in the form of private and public baths (the community baths helping to eradicate loneliness and also to enable job creation through maintaining the baths) and that everyone should live adjacent to a water source, which can be used for hydroelectric energy creation and helping with the growth of our trees, plants and food. These public baths are inspired by many cultures whose communities revolve around such activities, including the Japanese, Hungarians and even the inhabitants of the Roman Empire. 

Air: providing space, both to live and work. The 1/4 of the land that is given to this element houses all of the built environment. This means that the remaining 3/4 of the whole site is free from built form.