User:M. John Latham/sandbox

THE ECOPICALITY FACTOR

… Or 'traditional, nonindustrial, energy/resource efficient building techniques'. This word 'ecopical' is basically about that but includes the aspect of social personality - as people we do best what people understand, love and are prone to do – and so politics is part of ecopicality also.

Ecopicality is not in our dictionary, but its imprints belong in our frames of mind when we do our housing. Housing is also grids, offices and factories.

This is a writers drift.

Houselocusts swarm Eden; more than anything does. Through their birth and catylistics, they absorb and transform far beyond their local geography. Gurgling the earth, stamping the psyche and spawning new things.

Full of wisdom and humour, his nature like his adventurous name suggests, Australian Blackfellow, Cheekybugger Talkabout makes nexus with the West. Nomad minima, boulevard bold. Albert Gulpullil, the man he loves to call ‘Uncle,’ is of the same land, but a of a People who have seen only simple thoroughly modern nature – no boulevards. Both are the most everywhere nomads. They value a strong pair of legs over and above any front door, or gush-laden view-window. Their value of home and society is very rich, without the house. Their physical trappings are, of course, scant. Talkabout interfaces the Western edge but his understanding of life keeps him minimally housed by preference. That is except on his rare visits to Sydney, which he artfully enjoys as short sojourns coloured by his cross-cultural jibes as to what the Whitefellas are missing. In particular, the Whitefellas include the king of the ticky-tacky box, Mr Global Pale and the academic protagonists of ecopian activity, Bobby with his wife, Little White Cloud and nomadic urban altruist Low Carl. Low forwent penthouse life for city tumble-weeding because he felt the rooms humming harder.

This writer’s drift relates specifically to the use we may make of the, very, original ‘unsullied’ natural world. We note that a joyful walk in nature is definitively impacted; housing is blended with this world. Gulpullil, through Talkabout's heart, with a freshly gutted lizard nods as he wanders through the egg shaped lounge to make use of a refrigerator. We use room and facility to both enjoy and actualise. There are in the bush(Australia’s natural countryside), spaces occurring as natural landscape, that a walker may identify as providing room amenity that is suitable for contemplation, lunch, sleep or some manual work. Bush is there in house, even as Mrs Pale hermetically seals out that which she can. Old Gulpullil is through the kitchen and out the back door in fluid motion enjoying the ergonomic-room flow of his visit while thanking the absent custodian for his sharing. He continues as nature’s physical breath on his way out the back track through the bush. The loungeroom lizard still quivering at the thought of his spear is afraid to touch the unlabeled berries left on the unlacquered kauri-wood dining table by the nomad. The building inspector in the back room finds the ceiling flying away and the room humming more softly. He has not used this house for other than exploration for his own residential ‘improvements’. He heads back out the front track into a small mobile interior, returning towards the Council offices. He notices people using the laundromat, the community hall and cafes and sees the ceiling of each joined with the ceiling of every house, and notes that the old Blackfella he saw seemed to utilise some interior whilst rejecting other. From his experience, the tight little boxes were cracking like egg shells and surprised lizards were too slow for the hawks. People had been using the boxes to hide away from disciplined activities and neighbourly truths.

A plastic toilet brush dragging on the spear, a halfway nomad misses his shot at the pizza-lizard scurrying across his path. Alas, he reaches for the supermarket tucked under his belt. On the shelf he finds an architect’s house blueprint; “In the trade we call this ‘the comic’!”, smirks his builder. Tumbleweeds roll, roots anchor, city antennae dissolve roots and make shuttle and rooms, rather than strides, in space. The house sees both intra- and cross-cultural smirk.

The mood to build or not to. The mood to wander, the mood not to. The desire to move on for food, joy or whatever weighs against the desire to settle for different food. There is the nub of something there; a critical point in belief, psychological inclinations, intuition, discipline. Surely the crest of eco-social truth. The most extreme nomad case may never ever even conceive of permanent settlement; being motivated by a satisfaction with the objectives of moving; of which he would never conceive as transience. Happy, he may never make a choice not to settle (to the extent of substantial building).

What are the actions that make the difference with the nomad and the settler; accumulating trappings, preparing to cook, making seclusion? One action is that of permitting substantial physical barriers, screening, between inhabitant and neighbours, and indeed inhabitant and nature; allowing the loss of immediate social contact with the encampment and the loss of wind on one’s back. Another, the acceptance of some environmental intervention, say, ploughing, building, permanent change and no indifference to barriers formed by interior.

An attitude; whatever - it’s in the roots of our cultural acclimatisations. It is safe to note that within all reasonability there is some middle ground where people may build without disruption of any of extreme nomadism, delicate environment or, indeed, caring settlers. Middle ground. Where the hunter-gatherer is content to accept contained horticulture, and where hyper-industry is hyper-ecodisciplined. Where natural selection is merely supplemented by contraception.

Nomadic, urbanic; nomurbic, don’t panic.

Ecopia is nomurbic, and as yet a figment township at the nomurbic crossroads – barefooted berry traders coming from there, a huge road train and a bicycle from there. Ecopia is a modicum of building that is extremely sensitive to ecological extrapolations and respectful of extreme nomadism. Extremely disciplined. Spirited by the flighty nub butterfly.

Universal nomad-cum-settler domestics. Nomurbics.

Ecopicality is the creative attitude fostered by the nomurbic nub butterfly.

Ecopia - a physical multi-domestic contraption arranged about the nomurbic nub. I think Paola Soleri was making one in Arizona, but he has not been as successful as was Noah.

The housed and their one alternative, the people capable of living without the house, have in common essential domestic-arrangement. Nomadic domestic activity varies from people to people, person to person. Hi-tech gear, adapted resources, Gypsy tradition, Gulpullil’s skill. Low Carl sees the potential of wholistically good city-life as he wanders the globe, knowing it to be non-existent; an urban nomad, in his pack a little methylated-spirits cooker and a shower borrowed from a corporate stairwell - a distant friend rubs sticks and steps freely into a billabong. Traditional wiles and newly learnt resourcefulness. Domestic survival, food included. Domestic survival can certainly be equally tough for the settled housed soul. Poverty can make it tough. The way in which we manage, even within the breadth of tradition, when tradition is effective, is unique to each; nomad and settler.

The colour of the front door becomes as urgent as was the shade of the roof. Even matters of finesse, when fuelled by eccentricity or ritual, may put us in as much of a lather as matters of basic survival domestics. If Global had not changed the colour of the front door Mrs Pale would have divorced him - finesse!. It was luminous violet, luminous violet - settler Global after all does have a soul, all be it gasping smothered in that plastic pastiche. The oyster surely would not live but for the mother-of-pearl. Cheeky tries telling Global of the perfect refinement of perpetually modern nature. Finesse.

In both nomadic and settlic social environment three aspects - finesse, shelter and cultural protocol (involving tradition, and domiciliary/municipal layout), - at times seem to be of equal importance in domestic motives. Lying within the acids of our psyches is the origin of our mode; tumbling tumble plants or rooted forests. The nub butterfly flitters or lands. The three aspects manifest to suit the lifestyle.

The mood; to build, or not. To wander, or not. To build or to wander; the choice. Something we do by tradition, habit or reflex. A fundamental sense of doing or happening that takes us either to the billabong in the bush or the sauna in the city’s interior heart. The country locale or the synthetic locale. And those in between. A few nomads, millions of lightweight settlers and millions of city ecological-heavyweights.

Albert Gulpullil unaware of building (as distinct from making) makes absolute minimal intervention in Mother Earth's harmonies. “Just a transient”, sniggers Mrs Pale in arrogant ignorance, supported by much industry. No, not 'a transient'. The most devoted penthouse-owner boggles at this everywhere-man and cannot imagine exchanging his own synthetic fibred suit and well-rooted street-alligator address for a pair of legs with muscles wiser than a satellite navigation box. What is he doing this jetting homo superior? Is he not being 'a settler' - there is some smiling cheek from Mr Gulpullil who is fascinated by the new apparent star crossing his sky - twas but a satellite.

This nub in the foundation of our dwelling doings. The two ways may blend. There are the lessons of the tried and the decisions for today. Dwell upon them; transcendental and matter-of-fact. One of the ways that should be a winner is losing, oppressed, to the one that is wide-open to the slob-that-creeps into our minds. The nomad, just like the wildlife, is dozed in and theodolite-surveyed into a tiny remnant corner, while the dwelling settler increases and combats epidemic potentials. Another meaning of ‘dwell’ is ‘astray’. The big, big mess has got to change, change, change. It is all in what we do, do, do, do. Do.

Doing it. Placing slabs of bark against a limb frame and refurbishing the open fireplace are doings. Purchasing a title deed and installing a microwave are doings. The eco-quanta, values and meanings whisper through the nomurbic nub. The whispered messages are distorted by the powers of money and sometimes are even not understood because of foreign industry in intimate locale.

Doing our domestic activity. We may negotiate our way to some new locale. We may accumulate our way to fixed abode. Ideally we do it with ecopicality. Abode, a doing; the act of waiting, a stay before proceeding. Abide; conform, make do with, live with. We reside. We stay, but only awhile, we are on the move and we depart when we die.

As the accumulation increases so does the domestic action and so the settler culture grows, dream-house, bitumen, service grid. Nomadism grows in the time that is not spent on housing, dream-time, natural bounty, and in the nature of the simplest of domestic-arrangements.

How we manage the doings is unique to us all, while in part it is common like the dressings of tradition, culture, place and language. With the newness of the day it is wise to be ever ready to take stock and renovate or even transform, ecopalise, your mind's inherited architecture and lifestyle. This is what sent Bobby's ceiling away and awakened him to the, beating not repeating, heart of Little White Cloud. Their housing revelated reconditioned love easily counterbalanced the loss of Bobby's job. He had ignited a small ecological bomb in his corporate property-development workplace. He still walked the chequered vinyl floor, but it was now, clearly, converted ‘playdough of the earth’ with a twist of dieing culture.

Don’t panic. Arm yourself with Gulpullil's legs, Bobby's candour and Low's conviction. Somewhere there is value in Pale too. Review and renovate or refurbish your mind as appropriate and open the louvres to the new day with either changed or sustained actions in your housing. Seek direction from the local or global resource, quickened with the transcendental. Think about simple domestic facilities on one hand and your own personalised masterplan on the other. Any culture fits this process. Different resources, personalities and climates blended with time produce the different buildings and lifestyles. Similarly people produce their own swagger.

As we note, across the world there is some difficulty with housing. The process of housing oneself is very often frustrated.

Are we locked into some dream-house mode? Take a serious look at our limitations. They are the fences and walls of our true domestic space. ‘True’ – that which is our best medicine. The limits of our true domestic world are what fit you and today's world together. Respect them. Work inside them to achieve what you can; it may be very humble, toward nomad minima. A wealthy man must consider that his money may be an obstacle concealing a mud hut, which could turn his heart to health. There was something irritating about his bold boulevard mansion; he was puzzled. The obstacle can be moved, the true limitations cannot. A limitation for him may be discovered by his doctor. Limitations may also be ethical. Hope and attitude and knowing the meaning of success; what you get by due process is probably just what you need; greed and pretension is not due, they are not a limits but obstacles. Ecopicality knows no obstacles.

Within the limitations we make ecopic actions. Such action adds to opportunity and worth, the feeling of beautiful action; graceful and aesthetic.

We resolve and understand our needs; fresh water, four bedrooms, a house that represents some son of a god lying on his side, a time-frame. Our needs. We resource - obtain information, expertise, skill, site, fabric. In either an ecopian town or the mega-monster’s orthodoxy we usually need to call on others - perhaps designers, tradesmen, gardeners, estate agents, advisors, neighbours, window cleaners, money lenders, and so on. Albert Gulpullil notes that unless they are ecopic these people are ‘doing time’, house-time, for a living – certainly not dream-time. Location is a resource. We may relocate, like we create; to a new town, a design, a strategy, a building, an opportunity, a lease. Civilised cooperation with these others is a sensible thing; compromise and mutuality are a-priori to working together. We exercise faith courage, perseverance and trust as we house; as we do in all endeavour. We recognise and reject, resist or resolve obstacles and frustrations. We dream. Take a Sunday drive looking at houses and locales – forests and untouchable beauty. Our actions bring reward in karma.

While we are busy making house plans, doing house-time, a life just as real is happening for Albert and Low Carl. Also though, things just as real happen in spontaneous creative house-doing that would not happen by design and life plan.

An obstacle or faint domestic opportunity seen through the eyes of a dweller at home in daily motion will be invisible to the planning eye. Gradual evolution of room amenity as the dweller dwells. A front landing that is a little awkward to an expanding family. A step widened, a shrub moved. Eventually a whole new significant attribute to the residence is developed; a much lauded sandstone circular landing pad. A pearl. Similarly things happen for nomads but in fairly abundant minima.

There is sometimes a domestic circumstance of which one dreams. One’s voluntary psyche has got everything to do with achieving it. By way of attitude you may make the most of the sense of order, form and adequacy of things as they exist. A physical basis of ecopical dwelling. Molecular energy, the air between us, even the abundant boulevard house that many soak up innocent of its unecopian birth, music, wind on the back; they’re all residential wealth. By appreciating this wealth and by an active psyche response to one’s extant house, in time one achieves a state that is one’s optimum. One’s unique spirits affect one’s unique perception. Personality flavoured ecopicality. You’ve got ecopicality, walk ecopicality, talk ecopicality! A living joy.

Maturity settles, whilst youth underpins maturity’s fulfilling wisdom. With all this still we drift toward the orthodox mode and on through the other side we drift innocently to the elegant veneer of the eco-dangerous boulevard bold.

And so we go on doing; within our capacity to perform, different approaches, romantic enthusiasm, utilitarian gusto, any old how. Doing it constantly, unconsciously, zestfully, partially, olympically or another way that suits. Having some done for you, doing it for others; quarryman, director of housing, planner, architect, regulator or any old you. The having of creative ideas is generally hopeless unless the idea is appreciated and fed with the sense of ecopicality to the future of your action through a broader activity that you know how to enjoy – work. Is there any work that today should not be, at least partially, ecopically motivated? Ecopical, a personally satisfying cocktail of pragmatic, ecological, sociological, cultural, spiritual, aesthetical and creative domestically oriented lifestyle. Or perhaps you are a bit different in your motivational manner.

In a sense one’s overall life is one’s housing; nomad bold, big broad world; boulevard minima shape our life.

archinect.com/blog/48478488/ecopicality

www.facebook.com/HouseFandango

Nomurbics HouseFandango extracts.

The whole story of interior and exterior unfolds. We note some of it.

Even domestic facility as a camp has interior. The heart of the interior is the dwellers space. The fabric of the interior is simply domestic facility; fire, campstool, conceptual boundary, or maybe walls and roof. The amenity of this interior may include simply warmth, or seating, or it may include windless air and shade. The exterior is the reverse side of the fabric that creates the interior, even the reverse side of a conceptual boundary. Surely without built interior the world would never have been thought of as open air, nor external nor outside; except in the sense of outside a realm or a copse of trees. A cave is in, one would go out of it, but this ‘out’ doesn’t seem to fit the outdoors scenario. We have become pale – unless we were originally simply soft enough for Eden.

Panels that open and close - doors and the like. If there were no houses you would never see mother with sunny window-pane patterns warming her blouse – nor father. Captivated aside a moment from a boxed-in workaday, as to the where’s and whys of the house, by a sensation mysterious to him, in fact a deep engulfing nomurbic vortex in the swirl and rhythm, he snapped back to routine and wakely places a shirt in the washing machine, framed by the doorway to the laundry. Open the door, close it. Space, light, interest, movement. There one moment, the next changed at the motion of a hand; a sound as the jamb is struck; the wood is in the hole. The bead curtain has flopped back to straight. A door is a door, a window an air vent, a straight line a part of the aesthetic profile, inside and out. The lounge lizard isn’t moved.

Not all houses have them, and some houses have only the native land, yet as part of nature’s vegetated surrounds, the garden offers rich potential to bind house and land – earthy nurtures. And the house offers rich potential to enhance life in the garden; as distinct from life in the land - that is, notwithstanding the potential traps of interior. By utilizing the land around for living we can make do with less by way of building. There’s some eco wisdom there; one step towards an ecopian urbanity - nomurbics. The nomadic land-living ethos embracing settled interior-valuing ethos – at that nomurbic crossroads.

Tradition, adaptation, mediocrity, industrial limitations, marketability, mortgage conditions, regulation, by-law.

These are all societal contribution to and societal impact upon design.

Within permitted discretions it is mandatory in design to accept regulation and established planning. Along with regulation and planning, it is optional to accept economic and cultural conventions or trends. Building regulations limit what can be done in design and sometimes enforce a house that is more than needed – if not a mere dog box relative to healthy lifestyle. But the accurate supervision of hygienics, land-use and security by authoritative process is invaluable. “Or should we say, would be invaluable if it set to reducing excess such as the traps of our huger interiors!” comes a passionate nomurbic voice. “What use is stringent energy regulation, without the curbing of gargantuan playdough and landscape consumers embodying huge energy per dweller capita in huge houselocusts.” The applause of the stratospheric strollers rings long and loud for Low Carl’s call.

The only thing plainly tangible about regulation is printed text. The meanings have unclear roots. As well, I have read some terrible English in formal planning documents. Are the public authorities and their lobbyists doing it correctly? Too much. Not enough. Red tape. Bias. Yes and no and also the megamonster kicks in and Bobby’s task in Arcosanti is clear.

Environmental regulations are becoming more stringent, with respect to energy, building materials and planning. Change is happening too quickly. Politics is often expedient. Bureaucrats can pretend. Community opinion is usually diverse and pointed to selfish ulteriors. Democracy can mean apparent rule by a mistaken majority. With passion, the underground strives to save environments and species’ and people’s habitational amenity - its integrity proven by lack of pay. A large proportion of the underground too is mistaken in essence. Whence comes the blast from the sun, to rinse clean everyone. Or are we all bound for last earthly days looking for the one fish in simmering soupy oceans. Low Carl straightens his torn collar and heads for the city library internet. His email is to you. "If you haven't already done so, put it down now. This is serious.  We can't leave it all to Bobby!  Don't invest in a 'hot brick' dwelling.  Put it down.  Convert it. Change the orthodox.  One vote and you are not guilty." We are all participants in public authority and cultural development. Let us help Global Pale to detox his bus and debox his residential property. Ingenuity may find the antigravity hover-car. The harmonious dwelling circumstance. The pure playdough. The dream bubble is burst by some pins from both regulation and orthodoxy. It is not easily answered. Call for the blast from the sun.

Is the architect;

ζ	An EPHEMERAL NOMAD, so as to be nature’s earthy nurtures landscape-designing the interior, and Ω 	A SOCIAL BEING, so as to be tweaking the synthetic address and the regulations, and ¬ 	A PERENNIAL SETTLER, so as to facilitate hallowed halling and fruitful continuum?

Are civilised and social coordinations just like the winds, sands and gravities that shape, weather and shake?

Doing your own housing. Doing another’s housing. Housefandango; doing, using, responding to and living relative to housing. Domestic activity - creative building, making, designing, habitation, hospitality, cleaning, renovating, resourcing, checklist ticking and enhancing. This chapter is about the actions that have caused you to be housed as you are – choices, attitudes, attentions, predilections and freedoms. And the actions and reactions that occur as a result of your abode - enjoyment, hard work and chores. It touches on the doing of nomadic domestics and those doings that culminate in the industrial frontier – your connection to nomurbics and ecopicality. It also relates strongly to those who do housing for others - welfare programmers, architects, regulators, commercial developers and domestic item producers. With the foregoing chapters it goes a distance to empower you with respect to your own domestic immediacy and your political and social potency. It is more a corridor through the book than a room. Lining the corridor you may recall :– ‘We know why’, the checklist, the dignity of dweller quicksilver abstractions and your synthetic aesthetic, calling your own shots, simple ecopical action and use of playdough, your accumulations, the ergonomic matrix, preening it of grid infections, a person in motion, cosmic symbol, your place in your continuum, the sociology of the doorknocker, compromise, attitude, deboxing, the trap of interior, the architects’ perspectives, the domestic-contraption is a key. Dreaming is doing. Using is doing. The happening organism is doing. We have talked a little about original, primitive and evolutionary doings and what Albert Gallopilong and dolphins don’t. The happening settled person today generally spends

much of its time doing something associated with housing. Very significant quanta. You are doing some now as you read. It’s something we do - housing. It’s the Housefandango. It is usually very big in our lives. As big as that which it makes and hones. And that which we afford or borrow. “Jesus is preparing a place,” comes a surprising comment from Pale. “In the heavenly city we may be nomadic in our prepared abode,” suggests Cheekybugga.

We do other things too - recreation, investigate the world, socialise, help each other, eat, collect stamps and create. The nomadic person spends more time not doing housing things than does the settled person; and far more than the rat racer.

An attitude. Whatever, it is it’s in the roots of our cultural acclimatisations. It is safe to note that, within all reasonability, there is some middle ground where people may build without disruption of another’s reasonable domestic option, be the option extreme nomadism or ecopical settlement, or indeed, Nature’s own environment. There is some middle ground, where the hunter-gatherer is content to accept contained horticulture by the settler and hyper-industry is hyper-ecodisciplined. Where natural selection is supplemented by contraception. Ecopia, as yet a figment township at the nomurbic nub, the crossroads - a modicum of building which is extremely sensitive to ecological extrapolations and respectful and encouraging of extreme nomadism. Extremely disciplined. Spirited by the flighty nub butterfly. It is protocoled by universal nomad-cum-settler domestics - nomurbics. A physical reality arranged about the nomurbic nub. Its Australian symbol can be Albert Gallopilong shepherding a descendant British lamb with a handcrafted spear. Its global symbol can be a theodolite shared in indigenous and industrial hands.

The most devoted penthouse-owner boggles at the indigenous nomadic everywhere-man and cannot imagine exchanging his well-rooted street-alligator address for a pair of legs with muscles wiser than a satellite navigation box. What is he doing this jetting homo superior? He is not being 'a settler' - there is some smiling cheek from Mr Gallopilong who is fascinated by the new apparent star, a satellite, crossing his beloved red-earthed sky.

In their foundational context; Little White Cloud found that Robert is her journey and Robert now finds White Cloud to be all the room he needs. Together in this way their cleaving grew an ethereally founded nature and playdough force-field, blasting with hyper nurtures. The nurtures forged the childhood memories of home for their children in ecopical domestic nomurbic dynamics; a masterplanned corridor blending changing landscape and diverse temporal abodes with a hallowed supremely functional, renovated, intimately internal base-camp, which would raise Dali’s eye. The current aspect of this domestic continuum is shrouded to the public in an ordinary largish once-pale box, a delight for Global, on the delightful country fringe of ‘secure’ suburban mediocrity. There was no room for an architectural award only because there was no explaining the architecture. All the dwellers there, it is obvious, are architectonically nurtured.

This nub; in the foundation of our dwelling doings. The two ways may blend. There are the lessons of the tried and the decisions for today. Dwell upon them; transcendental and matter-of-fact. One of the ways that should be a winner is losing oppressed to the one that is wide-open to the dodo-that-creeps. The nomad, just like the wildlife, is dozed-in and theodolite-surveyed into a tiny remnant corner, while the dwelling settler increases epidemic potential. Another meaning of ‘dwell’ is ‘astray’. The big, big mess has got to change, change, change. It is all in what we do, do, do, do. Do.. ..

ECOPILISE NOW