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“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” Charles Mingus
"Sometimes the greenest looking technologies are less green than the conventional looking ones; buyer beware."
Elemental Solutions and Sustainability
I aspire to an eco-minimal or eco-simplicity approach of cost effective and passive or low energy technologies that are simple to understand and maintain. I advocate appropriate solutions rather than automatically suggesting green icons such as reed beds regardless of context.
Style
I do not believe that genuine sustainable technologies need
have a particular style but do recognise the importance of style as
a barrier and driver for the wider uptake of sustainable solutions.
Elemental Solution's Office
Self-built, super-insulated, water efficient with biomass (logs) space heating and solar water heating. Electrical consumption is minimised. More information coming soon.
Recomended reading
NEW - Eco-Minimalism Revisted by Nick Grant. Full version of Comment published in the Architects' Journal 20.03.08
Heat - George Monbiot. Summing up the evidence for climate change and looking at the options.
Sustainable Energy-without the hot air. Professor David J.C. MacKay, Good clear presentation of the numbers behind the problem.
Factor Four; Lovins et al - link to Rocky Mountain Institute, USA from whence Amory Lovins examines synergistic efficiency measures. I don't go along with it all but there are some gems.
Peter Harper of CAT - Eco Realism - an emerging paradigm. Pdf download 16 Kb. Peter's writing is always a delight, this is just a table but an important landmark on the sustainability map.
Mayer Hillman, How we can Save the Planet . Don't let the title put you off, thought provoking reading to inform the priorities for action and as a reminder to the limits of technology alone in delivering a sustainable future.
John Maeda, The Laws of Simplicity; design, technology, business, life. Artist, designer and academic wrestling with the paradox of desire for both simpicity and complexity in design, a very complex subject! Whilst sustainability scarcely gets a mention, many of the principles apply to eco-design.
Nick Grant - Style over Content - 16 Kb pdf download, and doing the same with Howard Liddell of Gaia Architects in Building for a Future magazine article Eco-minimalism - 192 Kb pdf download.
Original website built by Mark Moodie.
Design and images; Mark Moodie and Nick Grant.
