Relationship
Relationship is a guiding concept for the placement of circulation
systems and areas where activities take place. Putting things
in the right place on a site is essential to making useful connections.
The effect of not paying attention to relationships is extra effort
to meet needs not met within the system and waste of system outputs.
Simply put, there is more work and more pollution if things aren't
well related. (Patrick Whitefield in Permaculture in a Nutshell,
page 14)
Perhaps a good way to understand relative location is to look
at Patrick's example of The Chicken-Greenhouse:
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from: Permaculture in a Nutshell, pg. 13-14. |
In this design the greenhouse is attached to the sun-side of the
chicken house. The body heat of the chickens helps keep the greenhouse
temperature up on cool nights and the greenhouse reheats the chicken
house as the day progresses. The carbon dioxide respiration of
the chickens and their manure enhances plant growth in the greenhouse.
Water collected from the roof of the structures is used to supply
drinking water to the chickens.
The chicken-greenhouse is further placed in a good relationship
to the surrounding landscape. The chicken run is next to the wheat
field and orchard making a forage connection by opening a gate.
The chickens can eat the ears and grains missed in the wheat harvest
and the insects in the orchard. Adding a connection to the vegetable
garden puts the "chicken tractor" to work eating weeds
and pests there. With this simple arrangement the need for chicken
food is met from several sources.
The design of this complex of building, vegetation, animal, water
and energy connections illustrates the concept of relationships.
It provides a landscape that is diverse, energy efficient and
sustainable. Other components in a design may be connected in
a similar manner. We may also have components that we wish to
keep apart because they might conflict with each other. It is
important to identify these as well. The nature of the relationship
may be physical, visual, audial, time- or season-related. We may
want a variety of potential combinations incorporated so complex
arrangements and techniques for changing relationships may be
required.
Think about each component in a design as having little hands
reaching out to grasp the hands of other related components. Our
job is to determine which hands should be joined and the best
ways to join them . We are able to relate elements in a design
to each other using several techniques. The most basic is to just
put them next to each other on a horizontal surface or one above
the other vertically. In other instances two components may be
related to each other through a shared third component -- a mud-room
linking a garage and a kitchen, for example. Another way of relating
components is to give them a shared circulation system as when
we link a number of keyhole beds along a pathway. Different types
of circulation systems offer different opportunities for creating
relationship connections. Creating workable relationships is one
of the main issues addressed in a design problem.
