SHELTER NOTES: The Original Green Architects

The second in a series inspired by the University of Colorado School of Architecture’s ongoing design work for the future home of the Rocky Mountain Land Library.

One of our earliest, and most favorite, natural history books was Karl von Frisch’s Animal Architecture. This book opened our eyes to the ingenious wildlife structures in our midst, from bird’s nests and spider webs to prairie dog burrows and beaver dens. Looking back, we were as captured by the natural beauty of these structures, as we were by their time-tested utility.

The Land Library has never been able to resist books on this subject. As our animal architecture collection has grown, our only question is where to shelve these wonderful volumes — as part of our animal behavior section, or as the logical start to our shelves on achitecture and the built environment?

Here’s a few of our favorite books on one of our favorite topics. Peggy McNamara’s Architecture by Birds and Insects: A Natural Art (pictured above) is a particularly striking volume. (McNamara was inspired by the vast nest collection at Chicago’s Field Museum).

And here’s a few more fun books:

Built by Animals: The Natural History of Animal Architecture by Mike Hansell, Animal Architects: Building and the Evolution of Intelligence by James Gould & Carol Grant Gould

The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal-Built Structures by J. Scott Turner, along with E.J. Detmold’s beautiful illustration of a wasp nest, from Fabre’s Book of Insects by Jean-Henri Fabre

Animal architecture is very well represented at our Waterton Canyon Kids Nature Library too!

Burrows, Nests & Lairs: Animal Architects, Animal Architects by John Nicholson, and The Architecture of Animals: The Equinox Guide to Wildlife Structures by Adrian Forsyth:

Next week’s Shelter Note: Built by Hand: Vernacular Architecture across the World. Please join us!

And, we can’t sign off without a nod to one of the most clever animal architects. Found along fast-moving stream bottoms, the caddis fly builds a sturdy tube-shaped home, using whatever substance at hand: gravel, twigs — even shells!

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SHELTER NOTES: Touring South Park

It’s been a wonder to see. One of South Park’s oldest historic ranches (vacant for over fifteen years) is coming back to life. This past year has brought together a constellation of partnerships that will continue to create a truly unique land-study center for the Rockies. Buffalo Peaks Ranch will be home to a field station dedicated to connecting people of all ages to the lessons of land, water, and how we can all live lighter on the earth.

No partner has supplied us with such constant support and inspiration as has the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Architecture. Kat Vlahos’ graduate students are halfway through their second semester of design work at Buffalo Peaks Ranch. Their focus is sharpening, and it’s like a dream coming true to see their thoughtful visions taking shape.

In September, we all toured the ranch together. A glorious, cloudless, high mountain kind of day! We hope you enjoy some of the photos taken that day.

Above (click to enlarge!): 1) the students arrive at the main house porch, 2) one of the old bunkhouses (next on our “to be painted” list), 3) the expansive look up valley, as the students get a lay of the land.

Linda Balough, Director of the South Park National Heritage Area, led the students around the ranch, all the while supplying wonderful stories of the ranch’s early days.

Then we explored the clerestory barn — one of the student’s favorite structures.

The tour ended at noon, then it was off to our neighbor to the south, the Santa Maria Ranch (another future stop for the National Heritage Area):

Santa Maria owners George Meyers and Merrill Wilson hosted us for a wonderful, hardy & very much appreciated lunch. The Key Lime Pie couldn’t have been better!

After lunch, Merrill toured us through the 1870′s ranch house that they are slowly-but-surely renovating. (The Santa Maria Ranch has already been designated as a National Historic District).

And here we are at our last stop of the day, South Park’s High Plains Ranch. Owner Carol Carrington gave us a history-filled tour, while providing plenty of opportunities for the students to delve deeply into a variety of building styles:

You’ll definitely want to click & enlarge these photos of well-worn timbers!

Highland Cattle are the specialty of the High Plains Ranch. They are also a lot of fun to watch!

It quickly became clear that the architecture students were also animal lovers — ranchers at heart.

And here we are (or most of us) at the end of a remarkable day. We drove over Kenosha Pass on the way back to Denver, full of an inspiration derived from the past, while feeling a renewed excitement for what’s to come. We hope you can all visit South Park (& Buffalo Peaks Ranch) soon!

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Think Vertical

Is this too wacky, too dreamy — as hyper-visionary as the hovercraft dreams of the fifties? Probably, but then again, maybe not??

Columbia University professor Dickson Despommier looks to the future in his new book The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century. His vision of high-rise farms has scientists, architects, and urban planners intrigued.

Vertical farms can be built anywhere — in abandoned buildings, deserted lots — or even in regions that contain little or no arable land. Cities can begin to satisfy more of their own food needs. Despommier writes: “We continue to urbanize without building cities that are equipped to handle their populations. Most evolutionary biologists agree that continued failure to live within our means will relegate the human species to the fossil record.”

Here’s a few visionary designs from The Vertical Farm:

The Dragonfly Tower — an urban harbor aquaculture farm, designed by Vincent Callebaut.

It’s time to accept our connectedness to the rest of the natural world. There is only so much natural capital out there, and we are on the verge of exhausting it. Building self-sustaining cities now will allow the land to heal itself, thereby restoring balance between our lives and the rest of nature. — Dickson Despommier

For much more information, you can visit The Vertical Farm website!

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The Taste of Place

Rowan Jacobsen begins his lastest book, American Terroir: Savoring the Flavors of Our Woods, Waters, and Fields, with a series of questions: Why does honey from the tupelo-lined banks of the Apalachicola River have a kick of cinnamon unlike any other? Why is salmon from Alaska’s Yukon River among the world’s best? Why does one underground cave in Vermont produce many of the country’s most intense cheeses?

The answer, says Rowan Jacobsen, is Terroir, the taste of place. Originally used by the French to describe the way local conditions such as soil and climate affect the flavor of wine, the concept of terroir has become a useful tool in understanding the unique offerings of regional foods across the country.

Rowan Jacobsen writes, “If you grew up or spent time in the country, your family may have loved to get sweet corn from a particular farm stand. There may have been lots of farm stands in the area, but Farmer Brown’s corn always tasted better. There was something about Farmer Brown’s land — the soil, the water, the microclimate. He had the best spot, and he had the best corn.
That’s terroir. And it’s that simple.“

American Terroir is a rich and perceptive tour of the local foods of North America — from mushroom-hunting in Quebec and potato picking on Prince Edward Island, to the varietal honeys of Florida and the deep dark chocolate of Chiapas, Mexico.

So why is John McPhee’s classic geology book, Annals of the Former World, matched with American Terroir above? Well, it somehow makes sense to Rowan Jacobsen, and to us:

“Terroir almost invariably finds its roots in bedrock, in the workings of tectonic plates and glaciers, along with the realities of climate and geography. For this reason, my favorite work on terroir is not from the bottomless vat of wine writing. Rather it is John McPhee’s magnum opus Annals of the Former World. In that work, McPhee traverses the continent, showing how the patterns of life of its inhabitants, human and otherwise, were set long ago by the deep movement of the earth.“

And here’s three related titles from the Land Library’s shelves:

Terroir: The Role of Geology, Climate, and Culture in the Making of French Wines by James Wilson, The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir by Amy B. Trubek, Geology and Plant Life: The Effects of Landforms and Rock Types on Plants by Arthur R. Kruckeberg.

Rowan Jacobsen referred above to the bottomless vat of wine writing. Over the years, as tempted as we have been, the Land Library has never been able to plumb those depths too deeply. But whenever the notion of terroir arises — land, soil, climate, the taste of place — we dive deep. Here’s three of our favorite volumes from the Land Library’s secret vat:

At Home in the Vineyard: Cultivating a Winery, an Industry, and a Life by Susan Soko Blosser, The Winemaker’s Dance: Exploring Terroir in the Napa Valley by Jonathan Swinchatt & David Howell, A Wine Journey Along the Russian River by Steve Heimhoff.

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A New World on the Banks of the Magdalena River

Mutis lives on in memory as a pioneer scientist struggling virtually alone, thrilled by the wonders around him, and never deterred by the handicaps he faced in unraveling them. — from Kingdom of Ants

Born in Spain, Jose Celestino Mutis (1732-1808) was one of the earliest New World naturalists, spending forty-eight years exploring the flora and fauna of modern-day Colombia. Primarily known as a botanist, Mutis always had difficulty in restraining his naturalist’s eye. At the urging of Carl Linnaeus, Mutis began a comprehensive study of ants, eventually building his own classification system for a wide array of army ants, leafcutters, and many others found along the banks of the Magdalena River (pictured below by artist Frederic Edwin Church).

E.O. Wilson and Jose Gomez Duran have performed a wonderful act of historical rescue with their new book Kingdom of Ants: Jose Celestino Mutis and the Dawn of Natural History in the New World — restoring Mutis to his rightful place in the history of science. As Wilson and Duran observe:

To biology historians, Mutis is known chiefly as a botanist and unacknowledged apostle of Linnaeus. Yet, as we will now show, he was also the first in the New World to study the amazing habits of ants and termites, the dominant insects of tropical America. Among all of the explorer naturalists of the eighteenth century who focused on plants, vertebrate animals, and occasionally butterflies, Mutis alone looked down to the little creatures teeming at his feet.

It’s been a busy year for E.O. Wilson! As we reported earlier, this 81 year old Pulitzer Prize winning author & scientist recently published his first novel, Anthill. Coming in November will be another exciting collaboration with fellow entomologist Bert Holldobler. Here’s just a few of the Land Library’s favorite E.O. Wilson/Bert Holldobler books on ants:

The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct (due out in November), Journey to the Ants: A Story of Scientific Exploration, The Ants (winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize).

For more on Ants (& E.O. Wilson) take a look at some of the Land Library’s earlier posts!

–E.O Wilson’s Brave New World

– A Parallel Universe

– Fun Tales of First Contact

plus this fun post on the great French entomologist J. Henri Fabre:

– The Insect Man

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