Serenbe’s New Wellness District Features a Food Forest

Deep in the woods southwest of Atlanta, Serenbe is a unique designed community — a mixed-use development, with clusters of villages comprised of townhouses and apartments fueled by solar panels and heated and cooled by geothermal systems, and vast open spaces with organic farms, natural waste water treatment systems, and preserved forests. A leader in the “agrihood” movement, which calls for agriculture-centric community development, Serenbe is now moving into wellness with its new development called Mado.

On a tour of the new town, which will add 480 homes, including some assisted living cottages, to the 1,400 that already house some 3,500 people, Serenbe founder Steven Nygren explained how his vision of wellness was inspired by the sustainable Swedish city of Malmö. He and his wife Marie traveled there, and they brought back lots of photographs, which they then gave to their planners, architects, and landscape architects.

The community now under construction is organized around common spaces set in gardens. Nygren fears a scenario in which you have two older residents out on their porches, but both are waiting for the other to invite them over. In Mado, the ground-level shared patios may create more opportunities for interaction.

Also, Nygren reached an interesting conclusion from his trip to Malmö: “They always connect streets into nature.” He decided to recreate that relationship in Mado, organizing the housing and common spaces along a central axis with ends that extend into nature trails.

Mado development plan / Rhinehart Pulliam & Company, LLC

Once this central organizational structure was decided upon, they brought in landscape architect and University of Georgia professor Alfred Vick, ASLA, who then created an innovative “food forest” to realize the concept of wellness in landscape form (see the bottom portion of the image above). It will function as an accessible outdoor living room, given throughout the space the gradient is less than 5 percent. It’s also a place where people can gather and also learn how to forage in the wider Serenbe landscape (see a close-up of its design below).

Mado food forest / Solidago Design Solution, Inc.

Vick said his vision was of a “edible ecosystem, an intentional system for human food production.” Using the natural Piedmont ecosystem as the base, Vick is creating a designer ecosystem of edible or medicinal plants, with a ground layer, understory, and canopy that also incorporates plants with cultural meaning and a legacy of use by indigenous American Indian tribes.

He imagines visitors to the forest foraging for berries, fruits, and nuts, including serviceberries, blueberries, mulberries, and chickasaw plums, as well as acorn and hickory nuts, which can be processed and turned into foods. Mado residents and chefs can harvest the young, tender leaves of cutleaf coneflowers, which are related to black-eyed susans. Or reach up to an arbor, which will be covered in Muscadine grape vines and passion flowers. Or take some Jerusalem artichokes, which were used by Cherokee Indians and today cooked as a potato substitute. Or pluck rosemary or mint from an herb circle. Vick left out peach and apple trees because they require fungicides.

“The primary goal is to engage residents,” Vick explained. There will be interpretive guides to explain how plants can be consumed, which will also “help encourage wider foraging when they are out in the Serenbe landscape.” Nygren wants everyone in the community connected to the productive cycle of nature and to know when the serviceberries, blueberries, figs are ready to be picked.

And the landscape is also designed to both provide a safe boundary — so grandparents can let kids roam — but also provide a natural extension into the rest of the landscape. While the Mado designs are still being developed, we hope that universal design principles, which call for fully-accessible seating and nearby restrooms, will be incorporated to ensure an 80-year old as well as an 8-year old can comfortably access and enjoy the landscape.

Learn more about Serenbe in this interview conducted with Nygren in 2015.

Future Materials Here Today: Self-Healing Concrete, Biological Bricks, and More

Transmaterial Next / Princeton Architectural Press

While we have all experienced the effects of the information technology revolution now underway, we may be less aware of the impact of the new “materials revolution,” argues University of Minnesota professor Blaine Brownell in his excellent new book Transmaterial Next: A Catalog of Materials That Define Our Future. Building materials are being transformed to respond to our planetary environmental crisis, lower costs and boost efficiency, and provide new media for creative expression. Given the serious problems facing the Earth, the scale of the ambition is heartening.

Brownell has been documenting the evolution of building materials for some time. Over the past decade, he has written Material Strategies: Innovative Applications in Architecture; Hypernatural: Architecture’s New Relationship with Nature (read The Dirt review); and three books in the Transmaterial series.

Transmaterial Next is rich with interesting details and well-organized, with sections on concrete, mineral, metal, woods and biomaterials, plastic and rubber, glass, paint and coatings, fabric, light, and digital materials. More than 100 brief case studies on materials offer brief summaries, images, the state of commercial readiness, and future possible impacts. He also defines the materials in terms of the trends they represent.

For example, future materials may be ultra-performing, meaning they are “stronger, lighter, more durable, and flexible than their conventional counterparts;” multi-dimensional, “with greater depth and richness;” re-purposed, as they often “replace precious raw materials with less endangered, more plentiful ones, and divert products from the waste stream;” recombinant — because “two or more different materials act in harmony to create a product whose performance is greater than the sum of its parts;” intelligent, because they “take inspiration from biological systems and are therefore less wasteful;” transformational, because they “undergo a physical metamorphosis based on environmental stimuli;” and interfacial — as they can serve as a linkage between the “physical and virtual worlds.”

Brownell does a great job of explaining the environmental costs of our exploding resource use and how new, less wasteful materials will help. 

Concrete, which was used by the Romans before falling out of favor for centuries, is now the “most heavily used material on Earth after water.” Concrete production accounts for some 5-10 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, and its use is growing 2-4 percent year, given its relatively short life-span and difficulty to recycle.

Concrete production can be far less polluting. Brownell identifies how simply replacing some of the Portland cement portion of cement with “alternative cementitious materials, such as fly ash or slag” can reduce emissions by some 46 percent. He calls for replacing problematic steel, which is used as a reinforcement in some structural concrete, with fibers or other materials.

Concrete emissions can also be reduced by lengthening the useful life of concrete as well — through “self-maintaining” or “self-healing” technologies that reduce maintenance. For example, BacillaFilla is an “engineered microbial glue” that can repair cracks in concrete. The microbes are grown in a bioreactor. After they are applied with a spray, the microbes quickly bind and come with a kill switch so the “germination process may be terminated.”

BacillaFilla / Wonderful Engineering

And then there’s bendable concrete, which is “far less brittle than conventional concrete.” While bendable concrete does form micro-cracks if bent too far, it can “self heal in the presence of air and water.”

Bendable Concrete / The ACE-MRL, University of Michigan. From Transmaterial Next by Blaine Brownell, © 2017 Princeton Architectural Press, reprinted with permission of the publisher.

In the minerals section, Brownell sees the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the brick industry, which spews out high amounts of black carbon. One way to do that is growing bricks via biochemical processes. Mason, a company out of North Carolina, seeks to do this with BioBrick, which uses bacteria to generate bricks out of sand or another aggregate.

BioBrick / bioMASON. From Transmaterial Next by Blaine Brownell, © 2017 Princeton Architectural Press, reprinted with permission of the publisher.

Another fascinating application — Stone Spray, a sort of 3D printer that “collects direct and sand located on sites and mixes them with a binder ingredient.” The vision of nearly-instantaneously printing a structure using nearby materials is awe-inspiring. The technology is in very early stages, and there would be limitations — the load-bearing capabilities of nearby materials would determine the capacity of the structure.

Stone Spray / Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia. From Transmaterial Next by Blaine Brownell, © 2017 Princeton Architectural Press, reprinted with permission of the publisher.

Over the past 500 years, some 4.45 billion acres of forest have been cleared. If the planet keeps going at the rate it has been, we will lose the world’s rainforests in a century. “This resource crisis suggests that forests must be preserved as much as possible.” To slow or stop deforestation, Brownell offers up some novel technologies, such as NewsPaperWood, a Dutch product, that is made out of recycled newspaper and is gorgeous.

Newspaperwood / Raw Color. From Transmaterial Next by Blaine Brownell, © 2017 Princeton Architectural Press, reprinted with permission of the publisher.

In the paints and coatings section, we learn about the potential of next-generation surfaces with coating technologies that enable “light harvesting, electricity production, and structural monitoring.” One brilliant example is the photo-luminescent paint found in the Dutch Smart Highway Project. A team from Studio Roosegaarde and Heijmans created a test bed with photo-luminescent strips that “absorb daylight and emit light during the evening for up to eight hours.” Think of the cost savings for lighting and the creative opportunities. 

Van Gogh Path / Pim Hendriksen. From Transmaterial Next by Blaine Brownell, © 2017 Princeton Architectural Press, reprinted with permission of the publisher.

A related idea in the lighting section: A team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin harnessed genetically-modified E.coli bacteria, algae, and protists to create a biolumenescent light source that will run on sunlight and its own waste. Still in early development, the bulb designers face challenges in making it reliable, Brownell argues.

BioBulb / AnaElise Beckman, Alexandra Cohn, and Michael Zaiken. From Transmaterial Next by Blaine Brownell, © 2017 Princeton Architectural Press, reprinted with permission of the publisher.

And there’s also Starlight Avatar, a strange plant that gives off light. Its chloroplast gene has been genetically modified with elements of marine bacteria. Bioglow, the firm behind this new organism, wants to “create foilage that can double as low-energy light sources.” The plant, which Brownell thinks could be used alongside paths for nighttime navigation, is ready for the market and available in the U.S. Whether there is a future market for glow-in-the-dark plants is unknown.

Now these new materials need to be scaled up. In particular, the planet is way past due more efficient and longer-lasting concrete. 

Chandigarh: Where Modernism Met India

Chandigarh Revealed / Princeton Architectural Press

Chandigarh, the capital city of the Indian states of Haryana and Punjab, was planned and designed in the 1950s and 60s by French-Swiss master architect Le Corbusier, along with architects Jane Drew, Pierre Jeanneret, and Maxwell Fry, and a host of Indian modernists. Envisioned by India’s founding prime minister Jawahar Lal Nehru, the planned city represented a break with India’s colonial past and embodied a distinctly-Indian form of modernism, rooted in post-independence values of democracy, socialism, secularism, and non-alignment. The city, and other planned modernist cities of the era, told the world India was on its way.

First planned and designed to accommodate some 500,000 people, today, more than a million people live in Chandigarh, as the city has expanded, and slums have taken over areas where the plan was never fully realized. Some 50 years later, Le Corbusier and Nehru’s city appears both glorious and derelict, visionary and an anachronism in Chandigarh Revealed, a fascinating new book by photographer and designer Shaun Flynn.

Chandigarh has been likened to Brasilia, the modernist capital city of Brazil planned and designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer. But whereas Brasilia hosts workers during the day and expels them at night, Chandigarh was designed to be a more livable city full-time, with a primary Capitol complex, and its Legislative Assembly as the focus; commercial districts; parks and plazas; educational, medical, and research institutions; and housing for tens of thousands of government workers.

Chandigarh legislative assembly / Images © Shaun Fynn, from Candigarh Revealed: Le Corbusier’s City Today by Shaun Fynn published by Princeton Architectural Press (2017)
Chandigarh legislative assembly interior / Images © Shaun Fynn, from Candigarh Revealed: Le Corbusier’s City Today by Shaun Fynn published by Princeton Architectural Press (2017)

Chandigarh’s plan is divided into 47 sectors, each 800 by 1,200 meters. Sectors 1-30 were created from 1951-1976, and sectors 31-57 were created from the 1960-1985. Until his death in 1965, Le Corbusier was still designing elements of the site. Flynn’s well-designed infographics really help explain his vision.

Flynn describes in his introduction how government housing is further broken into fourteen categories, each with variations, and “all built according to a hierarchy based on socioeconomic status.”

“The most desirable and lowest-density area are sectors 2-9, which are adjacent to the Capitol complex, while population density increases as the sectors recede from the mountains, the Capitol complex, and Sukhna Lake.” Even in the planned city, it’s all about location — in this case, the proximity to power.

But all buildings were made to a consistent level of quality and with the same attention to detail. Constructed out of concrete and brick, the most cost-effective and freely available local material, the buildings were designed to nest together into a broader plan. And even the smallest apartments — the minimum being 100 square meters — were designed by an architect with care, writes M.N. Sharma, an associate of Le Corbusier and chief architect of Chandigarh from 1965-1979.

According to numerous reports and surveys, the city today has one of the happiest and wealthiest populations in all of India, and the city itself is one of the cleanest. These achievements may be seen as a testament to the legacy of Nehru, Le Corbusier, and his colleagues.

But the state of ruin of many of the buildings can also be seen as a commentary on the lack of progress towards Nehru’s vision of a fully-modern India, with strong, centralized, and efficient government.

Architect Vikramaditya Prakash, who grew up in Chandigarh, writes in his essay about the complexities found in Chandigarh. By the 1970s, the vision of efficient government as embodied in the Capitol complex had died amid “the daily disintegration of the failing Nehruvian nation-state,” and “as endemic corruption, unemployment, and the bloated lethargy of the public sector slowly drained the lifeblood of the nation.”

Chandigarh / Images © Shaun Fynn, from Candigarh Revealed: Le Corbusier’s City Today by Shaun Fynn published by Princeton Architectural Press (2017)

However, in the midst of this national deterioration, “Chandigarh paradoxically prospered.” He writes: “As the rest of the cities of northern India descended into urban miasma, Chandigarh became a haven for the Punjabi elite because the city, particularly as its tree cover matured, offered an unparalleled quality of life.”

Flynn argues there is another narrative on Chandigarh worth exploring: planning, architecture, and nature. Le Corbusier focused on the “care of the mind and body,” which is reflected in not only the buildings, which are rich with Le Corbusier’s symbols and native religious forms, but also in the landscape.

Le Corbusier’s hand symbol on a building / Images © Shaun Fynn, from Candigarh Revealed: Le Corbusier’s City Today by Shaun Fynn published by Princeton Architectural Press (2017)

In his edict, Le Corbusier writes: “The city of Chandigarh is planned to human scale. It puts us in touch with the infinite cosmos and nature. It provides us with places and buildings for all human activities by which the citizens can live a full and harmonious life. Here the radiance of nature and heart are within our reach.”

Nature and architecture intermingle at Chandigarh / Images © Shaun Fynn, from Candigarh Revealed: Le Corbusier’s City Today by Shaun Fynn published by Princeton Architectural Press (2017)

In a transcript of an interview, Sharma concurs, arguing that “to take care of your mind and body, you need recreation so this is a city with open spaces. Old people can walk, children can run around, and then there are paths that are very peaceful. There are also large-scale gardens that many people thought were for the rich, and I told them, no, the Rose Garden is meant for poor people.”

Modernist planning and architecture comes together with parks and tree-lined streets to create a livable Modernism, a garden city for Indians.

From the book, however, it’s unclear how much of Chandigarh’s interesting landscape came from the original designers and how much accrued as new layers later.

Also, while Flynn shoots the buildings designed by Le Corbusier, Jeanneret, Drew, and Fry in a compelling way — giving us a real sense of what it’s like to be in these buildings, walk around them, or even be on top of them — he only gives us glimpses of civic and green spaces, and offers no photographs of people out enjoying the community’s tree-covered streets, parks, the celebrated Zakir Hussein Rose Garden, or the Rock Garden, which is estimated to have received some 12 million visitors.

Chandigarh rose garden / Wikipedia, Harvinder Chandigarh, CC BY-SA 4.0

Examining Flynn’s photographs, one must often look around the corners of buildings and imagine what these landscapes are like in totality.

View of Le Corbusier’s museum / Images © Shaun Fynn, from Candigarh Revealed: Le Corbusier’s City Today by Shaun Fynn published by Princeton Architectural Press (2017)

Le Corbusier was very focused on how buildings and nature must relate. In this book, one hopes for a clearer view of that central relationship.