lebbeus woods recently blogged on hybrid landscapes and their intent to provide a sensible approach to architecture and it's relationship to the site. the approach takes a rather simple minded and almost historic view towards unifying site and building rather then fulfilling ridiculous and stringent rules identifying a building as "sustainable."
"contemporary urban world, with its aggregates of buildings that become in themselves artificial landscapes and contexts—entirely displacing the natural—the architectʼs role would seem to inevitably expand beyond designing built single objects."
"hybrid landscapes...approach indicates a sensibility that could lead in that direction...manifests a different attitude toward architecture, one that plays down a heroic conquest of nature and looks for modes of coexistence with it."
"coexistence, neither presence is sacrificed at the expense of the other; rather, each impacts the other in creating—hopefully—a balance, even a new form of harmony."
proceeding forward with the intent to coexist, the building and the site provide a different set of parameters. parameters that seek different roles of behavior and interaction with the program of the artifact seeking to use the site, or earth, as a living extension of itself. the repetition of this strategy should begin to yield a different product of culture and how people will choose to interface with this new typology.
