Dominion & Design as an Act of Care

Dominion & Design as an Act of Care

Dominion:

Dominion Defenition= logic, sovereign or supreme authority.

The concept of dominion gave a permission in to set man at the centre of all things. In this sense all that surrounds us is created to serve us. It hasn’t always been this way.

Interrogation of indigenous ‘ways of being’ show very different paradigms in which they tread on the earth lightly. Australian Aboriginals held a symbiotic relationship with their environment in which they did not seek to conquer it, but live empathetically within it. Indigenous Americans also has a symbiotic relationship with Earth, normally living in nomadic lifestyles, moving across the land to follow the bison that they follow for food. Taking only from the land when they needed it to survive.

What i find interesting about the past way that indigenous lived is that they display no sense of ‘dominion’, demonstrating that they didn’t have a hunger for power or control, but simply wanted to live ‘with and within the world’. Trying to shoe what we have lost and what we should rediscover.

Every decision we make has consequences. For example the industrial revolution has transformed the world forever in ways such as:
- Mass urbanisation
- Mass production
- New means of transport
- Greater needs for law
- Materials
- Child labour
- Employment
- Pollution 
- Waste
- Changes in social order 
These were brand new ways of being in the world and as a result lead to exploiting the world and landscapes around us as production levels increased and new markets emerged - the genesis of globalisation. 

Industrialisation and globalisation has consequentially lead to a rise in pollution and waste, and decreasing air qualities. This has therefore lead to a direct impact upon climate change which I believe has put Earth into a state of climate crisis and emergency. At the core of these challenges is he human sense of dominion over the world. We always need more and more…

I believe that we need to slowly adapt to this new way of living inspired from the ancient indigenous cultures that held a respectable and symbiotic relationship with the Earth and all of its diverse ecologies.

Design as an act of care:

Care definition: charge, oversight, attention or heed with a view to safety or protection.

Sverre Fehn school for deaf children, Oslo, Norway. Fehn conceived this project as a community of care, a hill village or care and support for children with hearing difficulties. Rooms were circular so children could sit in a semi circle to allow them all to see the teacher and be able to lip read, demonstrating Fehn’s wisdom and his thought and care that he put into his design.


Care in material choice: 
Timber:
- Each material we use as its own ecology and also interconnected ecologies.
- Trees as living entities have diverse ecologies:
  • Wildlife habitats
  • Deciduous leaf
  • Compost supporting
  • Insects
  • Carbon capture
  • Photosynthesis 
- Trees are one of the most valuable resources on Earth and are the ultimate carbon capture and storage machine.
- Woods and forests absorb atmospheric carbon and lock it up for centuries through photosynthesis. 
- Trees are capable of capturing up to 400 tonnes of carbon per hectare. 
- Trees are a material source which is not finite, they can be harvested and replaced.
- Once harvested, timber is an excellent building resource with a diverse range of properties and applications and also has a low embodied energy.

Concrete:
- Comprises of sand, aggregate and cement
- The sand and aggregate need to be extracted from he ground which therefore impacts negatively on landscapes and habitats.
- Limes and sulphites that are the basis of cement are also extracted from the ground and then heated. Therefore the process is highly consumptive of energy.
- However, concrete can be an excellent building material as its properties include:
  • High strength 
  • Durability
  • High density 
  • High thermal mass (stores heat)
How we care for the planet:
- Construction uses around 50% of the UK energy generated, of that 50%, 40% is accounted for by transportation.
- Re-purposing, refurbishing, re-imagining and adaption.
- Care as community (e.g. repurposed redundant multi-storey car park) 
- Care as economy 
- Care as ethics

Maggie’s Centres:
Maggie Centres are centres designed to help anyone who has been affected by cancer. They act as an environment to offer care, support, information and advice (not treatment). The idea was envisioned by Margaret Kewswick Jencks, who was terminally ill with cancer and found hospitals to be a daunting and uncomfortable place to be nd believed that cancer treatment environments needed good design. Therefore, Maggie’s centres were formed after her death by her husband Charles Jencks to offer a tranquil, calm drop-in centre for those affected by cancer.

Locations:
- Aberdeen
- Barr’s - London (City & East)
- Cambridge
- Cardiff
- Cheltenham 
- Coventry
- Dundee
- Edinburgh
- Fife
- Forth Valley
- Glasgow
- Highlands
- Lanarkshire
- Manchester
- Newcastle
- Northampton 
- Nottingham
- Oldham
- Oxford
- Southampton 
- Swansea
- Taunton
- West London
- Wirral
- Yorkshire
- The Royal Free
- The Royal Marsden
- Kailida Barcelona 
- Hong Kong
- Tokyo
 
Who Designed Maggie Centres?: Examples
- Rem Koolhaas
- Frank Gerry
- Zaha Hadid
- Dow Jones Architects
- Snohetta 

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