The Elementals

Ground Elemental The cabin is raised up from an underground bunker when in use. Planted trays of prairie grass are tilted up to become the enclosure.

Ground Elemental When occuppied, the lack of exposure to sun and rain combined with the force of gravity eventually cause the grass to die and fall to the floor. This makes the ability to occupy the cabin unsustainable.

Water Elemental Located at Lake Hollywood, the cabin is elevated on a hydraulic frame in order to afford a stunning view across the Mulholland Dam to the Los Angeles skyline.

Water Elemental The hydraulic system is governed by the capacity of the adjacent cistern. As occupants consume water, hydraulic pressure is reduced—thereby causing the cabin to lower and the view to disappear.

Wind Elemental Located in the windy San Gorgonio pass, this structure provides an elevated viewing platform with a sleeping hammock and basic restroom facilities.

Wind Elemental Like a weather vane, the platform and hood rotate so that the view is always framed in the direction the wind is blowing.

Wind Elemental Within the hood, a wind sock serves as the viewing oculus. Therefore, a framed view is only possible when the wind is blowing. Furthermore, standing in front of the oculus disrupts the wind that makes the view possible.

Sun Elemental When unoccupied, this cabin is a flower-like solar collector. When occupied, however, the collector panels fold together to make the cabin enclosure, and the structure is powered by the energy it previously collected.

Sun Elemental The uninsulated cabin is only occupiable for as long as stored energy is available, since only the use of air conditioning and heating can mitigate the extreme temperature shifts of the surrounding desert.

Sun Elemental Energy is also consumed in the act of viewing, since the viewing oculus is regulated by a high speed rotating shutter panel, which blocks the view when power is interrupted or depleted.

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The Elementals

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Project Description

Ground Elemental

Water Elemental

Wind Elemental

Sun Elemental

Project Data

The Elementals are a series of four unique eco-tourism cabins that have been proposed for sites throughout California, and which have been designed to create experiences of the environment that critique the prevailing logic behind “sustainability.” This logic—which is based upon an anthropocentric and resource-centered perception of the environment—is characterized by a hierarchical division between humanity and the larger planetary ecology that is enabled by technology’s role as an intermediary instrument of human control over the environment. Given its critique of technology’s use in this regard, The Elementals takes its name from the mythological elemental beings associated with the pre-technological alchemical tradition. Each cabin is therefore identified with one of these entities as an analogy to the particular resource it addresses: industrial agriculture (earth), wind energy (air), solar energy (fire), and hydroelectric energy (water).

Located at sites of intense resource-based activity, each of the Elementals is designed to experientially implicate the individual as an active consumer of the natural environment, and also to critique this exploitative relationship by creating unique environments for viewing the landscape in which acts of consumption or control are foregrounded, problematized, and contested.

This is accomplished in the case of each of the Elementals by creating an inhabitable scenario in which the primary desire of the occupant—namely, the eco-touristic view of the surrounding landscape—is framed as a limited resource which, when consumed, renders each cabin uninhabitable.

As a result, the occupants are immersed within scenarios that critique the implicit logic of resourcist-based ecological perspectives that presume to be able to afford a continuation of the contemporary way of living within the world through a vague appeal to “sustainable” practices and new “green” technologies. The occupants of the Elementals are therefore confronted with situations in which no modification of behavior, nor any appeal to new technology, will allow the status quo to be sustained. Instead, individuals are provided with a rare opportunity to instructively inhabit a no-win scenario—one which most closely resembles the contemporary world, and within which the only positive way forward is a radical paradigm shift in the way that humans perceive their relationship to the larger ecology.

In the Ground Elemental, the very cabin that provides the sheltered area from which the panoramic view takes place also threatens the ability to sustain that view. Located near Avenal, CA, the site for the cabin is a flat hilltop that overlooks a broad expanse of the vast agricultural landscape of the San Joaquin Valley. However, the cabin itself is stored beneath the site in a recessed bunker hidden under four large hinged trays planted to match the surrounding grasses. In order to access and occupy the cabin, a control box in the parking area below must be activated, which causes the grass trays to fold upward to form the pitched roof and side walls of the cabin. These are completed by a floor assembly that raises up from below, and which includes the front and rear glass facades. However, the grass trays that make the characteristic house-shaped enclosure for the cabin are oriented with the planted surfaces facing the interior.

Over time, the repeated action of raising the cabin out of the ground, the lack of sunlight and rainwater to feed the grass, and the protracted exertion of gravity will combine to cause the grass and soil to slowly rain down upon the occupants, undermining the ability of the cabin to successfully serve as a sheltered space for viewing the landscape. This scenario therefore transforms the sheltered view into a limited resource consumed over time by the occupant.

In the case of the Water Elemental, the view of the surrounding landscape is slowly denied as water is consumed. Located on a small promontory thrust into the midst of the Hollywood Reservoir, this particular cabin is held aloft by a framework supported by two large hydraulic cylinders whose pressure is governed by the hydraulic pressure in an adjacent water well. When the water column in this well is at full capacity, the pressure in the system is sufficient to hold the cabin fully aloft, allowing the occupants a dramatic view over the crest of the Mulholland Dam to the skyline of the city below. However, the non-potable water used by the occupants of the cabin is pumped directly from this water well.

Every time an occupant uses the shower, turns on the faucet, or flushes the toilet this act of consumption reduces the volume of the water column, which reduces the hydraulic pressure and therefore lowers the elevation of the cabin, thus blocking the dramatic view of the city skyline.

The Wind Elemental renders the view completely dependent on the availability of wind energy. Sited within the heart of the San Gorgonio pass, which is one of the windiest places in California, this cabin features an elevated viewing platform that offers breathtaking views of the surrounding San Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains, as well as the over 3000 wind turbines that comprise the San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm. The viewing platform is designed such that the wind determines both the orientation and duration of the view: like a monumental wind sock, the platform rotates to align with the direction of the prevailing wind and contains an inflatable fabric tube that serves as the viewing oculus.

Since the only possibility of a view is through this inflatable viewing oculus, a lack of sufficient wind will fail to inflate the fabric tube and thus prevent the possibility of a view. Furthermore, to actually enjoy the view the occupant(s) must stand on the platform in such a way that they partially block the intake of wind into the fabric tube. This has the effect of disturbing the inflation of the viewing tube, thereby foiling the ability of the viewing oculus to sustain the view for the occupant. Consequently, like each of the other Elementals, this cabin creates an inhabitable scenario in which a dramatic view is framed as an unsustainable resource that is threatened by the occupant.

In the Sun Elemental this consumption of the view is correlated to the consumption of solar energy in the form of stored electricity. Located in the Mojave Desert near Baker, CA, this project features a sweeping view of the massive Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System. Like the very subject it surveys, when unoccupied this cabin is also a massive solar energy collector, with the surfaces that comprise its floor, walls, and roof unfolded to produce a large, flower-like solar array. The solar energy harvested by this array is then stored in a large battery bank, whereupon it remains ready to power the electrical systems of the cabin during its occupation.

The duration of this occupation, however, is governed by the amount of stored electrical energy, which is consumed not only as the occupants use such common electrical systems as lighting and air conditioning, but also a specially designed viewing portal that requires electricity to be continuously consumed in order to provide the only view available from inside the cabin.

This is achieved by the integration of a large horizontal-axis rotating panel within the viewing portal: when this system is turned on, the rotating blade spins at a sufficiently high velocity to allow the occupants to see through it to the landscape beyond.

In addition, as this rotating panel also serves as the blower for the air conditioning system, it supplies conditioned air to the uninsulated cabin in order to render it temporarily habitable in the harsh desert climate. However, when the system is turned off, or if the batteries are drained of power, then the rotating panel is fixed in a vertical position, thereby blocking both the supply of conditioned air as well as the access to the view—both of which render the cabin uninhabitable.

Completed

2009-2012

Materials

Painted steel structural frame; various enclosures including insulated fiberglass shell, steel trays planted with prairie grass, laminated polyester fabric, and photovoltaic collectors; various interior finishes including painted drywall, fiberglass bathroom pods, and cast-in-place concrete floors in metal decking; painted steel linkage framework with double-acting hydraulic actuators; press-lock close mesh steel bar grating; cast-in-place concrete slab and retaining walls; slewing ring with battery-powered drive motor

Published

GA Houses 115 (March 2010)

GA Houses 125 (March 2012)

Post-Sustainable: New Directions in Ecological Design, Mary Christian, Mitchell Joachim, and Michael Silver (Metropolis Books, 2013)

The Elementals