Connections: Nature of connection to nature

7 woke up and heard the earth, screaming through the asphalt'. These words pounded into my being upon reflection of my teaching experiences for preparation of this proposal. How do we teach our students to feel the beauty of the earth? How do we teach them to feel that beauty ebbing away from our grasp and all with our own implicit consent? In a series of architectural courses, students confront their appreciation of the earth in relationship to the built environment. "Over the past fifty years, we have reduced a complex and diverse landscape into an asphalt network stitched together from coast to coast out of a dozen or so crude design "templates," states Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan in their book Ecological Design. In the course series titled, Connections: Nature of connection to nature, students engaged in a process to transform the current design thinking, which has led to a destructive relationship with the earth, into a relationship of cooperation and partnership. The studio project was sited on an anomalous 7 acres of forested land, owned by a local textile mill, which intersects an ubiquitous retail strip. Students discovered beauty in the forested site bordered by fast food restaurants, lube shops and barely noticed from the four lane highway upon which it fronts. The program called for a research center to analyze their connection to "nature" in the suburban condition. To begin the design process, students explored the site through the eyes of an ecologist. Analysis drawings were made of the site system patterns. Patterns operating in the contextual retail strip are also examined. In group dialogue, values of nature, suburbia and our role as just one species within this vast system were explored. Through this new lens, students generated alternatives to our current settlement patterns. Student responses ranged from creating a pattern of points of realization woven within the site expressing the fragility of our species, to the other extreme of questioning our dependence on the automobile with a drive through nature center.