Throughout a career spanning over half a century David Lea has sought to design low impact buildings that bring people into a closer relationship with the natural world.
Looking back on 56 years of architectural practice I see that I have always been amazed by the beauty of nature and the human response to it, expressed especially in the strength and harmony of pre-industrial buildings.
Advancing capitalism destroyed traditions of handwork and replaced them with banality and ugliness. Architecture, expressed as a coherent body of knowledge and creativity has almost disappeared, and urbanism as a logical spatial layout for human settlement has gone with it. Now we have piecemeal development, competition on individual sites for maximum profit and theft of public space by private developers. People are trapped in high-rise buildings, vulnerable to every fault, deprived of any meaningful response to trees, grass, streams and lakes.
When we build we reveal our vision of the future. One moment the design is inside our heads, the next it is grounded in all its solid reality. This imposes a responsibility which is impossible to avoid. Our vision surely must include the truth of rapidly accelerating climate change and the imperative to preserve the natural habitats of all the creatures with whom we share the Earth.
How can we do this?
Sometimes it seems that everything is going in the wrong direction. To survive we need a complete rethinking of planning and construction policy.
Everything is connected and it all starts with the land. Who owns it and how is it used? We need a shared vision embedded in planning policies operated on a large enough scale. The production of food, shelter, energy and tools should be integrated with settlements. It would be unnecessary to build any multi-storey buildings. Most buildings could be made of stone, clay, lime and plants, all materials with low embodied energy. Every family could have a garden and access to open space.
I have tried to design and build as if this type of low impact organisation already exists. I have wished all my life to bring people into a closer relationship with the natural world, encouraging them to enjoy the ever changing light and sounds of day and night.
