The Florence and William Tsui House in Berkeley World famous for his structural designs that use nature as a model, Eugene Tsui has become a leader in the biomimicy movement, pioneering uncharted territories with a unique design style based upon the profound study of nature’s design intelligence. Treading lightly on the earth, his designs utilize the sacred geometry and interaction of elemental forces found in nature.

UAS: It’s been a while-- almost a year. What have you been up to with your latest projects?

Eugene Tsui: For the past year I’ve been involved with setting up Telos, which will be an interdisciplinary design school that applies the microcosmic patterns and profound intelligence found in nature. Set on a 170 acre campus at the base of Mount Shasta, in northern California, the massive plan for the school really involves answering the following question: How would nature design a school; and if you were to live lightly on the planet, and design in such a way as to create minimal impact on the natural environment and at the same time create a new paradigm of living that neutralizes the consumer-driven, affluence and growth culture that we are so conditioned to accommodate, how would you go about it and how would you live?

We are currently designing and building the first prototype building for the school in Mt. Shasta based on a spherical dome. It will be completely off the grid with its own constructed wetlands for cleaning and recycling grey water, composting toilet system, photovoltaic and windmill systems, rain catchment devices for cooling and solar ovens for cooking. Eventually we will be developing buildings that open and close, expand and contract according to the climate and their human use.

We are also experimenting with the idea of designing a building as adjustable space by creating an adjustable 2nd floor to suit the needs of the various projects that will evolve there. Additionally, we are testing the strength of various structural systems based on the economies of nature, such as using curved floor beams, which puts wood under tension, allowing us to use less materials with greater strength creating a structure that is lighter and stronger than anything constructed today or in the past.

Currently, the standard residential building weighs at least 140 tons and can’t even support its own weight. Nature’s structures, on the other hand, can often support 80-10,000 times their own weight. And the sphere is the strongest shape in nature. So we are reaching for the strength-to-weight ratios that are inherent to nature but are typically so foreign to human beings. In fact, architecture, to this day, does not even talk about or consider strength-to-weight ratios in design. This concept has never been talked about in schools or in professional offices.

Creating shapes similar way to the way nature builds cells and molecules, we are discovering the strength to weight ratio of the geodesic dome is much stronger than the square box. This is of course dependent on the materials and structural systems used in the construction and design process. Curved buildings, by their very nature, are significantly stronger and more energy efficient than a box building.

The typical building is based on a floor slab and a box on the ground, which essentially suffocates the earth. With Telos, we are experimenting with how to do the opposite—how to minimize the foot print of a building yet maximize the interior usable space.

UAS: Telos sounds amazing. Is there a reason you chose 2012 as the launch date?

ET: 2012 was chosen based on how much time we will need to construct the school. With its seven main buildings and outdoor facilities for athletics, music, horses, swimming, gardens, etc, it’s quite an undertaking. Because we’re experimenting as we go, we can’t rely on the usual construction scheduling systems. We are really all students of design. You might start out one way with a clear plan, but if you’re examining and questioning the design process as you go, you could end up with a completely different design than what you started with. Things can change, and they ought to, because the act of building evolves as your insights evolve and deepen.

UAS: This month the UAS theme is ecological design. Given your unique stance on structurally sound design, what does ecological design mean to you?

ET: Ecological design as it is thought of presently, is not ecological design. We are only fooling ourselves if we think industrial-based and consumer-driven recycled/re-used materials constitute this. Labels like “green architecture” and “green design” are being applied to slightly modified versions of the ubiquitous box. This is not the true study of nature. Not even close to it. True ecological design comes from the profound study of nature—finding out how nature works and why. But we haven’t touched upon that yet in our built environments or in the way architects, builders and planners are trained. Our universities have become ineffectual trade schools of conformity. We are afraid to ask serious questions, because we are afraid to make something that works as nature works; that looks as if it were created by nature. We want boxes because we have been inculcated with the box image and our conditioning is so insidious that we do not even realize that we are absolutely conditioned to the image.

Just think of what our built world would look like if every building had a different and singular persona just like every individual has a different personality. Our built environments should be as unique as we are—as distinctive and diverse as we are.

We also need to start minimizing our impact on the planet and maximizing the renewable energy that is everywhere. And creating sterile, stark, LEED certified steel and glass boxes that still keep us compartmentalized in a prison-cell type of environment is completely contrary to the principles of nature—and to the true meaning of ecological design. We need to start looking at how buildings contribute to dividing humanity, and how they reflect the religious and consumer-driven aspects of alienating people from each other. And then we’ve got to change our whole perspective of what nature-based design is.

In nature, we are dealing with the interaction of forces-- there is no division. If we work as nature works, then we are dealing with the true impacts of wind, climate, transportation, effective ways of bringing in sunlight, and most importantly, how to communicate and relate with each other. Nature is the action and reaction of natural forces—it is the understanding of the truth of things. Truth that has nothing to do with religious belief, social dogma, cultural conditioning and inculcated values and behaviors—all the issues and beliefs that separate us as human beings. These things have driven us far away from the truth and wisdom of nature and its substantive processes and phenomena. How can ecological design be truly understood and applied when we are still enamored with the stylistic images of the past? They might have been appropriate for 1893 but for 2007? It is absolutely absurd and senseless!

UAS: Going with the idea that the design of our buildings reflects our relationship to nature, I’ve heard you also design earthquake and hurricane-proof buildings. What would something like this look like?

ET: Box structures cannot withstand earthquakes unless they are reinforced with an inordinate amount of steel or reinforcing materials. But spheres and conical shaped buildings could—because of their shape—resist tremendous forces. For hurricane-proof housing, we could create waterproof buildings that cut through waves like a giant shark fin, swivel to face the wind and wave straight on and dissipate high winds like buoys in the ocean.

One of my hurricane-proof housing designs consists of two spheres-- one within another. The outer sphere exists within a case that rotates 360 degrees, which would rotate if a huge wave struck it. A living example of this can be seen in some martial arts practices and in the boxing ring, when you spin or dissipate the attacker’s energy away from yourself. Your body has the ability to deflect a straight on attack by twisting and dissipating the energy of a hit. In the same way, a rotating sphere re-directs force away from itself. The inner sphere is the stable one where you live, unaffected by the rotating outer sphere that is interacting with the intensity of the outer elements— in this case, a Tsunami wave, hurricane or tornado.

UAS: So how can we incorporate true ecological design into our lives?

ET: For the school in Mt. Shasta, I’m considering getting some horses as the main transportation option. It’s great exercise, and I think it is a more noble, healthy and majestic way of getting around. I much prefer it to a car, where you are shut in a box void of the sounds and smells around you, polluting the air as you go. And really, what is so bad about returning to the fundamentals of things like riding a horse? It keeps you healthy -- the very act of riding.

We need to start rethinking the whole structure of how we want to live. We’ve become so conditioned by our consumer-driven culture that we no longer value the importance of human life because we are obsessed with money, convenience, comfort, and security. Meanwhile, our health deteriorates, stress increases while restful sleep decreases and we go through life never fully discovering where our passion for life really lies!

It takes a lot of strength to say, maybe I don’t need this ipod, car, computer, TV, cell phone, etc., but this current affluence-growth model is killing our planet. Our “green” ideas are still very much a part of the consumer driven model, which consumes and depletes the natural resources of the planet. This is a diverse problem on several levels and it is global. Now we use “green” to sell more products that we don’t need and complicate our lives. “Green” has become a catch-word for the labeling of products.

The only chance we have is to be educated differently-- we need to educate everyone differently, especially our architects, planners, and designers, and nurture creative problem solving and understanding how nature works. We need architects who are problem solvers rather than image sellers.

This is one of the reasons I’m starting this school in Mt. Shasta. It is probably the first school in the world that is publicly against the affluence-growth-mass consumer driven model.

UAS: In a similar vein, do you have any experience with zero-waste design?

ET: Zero-waste design is exactly what we’re experimenting with in the prototype at Mt. Shasta. How do you create a building that is zero-waste, not only in use, but in the design of the structure itself?

It’s an ongoing experiment, and if we remain dedicated to problem solving, we will continue on the road to minimizing the amount of waste created.

UAS: Do you see biomimicry as revolutionizing the way we understand ourselves in our environments? Where do you see it evolving from here?

ET: Biomimicry is one component that contributes to revolutionizing our understanding if we go back to the genuine study of nature. Culturally, we have such little experience with it-- Nature and design are the two most neglected subjects in education. If we are going to understand biomimicry and ecology, we must change the worldview by changing the availability of information and openly supporting nature-based education. But I must qualify this by underlining the importance of questioning our assumptions. If we study nature to produce countless gadgets for the global market—even if those gadgets may be more energy efficient—we are still consuming our natural resources at a devastating rate. In a sense, biomimicry, ecological design and “green” design severely contribute to the destructive mass-consumption model. This model is destroying us, so we must be very careful about how to study nature. The most important question is; how do we change our lives and our behavior away from the affluence, consumer, growth, globalization model?

At Telos, the idea is to create buildings that can be built at the hands-on level, without huge equipment from far away. True ecological design uses local tools and materials in creative ways, and it’s important that localization is a part of it. We need to get away from globalized mentality that has permeated our entire worldview and way of thinking—an outlook that is eating up our planet and destroying living organisms everywhere. Financial gain has replaced the intrinsic value of living things. When living things become commodities to be bought and sold-- then the end is not far off. Even human beings have become commodities. We have become, “the marketplace”.

UAS: How can people get involved and gain exposure to any part of your construction, your philosophy and design process?

ET: We have an on-going educative program in the office. Internships are available to anyone, regardless of their background, as long as they want to learn. Over a 16-year period we have had over 400 interns from every continent of the world—and they continue to join us. There is a fundamental blind spot in design education and practice that precludes hands-on experience. Anyone can become an architect or engineer without ever having held a hammer or sawed a piece of wood. How can you expect to know how a building goes together when you’ve never built one?

Architects and engineers are constantly criticized by builders because their drawings cannot be built. Is there any wonder that our buildings are ugly, poorly designed and collapse under disaster conditions—killing hundreds of thousands of people annually?

There is much that needs to be changed and I intend to make that change come about! If we do not embrace the study and application of natural principles we will surely be doomed as arrogant profiteers. It is my hope that a few insightful individuals will be enough to bring about human life based upon curiosity, intelligence and peace.

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For more information on Eugene Tsui’s eco-structural/biomimetic designs, please visit www.TDRInc.com. Dr. Tsui will be a keynote speaker at both the West Coast Green Conference and the Green Festival in San Francisco in the Fall of 2007.