Many peoples of North Africa migrate within their buildings in both daily and seasonal patterns to take advantage of the various microclimates the buildings create.
The real world of technology denies the existence and the reality of nature. For instance, there is little sense of season as one walks through a North American or western European supermarket.
Just as there is a little sense of season, there is little sense of climate. Everything possible is done to equalize the ambiance – to construct and environment that is warm in the winter, cool in the summer.
I am fascinated by the Farmer’s Almanac, and the “Planting by the Moon” guide in particular, which has advice such as: “Root crops that can be planted now will yield well.” “Good days for killing weeds.” “Good days for transplanting.” “Barren days. Do no planting.”
I think it’d be funny to make up an almanac for writers and artists, one that emphasized the never-ending, repetitive work of the craft.
In 1964, the historian Bernard Rudofsky curated a show at MoMA called Architecture Without Architects, celebrating the formal qualities of a range of traditional building practices drawn from around the world.
Setting aside the endlessly troubled implications of the Western gaze on “primitive” cultures, the show had the very constructive impacts of encouraging formal diversity at a time when mainstream architecture had grown desperately, myopically monochromatic and of suggesting that “non-architects” were capable not only of making good judgments about their environments but of actually taking the lead in creating them.