tropical prototypes

tropical prototypes

1. Flamingo

How do you maximize ventilation, or improve your view, or even build a community on the water or in it?  Flamingo.  Even the underside of your building is vented and cooled.  Building in the water isn't typically encouraged, at least in the US, but it has ancient roots and the advantages easily translate to land.  A community on stilts is truly special, sitting lightly on the land, commanding the air and the breeze unencumbered by vegetation, the views so truly incredible from higher up.

2. Butterfly

In the tropics, rain can be an especially powerful event.  In the rainy season, the clouds build all afternoon before rapidly, massively dumping the accumulated moisture and turning exposed earth to mud.  In the dry season, the storms are less predictable and the earth dryer, but the rains are no less a fact of life.  In any season, because of the heat, an expansive roof with as little underneath as possible is a good solution.  This is the Butterfly.  Our design for Hula Dog Farm on the Big Island of Hawai'i is a Butterfly, earth and water and air free to flow under and through, but the very big roof keeping the house dry and comfortable all year long.

3. Fish

Take a look at hundreds of tropical buildings, as we have, and you begin to see a theme: flow, air flow, and screens and lattice and expansive porches that filter out the insects but let the air through.  It reminded us of fish and gills and the way gills pull the oxygen out of the flow of water, and a comment we once heard but never confirmed that a shark will die if it doesn't maintain the flow by moving.  The metaphor isn't exact (houses filter out the (undesirable) insects and use the airflow, fish filter out the (desirable) oxygen and eject the waterflow), but we didn't really think that through until after the label had already firmly stuck.