about_symbiosis_s
About Symbiosis
Category : Symbiosis

GB + Symbiosis = SB
  The formula, GB + Symbiosis = SB was first declared by Judy Huang Chin-ying, Secretary General of Archilife Research Foundation in her keynote speech "A New Sustainable Approach Challenge of Subtropical Region" at a special session of the 2002 World Sustainable Building Conference, held on September 25th 2002 in Oslo, Norway. In the speech, there are three key points revealed:
1. Localization: Buildings should have the ability to respond to its local environment and climate, while also providing for the comfort and health of its inhabitants.
2. Team Work: Sustainability is a complex issue. It needs to be discussed on many different levels and aspects in order to come up with a comprehensive solution. Moreover, real dialogue with our environment will require continued experimentation, refinement, implementation and feedback.
3. Symbiosis: "Symbiosis" is a micro-scale symbiotic approach with mimicry of nature. It requires that people establish an intimate symbiotic relationship with the biological world, and particularly with the vegetables and fruits which provide us important source of food. It is in order to minimize their impact on nature and ensure environmental sustainability.


Symbiosis
  Symbiosis is a long-existed mutual-beneficial relationship among creatures, which follows the law of the nature. In the nature, materials and energy reach a balance through circulation, and it was through recycling that ancient civilizations could maintain self-sufficiency. After industrialization and urbanization, however, human beings acquired the capability to transform energy into materials, and then transported large amounts of materials by consuming huge quantity of energy to cities to meet their needs, thus breaking the original circulation of the nature. Accordingly, the recycling period of materials is prolonged and energy is wasted due to long-distance transport. Carbon immobilized underground is again released to the air because of massive consumption of petrol energy. Urban civilization, which has brought us abundant materials and convenience, also causes serious depletion of resources and damage to the natural environment. And even worse, it exacerbates the impact of climate change. Is this lifestyle really the kind that we want? When we think we could solve a problem with a certain method, we oftentimes bring about more environmental problems than solutions. Why can't we choose a new lifestyle to change the status quo? Archilife believes that the current postindustrial urban civilization should be replaced by a new way of life which leads to a novel civilization, following the ways of the nature and fostering effective recycling, namely "symbiotic civilization". Being aware that urban civilization has been seriously challenged for the consumption of large amounts of energy and thus, Archilife proposed a symbiotic way of life to transform human settlements by leading that will be helpful to restrain the waste of current civilization. On the other hand, digital tools will be applied extensively to enrich spiritual life and to replace transportation and all the convenience we take for granted of living in cities. Finally, the scattered settlements with self-sufficiency instead of energy consuming city will be formed.
  "Symbiosis" is a process to implant a "symbiotic environment" between "artificial environment" and "natural environment." In this process, the daily needs of the habitants will be sufficed by a short and efficient recycling and the settlement will be relatively scattered to receive more solar energy that supports the habitants produce and consume on their own. The materials and energy are therefore reduced to minimal. The plain and self-restrain lifestyle lightens the burden of the nature. If we name agricultural civilization and postindustrial urban civilization as a material world, then symbiotic civilization is a combination of spiritual world with biological techniques transformed from agriculture and digitalization transformed from post-industrialization. As it were, "Symbiosis" adopts the advantages of agricultural and postindustrial civilizations, but reduces human pressure against the nature, thereby assuring the sustainability of the nature. Therefore, symbiosis is a way to establish an interdependent relationship between humans and nature and maintain their ever-lasting co-existence.