PETAL INTENT
The intent of the Beauty Petal is to recognize the need for beauty and the connection to nature as a precursor to caring enough to preserve, conserve, and serve the greater good. As a society, we are often surrounded by ugly and inhumane physical environments. The key to creating beautiful buildings is to embrace a biophilic design process that emphasizes that people and nature are connected and the connection to place, climate, culture and community is crucial to creating a beautiful building.
IDEAL CONDITIONS + CURRENT LIMITATIONS
The Living Building Challenge envisions designs that elevate our spirits, connect us to nature and all other living systems and inspire us to be better than we currently are. Mandating beauty is, by definition, an impossible task, which is why we require biophilic design as the process to arrive at a beautiful building. In this Petal, the Imperatives are based on the theory that connecting to nature, place, community and climate will create good design, and that the communication of that design process will allow Biophilic and Living Buildings to be replicated. We do not begin to assume that we can judge beauty and project our own aesthetic values on others. But we do want to understand people’s objectives and know that an effort was made to enrich people’s lives with each square meter of construction, on each project. This intentionality of good design and graceful execution must carry forth into a program for educating the public about the environmental qualities of each Living Building Challenge project.
There are no current limitations to this Petal other than embracing our connection to nature and what we as a society choose to value.
