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ARTS  ARCHITECTURE Retreat Centre in Ffald-y-Brenin, built from converted cowsheds © Christopher Day / Routlege Press Soul building Victoria Manthorpe meets eco-architect Christopher Day Christopher Day has just finished writing his autobiography: not bad for a man who was given just twelve months to live – 18 years ago. Day was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2000 when he was at the height of his powers as a designer, architect and educator. This seeming death sentence both accelerated his immediate writing output, so that he finished Spirit & Place, his classic study on sustainable environment, and diverted his problem-solving skills into new channels. His book (my) Dying is Fun: A Comedy of Disabled Misadventures, first published in 2007 and reprinted three years later (as Dying: or learning to live) offers a range of observations, both wry and slapstick, on everyday struggles with disability. Day has continued to consult, publish and lecture, adapting to his frailties as they increased. Matthew Hardy, a senior lecturer at The Prince’s Foundation, recalls that in 2013 Day gave a lecture to MA students on sustainable urbanism with “sparkling intellect”. Unable to speak, he used words and drawings on a whiteboard that were projected onto a screen. The students loved it. In 2016, Day produced The EcoHome Design Guide, a highly accessible illustrated workbook for all those people who are just longing (if only they knew how) to build their own eco-home – or to adapt their current home to the new ecological demands. From which you will gather that Christopher Day is no slouch and that disability has not dented his sense of humour – as I was to discover when I interviewed him at home in suburban Cardiff. His house has solar panels on the roof, but it is not a home he has designed himself, although he and his wife, Aleksandra, have added a conservatory at the rear, where we convened. In this case interview is exactly the right word, since Day communicates by writing on a stack of paper on a clipboard. He may no longer be able to talk, but he can certainly chuckle, and his mind is raring to go. In the 1970s Day was one of the earliest architects to consider the detrimental environmental impact of buildings – becoming one of the first of a dozen or so eco-architects working in the UK. From necessity he started doing his own building work with volunteers – who provided what he came to call “gift-work”. Gradually he developed a consensual approach to creating buildings, which he formulated into an eight-stage consensus design process that develops each decision from the one preceding and is naturally inclusive – unlike community architecture, which tends to be selective. In the 1990s Day went even 54 Resurgence & Ecologist January/February 2019
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further to start designing proactively towards fostering people’s health. Working on the premise that illness is linked to disempowerment, his aim is to create healing environments. But even cumulatively, these elements are not what distinguish Day’s work. To understand his drives and motivations one must look deeper into his biography and his inner life. Born in 1942 to parents who, after the second world war, ran a market garden in Pembrokeshire, Day was used to manual work – repairing, creating and improving things. He was an only child and was sent first to a prep school in Hampshire, which he enjoyed, and then to a boarding school in Bedford, which he did not. He describes his later schooldays as taking place in “a hostile environment”. He focused on becoming an artist, and when he began studying sculpture he won an Arts Council prize. There’s no doubt that his design process works in and through his hands and that his architectural forms are first sculptural – as illustrated by his clay model for a Swedish eco-village. From his first Steiner Kindergarten at Nant-y-Cwm one can see that his nurturing curved forms are in direct contrast to the intimidating schoolrooms and dormitories of his youth. He has continued to build schools throughout his career, and he describes his vision in Environment and Children (2007). Day studied architecture and sculpture in London in the 1960s and by the 1980s was lecturing internationally. He articulated what many people think ­– that they don’t like living or working in architect-designed buildings. Architects design objects that are defined by their exterior form to fit briefs created by owners – be that corporate or government – not by the users. For ordinary people, it is the interior of a building that creates their environment – their place. In his late twenties Day began on a new pathway that would underpin all his later work. He enrolled in a twoyear course in agriculture at Emerson College in East Sussex, a centre that teaches from the basis of anthroposophy, the spiritual philosophy developed by Rudolf Steiner in the first Issue 312 Nant-y-Cwm Steiner kindergarten,Wales © Christopher Day & Heddwen Day / Routlege Press For design to be authentic it needs to synthesise multisensory aesthetics with multi-purpose practicality and nourish all four levels of our being Window © Christopher Day / Routlege Press decades of the 20th century. Anthroposophy proposes that humans function on four levels: body, life-energy, soul and spirit. We meet the world through our senses, and they evoke feelings that nourish our soul. From that attunement grows sensitivity and empathy, so that art has a social as well as a cultural benefit. And just as we feel cheated by inauthenticity, true authenticity is an essential nutrient for the spirit. For design to be authentic it needs to synthesise multi-sensory aesthetics with multi-purpose practicality and nourish all four levels of our being. From that point of departure it was inevitable that Day’s designs were not going to look or feel like those of his contemporaries. Sue Roaf, Emeritus Professor of Architectural Engineering at HeriotWatt University, calls Day a “farseer”: “He has used his feelings and understanding not only of people but also of the ecology of places to weave together solutions that benefit both.” That unique approach was welcomed in the early days of setting up The Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture in 1992 (now The Prince’s Foundation). Day’s influence survives through the educators who learned from him and in the annual residential Summer School, where students still build a yurt together – a practice he initiated. This year’s excessively high summer temperatures in Western Europe have made clear the urgent effects of climate change. As well as integrating his buildings into and in response to the existing landscape, Day has long been an advocate of creating microclimates – “We have to ameliorate conditions.” His methods come from close observation as well as from reading – he told me that Victorian gardeners were excellent at modifying the effects of weather on their plants. At which point he sent me out into the garden to experience the sheltered environment created by fences, trees and shrubs, and I noticed that the vines along the fence were interspersed with Scarlet Runners – a nice echo of the market garden. Day’s next book will be on ‘place-making’. Victoria Manthorpe is a freelance writer. Resurgence & Ecologist 55

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ARTS  ARCHITECTURE

Retreat Centre in Ffald-y-Brenin, built from converted cowsheds © Christopher Day / Routlege Press

Soul building Victoria Manthorpe meets eco-architect Christopher Day

Christopher Day has just finished writing his autobiography: not bad for a man who was given just twelve months to live – 18 years ago. Day was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2000 when he was at the height of his powers as a designer, architect and educator. This seeming death sentence both accelerated his immediate writing output, so that he finished Spirit & Place, his classic study on sustainable environment, and diverted his problem-solving skills into new channels. His book (my) Dying is Fun: A Comedy of Disabled Misadventures, first published in 2007 and reprinted three years later (as Dying: or learning to live) offers a range of observations, both wry and slapstick, on everyday struggles with disability.

Day has continued to consult, publish and lecture, adapting to his frailties as they increased. Matthew Hardy, a senior lecturer at The Prince’s Foundation, recalls that in 2013 Day gave a lecture to MA students on sustainable urbanism with “sparkling intellect”. Unable to speak, he used words and drawings on a whiteboard that were projected onto a screen. The students loved it.

In 2016, Day produced The EcoHome Design Guide, a highly accessible illustrated workbook for all those people who are just longing (if only they knew how) to build their own eco-home – or to adapt their current home to the new ecological demands.

From which you will gather that Christopher Day is no slouch and that disability has not dented his sense of humour – as I was to discover when I interviewed him at home in suburban Cardiff. His house has solar panels on the roof, but it is not a home he has designed himself, although he and his wife, Aleksandra, have added a conservatory at the rear, where we convened. In this case interview is exactly the right word, since Day communicates by writing on a stack of paper on a clipboard. He may no longer be able to talk, but he can certainly chuckle, and his mind is raring to go.

In the 1970s Day was one of the earliest architects to consider the detrimental environmental impact of buildings – becoming one of the first of a dozen or so eco-architects working in the UK. From necessity he started doing his own building work with volunteers – who provided what he came to call “gift-work”. Gradually he developed a consensual approach to creating buildings, which he formulated into an eight-stage consensus design process that develops each decision from the one preceding and is naturally inclusive – unlike community architecture, which tends to be selective. In the 1990s Day went even

54

Resurgence & Ecologist

January/February 2019

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