By Ricky Pires

Winston Churchill said that "we shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape our lives." Our houses are our havens. Home has always been the quintessential symbol of a sage and protective environment - a place that shields us from a harsh climate and the dangers that lurk outdoors, that provides privacy, intimacy, and comfort, that nurtures health and family life (Marinelli & Bierman-Lytle 1995).

The way our houses are designed affects not only our physical health but also our psychological well being. Our homes have lost their once intimate relationship with the land, which contribute to the rootlessness and alienation that afflict modern life.

The goal of the Environmental style is to enrich human life, to repair the ruptured link between us and the rest of nature, to stimulate new ways of thinking and building and living that enable us to coexist with the other creatures on Earth and to leave it in better shape than we found it.

This paper will explore the most ecologically friendly design aspects of the Seminole "Chickee", The Florida Cracker Home, and the environmental home of today, and will provide an outline for implementing those aspects in future environmentally sensitive home architecture.

  I performed this study by utilizing extensive library and web site searches. Using sources referred in The Further Reading Section in the text "Your Natural Home" by Jane Marinelli and Paul Bierman-Lytle, I either called or faxed for environmental building information. Another procedure to obtain information were three personal taped interviews with an architect, solar specialist, and a member of the Seminole Indian Tribe. I also, visited the Collier County Museum, Edison Home, a Cracker home in Fort Myers, and Seminole State Park for fieldwork.

Library and Web resources were very limited on the subject of Environmental Architecture for the Seminole "Chickee", Florida Cracker Home, Today’s Environmental Home, and The Twenty-First-Century Environmental Home.

Andrea Clark Brown, Architect, and Del Jones, Solar Specialist, expressed that I was the first person to come to them for extensive information on environmentally sensitive designs that can significantly improve the comfort, aesthetics, resource efficiency, and value of properties while reducing pollution and saving money. They both stated that these concepts are the result of a new view of ecology and designs, but it all came down to economics or a lack to real concern for the environment by their clients.

Tina Osceola told of her family's history culture, customs, living conditions, recreational activities, as well as commercial endeavors, which are dependent on a healthy Everglades ecosystem. In fact, the Tribe’s members believe that if the land dies, so will the Tribe. But, Tina never lived in a Seminole "Chickee", but her grandmother's stories of the cultures of her tribe and how they were designed to protect the land and water systems within the Reservation while ensuring a sustainable economic and cultural future for the Tribe.

These interviews were a valuable survey and very interesting, but they did not completely help me with my research and writing about environmental design of today and the future.

  "Chickee" is the word Seminoles use for "house." The first Seminoles to live in North Florida are known to have constructed log cabin-type homes, some two stories tall, with sleeping quarters upstairs. The chickee style architecture-palmetto thatch over a cypress log frame- was born during the early 1800’s when Seminole Indians, pursued by U.S. troops, needed fast, disposable shelter while on the run. Though indigenous peoples in other parts of North and South America have developed similar dwellings, it is generally argreed that the Seminole Indian technique and product are far superior.

Each family shelter, or chickee, was about 10 feet by 20 feet in plan with a single elevated platform set three feet off the wet ground. Upright posts were built of palmetto or cypress logs as available. Pounded into the ground for anchorage, the top of each post was set at about seven feet high and then notched to receive a horizontal log girder. To this, sloping rafters of lighter poles were lashed with rope made of palmetto fibers. Center poles at the short ends of the house held a higher ridge beam.

Once the rafter poles were in place, smaller purlin poles were placed to bridge across them and layers of palm frond thatch were tied to them. The thatching hung low out over the structural frame so that ample shade and rain protection were provided for the sleeping and dining space it sheltered (Haase,1992).

Pole beams set on short posts held the single platform which was decked with split palmetto logs, flat side up. Occasionally, with a false sense of security and permanence, a Seminole family might add two or three more such open and shady shelters permitting each to be used separately for either sleeping or dining. As expressed by Marie Osceola, the camps provided an interaction between Grandparents and grandchildren.

So popular, efficient and functional is the chickee that such Seminole architecture can be seen all over South Florida. The chickee structure should last about ten years and needs to be re-thatched every five years. Several Seminole Tribal members make a living building custom chickees for both commercial and private interests.

Cracker architecture has a quite beautiful vernacular style of its own. In Florida, it is the Cracker house that has most mediated between the manmade and the natural. The time frame starts with the first home-steaders of early 19th-century Florida and continues through the Seminole Indian Wars, the Civil War, and on into the first decades of the 20th century when boom-time invasions of outsiders distort the isolated regional peculiarities of Cracker life (Haase,1992).

It is interesting to note the ways in which these early Florida Crackers approached the building of their homes. They built out in the open, in a place cleared of any trees and underbrush, for fear that fire from frequent lightning strikes in the tall pine tops might wipe out their homesteading efforts and with it all their earthly possessions. And no ivy or picturesque vine coverings draped over the Cracker homestead was used. These plants would have expelled moisture into the air, cut down air circulation and harbored insects that might nest or feed on the wood construction.

Cracker homesteaders oriented their houses on a north-south axis. Such a tactic helped to keep the log walls dry. Moisture, leading to premature decay in wood, was the worst culprit in making a home unlivable. Placement of the fireplace and chimney in the north gable end would help keep that fourth sunless wall dry as well.

Lacking central heating, air conditioning, and other domestic technologies, the first Florida settlers had to get to know their climates intimately and make those climates work for them when building their homes. Devising ways to augment shade, air movement, and sun became fundamental and necessary keeping their houses cool during the day and warm at night (Haase,1992).

The single-room or single-pen house is the first construction effort of any pioneering homesteader. Using the basic materials and skills at hand, these simple shelters are built of logs, without the benefit of decoration. A special feature of the single-pen log house in Florida, was the incorporation of a broad shady porch. Shady porches and overhangs stretched along the front, kept it shaded in the summer and provide extended work and living space for the family. The hot and humid climate of the region demanded it.

As time went on and needs changed, a two-room Florida Cracker house was built with a house form created by separating the added room from the original by means of a breezy walkway. They too kept the shady porches, but added detached cooking and dining structure to the rear of the house (Haase,1992).

As Greek Revival pretensions and the gaudiness of Victorian decorative styles eventually descended upon North Florida, they marked an end to vernacular imagery for the Crackers. Such outside influences and international attitudes had a tendency to water down regional qualities in speech, lifestyle and general outlook as in architectural expression. This cultural dilution, coupled with an economical access to air conditioning, eventually all but wiped out Florida’s Cracker architectural heritage.

In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s ecological house design evolved by leaps and bounds. Architect, Andrea Clark Brown, explained that homes are not only ecologically sound but are also quite beautiful. These houses conserve energy, but unlike the environmental homes to the seventies they are not constrained by energy concerns. Space-aged technologies, form superwindows to superinsulation, make them very responsive to the local climate. At the same time, however, they have all the emotional warmth of homespun architectural traditions and natural material-materials that don’t threaten the health of the inhabitants. Manufacturing these materials causes a minimum of pollution. Ideally, they’re also "sustainable"- a fancy way of saying that they can be recycled or a least last as long as it will take nature to replace them in the wild.

The natural character of the region inspires the new environmental home. Stone, woods, and other materials native to the area reinforce its connection to the natural world. American beech, for example, enhances the sense of living in the eastern deciduous forest, and is excellent substitute for mahogany, an over exploited rainforest wood (Marinelli & Bierman-Lytle,1995).

The state-of-the-art environmental home is inspired as well by the site itself. Great care is taken to preserve as much of the natural vegetation on the building site as possible: the floor plan may even be pushed or pulled to save a tree or pond. In the new "green" kitchens, for example, handsome built-in cabinets discreetly store glass, aluminum, plastic, and other recyclables. In state-of-the-art environmental bathrooms, low-flow showerheads and ultra-low flush toilets conserve every possible drop of precious water, and gray water systems whisk relatively unsullied water from the sink and shower into the garden for irrigation (Marinelli & Bierman-Lytle,1995).

But these new environmental homes do more than protect nature: they celebrate it. Windows artfully frame views and sunspaces allow as to live close to nature in the beautiful sub tropical environment of Florida. The profusion of glass also floods the house with natural light, reducing the need for artificial lighting while making the living spaces bright and airy. Extremely energy-efficient windows keep heat from flowing into or out of a room. Daylighting with a handsome, coordinated array of windows, French doors, atriums, and sunroofs that take full advantage of nature's great cleansers and purifiers-fresh air and sunlight.

Mr. Del Jones, of Advanced Solar Systems, Inc., expressed a ground-source system, which provides clean, efficient space heating and air conditioning as well as all the domestic hot water you need, is the environmental first choice of heating water. However, if you already have another kind of heating system solar flat-plate heater is the next best choice. Over their lifetimes, these hot-water systems will save on fossil fuels used by conventional water heaters and drastically reduce the production of air pollutants that cause acid rain and global warming. Best of all, today’s solar water heaters are much better looking, better built, and more reliable. As the sun shines, radiation passes through the glass and strikes the absorber plate, where it is converted to heat. Gone are the days when large, ugly collectors littered rooftops. The new versions are slim and lie supine being built into roof, so that all you see is the sleek, silver-blue hint of the glazing, with the hardware tucked discreetly out of view.

For electricity, solar electricity makes good sense and is usually mounted flush with a metal roof. This provides enough kilowatts to run all the home’s appliances, including lighting, computers, television, refrigerator, well pump, and heating-equipment controls.

As a building material, concrete is completely resistant to fire and rot and does not require protective coatings. It lasts so long that is essentially permanent, as ancient Roman ruins attest-in some cases, the concrete mortar between bricks and stones survives, while the bricks and stones themselves are long gone. In modern solar houses concrete is used as a thermal mass in walls and floors to retain the sun’s heat (Marinelli & Bierman-Lytle,1995).

Wood would seem to be the perfect material for the environmental home. It’s handsome. It’s constantly renewed by nature. It links a home with the surrounding landscape especially in forested areas, enhancing the occupants’ connection to the natural world. If responsible forestry practices have been employed in producing the timber and the particular tree species used are in plentiful supply, wood is environmentally preferable to competing structural materials like steel, aluminum, and conventional concrete. But often it is not (Marinelli & Bierman-Lytle,1995).

Andrea Clark Brown, architect, expressed that raw ingredients of concrete must be mined, including the limestone, silica, iron, and alumina that make up cement. Some of these materials are taken from surface mines, which have a number of deleterious environmental effects: topsoil is disturbed, erosion occurs, and the quality of surrounding ground and surface waters can suffer. But, using an abundance of wood can threaten and destroy forests that are important ecologically, supporting vast numbers of plant and animal species. She suggests lesser-known species of tropical and domestic woods. These are often good substitutes for threatened or overexploited species.

A question often asked is, "Don’t environmental houses cost a lot more than conventional ones?" One of the most common criticisms leveled against environmental architecture is that it is too expensive for anyone except the very rich. But it doesn’t have to be that way. A good number of the products cost no more than their polluting counterparts. As, Del Jones, solar specialist, found that energy-efficient solar cost more initially but pay for themselves surprisingly quickly in lower fuel bills. Because environmental houses are designed for the local climate, they cost less not only to run but also to maintain. And they can be economical to build as well.

In environmental homes of the late 1980’s and the 1990’s the boundary between nature and architecture is blurred: opaque walls are replaced with long expanses of glass to bring the outside in and let the inside out. In the twenty-first-century home, this boundary disappears entirely. Ecological communities once confined to the outdoors now live within the house’s walls.

At the dawn of the new century, the most urgent ecological crisis is the threat to biodiversity, due primarily to habitat destruction. A sustainable environment for the human species relies on a diversity of plant and animal species, as the twenty-first-century home attests. The natural house, Frank Lloyd Wright wrote, should grow from its site, out of the ground and into the light "as dignified as a tree in the midst of nature" (Marinelli & Bierman-Lytle, 1995).

Entering the house is like entering a forest. Clusters of trees flank the steps to the formal entry. At the top of the steps is an airlock, or vestibule, lit by clerestory windows. A second series of steps leads to sculpted glass doors. To either side are the living spaces. Straight ahead is the canopy of an indoor forest, a riverine ecosystem comprising a variety of terrestrial, wetland, and aquatic habitats. A staircase reaches down to the forest floor, much like a canyon walk. The indoor ecosystem, complete with birds and fish, is the heart of the home and alludes to the plant communities that straddle the surrounding area (Marinelli & Bierman-Lytle,1995).

Water, forest, earth, and sky become a part of the living environment. The water is pumped up and into the living room, where it cascades down rocks like a miniature waterfall, providing soothing sounds and humidifying the air with spray. Transparent bedroom roofs offer uninterrupted views of the nighttime sky; as they drift off to sleep the inhabitants can gaze into deep space, light years away. By day, window walls through out the living spaces frame earthly views of the surrounding areas.

The indoor ecosystem promotes biodiversity and more. It adds beauty to the indoor environment, and repairs the ruptured link between nature and daily life. Just as important, it mitigates the adverse impacts of human activity on the fragile site. It cleanses the air of indoor pollutants while creating oxygen and adding humidity (Marinelli & Bierman-Lytle,1995).

A group of Ontario scientists and business people may be close to finding an environmentally friendly cure for sick building syndrome. The breathing wall, and experimental biological air-cleaning system composed of rocks, plants, water, fish and micro-organisms, recently was unveiled in a project at the Canada Life Assurance Company headquarters building in downtown Toronto (Florida Real Estate Journal,1998).

Sick building syndrome refers to indoor air pollutants such as fumes, dust and fibers and biological contaminants that circulate through modern buildings with closed air systems. To combat these pollutants, the breathing wall acts as a filtration system that "inhales" the sick air and "exhales" clean air.

According to Wolfang Amelung, biologist, the system for indoor environments was conceived by copying what goes on outdoor in nature. "In outdoor environments, nature takes care of cleaning the air, so we applied this same approach to develop an air cleaning system for indoor environments"(Florida Real Estate Journal, 1998).

"The problem was no different from putting life on a planet that doesn’t have life," said Amelung. The breathing wall is an indoor ecosystem. At 5 feet high, the 15-foot-long sheet of moss and fern-covered lava rock is kept constantly wet and is supported by large aquariums filled with fish and aquatic plants. Fans behind the structure draw room air across the plants and water and through the wall, absorbing airborne contaminants. The wall can be connected to a heating, ventilating, air conditioning system to distribute the filtered air throughout an entire building (Florida Real Estate Journal, 1998).

In the typical house, tapwater comes from an underground well or nearby surface waters. In this future home the drinking water comes from a well on site. Used water goes to an attached greenhouse. There, it is cleansed in a series of sun-bathed translucent cylinders, each a functioning aquatic ecosystem with algae, bacteria, snails, and higher plants. The various organisms in these self-sustaining ecosystems feed on the waste and are eaten in turn by the larger creatures. From here, the water moves into man-made marshes composed of coarse sand and gravel and planted primarily with bulrush, where more pollutants are extracted.

Homes of the twenty-first century must be net energy producers, not consumers of energy. This home is designed to achieve this goal with a variety of energy sources: for example, the house captures solar heat passively by its south-facing windows. Its mass walls store the heat and radiate it to the living spaces later in the day. Its photovoltaic system converts sunlight into electricity. Wind energy is used to pump water and generate additional electricity. Primary heating and cooling are provided by a ground source heat pump that extracts heat from a well in winter to warm the rooms and cools them in summer by transferring heat from the home to the underground water. Daylight illuminates the living spaces, reducing the amount of electricity needed for artificial lighting (Marinelli & Bierman-Lytle,1995).

The house is constructed with a minimum of material. Each material serves a function, in most instances more than one function, and there are few extraneous details. Glass is employed dramatically throughout the home. Walls, floors, staircases, and ceilings are made of lightweight concrete. Both aerated concrete and glass are made from natural minerals in plentiful supply; they are also chemically inert and therefore do not pollute the indoor air. Woods from environmentally responsible sources are used in a few locations to full effect. However, most floors are stone, with plant-fiber carpets and cotton and wool rugs used for warmth and color. But by far the most striking materials are the terrestrial, wetland, and aquatic habitats that merge with the man-made technologies, forming the house’s core (Marinelli & Bierman-Lytle, 1995).

In the twenty first-century home, we nurture nature, as nature nurtures us. The delicate and urgent task of balancing human and ecological needs becomes a part of daily life. Our homes have afforded us one of the highest living standards in the world. They’re also at the very heart of complex ecological problems that threaten not only the health of the planet but ultimately our way of life.

Peeling back time, the history of Florida’s architecture starts with the Seminole Chickee, then the Florida Cracker home that was built as a human response to the need for shelter to survive against summer floods, winter freezes, the pesky onslaught of mosquitoes, no-see-ems, and occasional encounter with brown bears and panthers. To the Seminole "Chickee" that harmonized with nature.

Today’s and the twenty-first-century environmental home should work with nature, not against it. An environmental home should be designed to minimize its contribution to global environmental problems such as ozone depletion, global worming, destruction of biodiversity, and air and water pollution. In the decades to come, we will face the depletion of some to the planet’s most precious natural resources-from its oil to its biodiversity-if our homes are not designed to give back to the Earth at least as much as they take.

Florida Real Estate Journal, April 1-15, l998.

Haase, Ronald W.(1992), CLASSIC CRACKER, Pineapple Press, Sarasota, Florida.

Marinelli, Janet & Bierman-Lytle, Paul (1995), YOUR NATURAL HOME, Little, Brown & Company, Boston, New York, Toronto, London.

Andrea Clark Brown,Architect/Environmental Architecture (l hour interview) 616 5th Avenue South Naples, Florida

Del Jones, Solar specialist/Advanced Solar Systems (45minute interview) 2431 Crystal Drive Ft. Myers, Florida

Tina Marie Osceola/Member of Seminole Indian Tribe (1 hour interview) Work/Collier County Sheriffs Office Naples, Florida

Environmental Building News/Brattleboro, Vermont (Mail)

Energy-Efficient and Environment-Friendly Workplace/Woodstock, New York (Fax)

Ecosystem Management Around the Home/Department of Environmental Protection Publication (Mail)