PEI Ark

In 1974, the provincial and federal governments invited the Cape Cod-based New Alchemy Institute to construct a demonstration on Prince Edward Island of “a new commitment to living lightly on the earth.” The resulting Ark for Prince Edward Island, designed in partnership with Solsearch Architects of Cambridge MA, was an innovative “bioshelter” offering a fully self-sufficient living environment for a family of four, providing for all food and energy needs, managing all wastes, and enabling a new and symbiotic relationship between its inhabitants and the ecosystem of their home. En 1974, los gobiernos provincial y federal invitaron al New Alchemy Institute, con sede en Cape Cod, a construir en la Isla del Príncipe Eduardo una demostración de “un nuevo compromiso para la vida liviana en la tierra”. El resultado, proyectado en colaboración con Solsearch Architects de Cambridge, Massachusetts, fue un innovador “biorefugio” que ofrecía un entorno de vida totalmente autosuficiente para una familia de cuatro personas, cubriendo todas las necesidades de alimentos y energía, gestionando todos los desechos y permitiendo una nueva relación simbiótica entre sus habitantes y el ecosistema del hogar. Environmentally-conscious “ecological architecture” projects such as the Ark emerged in force in the 1970s, in response to a number of social trends including the counterculture youth movements of the 1960s, the international events and activism leading to the first “Earth Day” in 1970, the OPEC oil crisis of 1973-78, and lingering fears of atomic destruction fed by the Cold War. Beneath these surface drivers lurk more long-standing cultural forces, including the tension between the modernist drive toward globalizing social and technological “progress,” and anti-modernist nostalgia for tradition, place, and customary social order.