Recovering America: A More Gentle Way to Build

by Malcolm Wells, 1999. Available from the author, 673 Satucket Road, Brewster, Cape Cod, MA 02631; 508/896-6850, 508/896-5116 (fax). Hardback, 144 pages, $5 plus $2 postage & handling.

It is the story of a journey Malcolm took across America, to view and photograph (mostly by helicopter) our built environment. The delightful book, hand-lettered and illustrated with the author’s photographs and watercolors, presents a less-than-delightful picture of America today—from the acres of parking around Disneyland to Boeing’s largest-in-the-world assembly building in Seattle and Boston’s paved-over urban waterfront. Interspersed with these photos of our building- and pavement-clad landscape are contrasting photos of natural landscapes and fanciful drawings of how our built environment could mimic nature by going underground.

Wells, who has written many books on underground architecture and passive solar design, says: “We look at architecture the wrong way: sideways, so what we see is only a thin sliver of the reality all around us.” That was the reason he pursued aerial photography with this book—to see our impacts more clearly. “We’ve built over far more of America’s best land than I’d ever imagined,” he writes.

The overall argument Wells makes in Recovering America is that we should revere our natural landscapes and put our built environments underground—or at least cover our buildings and parking lots with living landscapes. In his typical clarity, Wells notes: “The rules of life never change: 1. People can’t draw energy directly from sunlight. 2. Plants can. 3. Plants can’t live underground. 4. We can.”

Don’t expect a how-to treatise in Recovering America, or really much practical information at all. But it’s worth buying for Malcolm Wells’ unique point of view and philosophy that comes across so beautifully in the book’s pages. And the book is a real bargain.