Ouroboros
Ouroboros (n.) The “ouroboros” or “uroboros”, from the Greek “οὐροβόρος ὄφις”, is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail and faeces.1 The ouroboros often symbolizes self-reflexivity or cyclicality. In 1976, a group of architectural students at the University of Minnesota followed the trend of ecological design by building their own self-sustaining ecological house. They named it “Ouroboros”. Like its contemporaries, Ouroboros project was trying to fit an artificial ecological cycle into a house. Similarly example, Biosphere 2, was another larger scale of Ouroboros project, and with a much more complicated ecology system. However, ouroboros was a direct interpretation of what ecological architecture came to be from 1970s to 1990s: a way of ecologically architectural designing which fed on its own ideas, and gradually separated itself from the rest of the architectural community. Peder Anker said, “Its (ecological design) follower's sense of self-sufficiency resulted in a sect-design for the believers whose recycling of resources and ideas led to a lack of interest in an outside world simply described as ‘industrial’ and thus not worth listening to.”2 Although “ouroboros designs” (designs similar to ouroboros in general) were of significant importance for assimilation of architecture, ecology and cybernetics, the narrow focus on the circulation of energy and efficiency of buildings came at the expense of wider social and cultural values. Perhaps it is the time to break out the intellectual capsule.