Michael Carl Hylton, now developing the firm Tresala, continues fitting human needs sensitively to each particular site, from kitchen garden to watershed, regardless of scale. We coach DIY’s, serve diverse communities and cater to personal needs and wants. Whether fitting an architectural footprint, driveway and parking area into an undeveloped residential site or planning a bikeable and walkable streetscape, Tresala holds to integrating historic context with green engineering, conservation biology with design aesthetics and organic gardening principles with ecological restoration and client education goals.

Tresala designs elegantly combine holistic, living, integrated systems within cultural, historical and natural context. Tresala designs and plans rely on our intuitive genius to connect scientific conservation biology principles with green building architecture with visual design aesthetics with Asian feng shui and geomancy wisdom.   Ecological design is not green paint. At Tresala we strive to live deeply by design: calm practice and share surplus.

Ecologically sustainable designs integrate local food security systems into the context of regional ecological protection and enhancement programs. Good design takes time to grok.

New Oxford American Dictionary

context |ˈkänˌtekst|

noun

the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed : the decision was taken within the context of planned cuts in spending.

• the parts of something written or spoken that immediately precede and follow a word or passage and clarify its meaning : word processing is affected by the context in which words appear.

PHRASES

in context considered together with the surrounding words or circumstances : it is difficult now to view these masterpieces in context.

out of context without the surrounding words or circumstances and so not fully understandable : comments that aides have long insisted were taken out of context.

DERIVATIVES

contextless adjective

contextual |kənˈteks ch oōəl| |kənˈtɛkstʃ(əw)əl| |kənˈtɛkstjʊəl| adjective

contextually |kənˈtɛkstʃ(əw)əli| |kənˈtɛkstjʊəli| adverb

ORIGIN late Middle English (denoting the construction of a text): from Latin contextus, from con- ‘together’ + texere ‘to weave.’

grok |gräk|

verb ( grokked, grokking) [ trans. ] informal

understand (something) intuitively or by empathy : because of all the commercials, children grok things immediately.

• [ intrans. ] empathize or communicate sympathetically; establish a rapport.

ORIGIN mid 20th cent.: a word coined by Robert Heinlein (1907–88), American science fiction writer, in Stranger in a Strange Land.