If you looked down on the Cape Cod mall from the sky, you’d see a huge black roof surrounded by hundreds of parked cars. If the late architect Malcolm Wells had his way, all of that would be invisible. Malcolm was an underground architect, and on the leading edge of thinking about passive building design, sustainability, and ecological impact. His buildings aren’t simply covered with green roofs, they’re buried on all sides, or nestled into the sides of hills like Hobbit Holes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Right outside Brewster, Malcolm’s wife Karen North Wells still runs the structure they built on their property – the Underground Art Gallery. “Underground” generally brings to mind some kind of dungeon, but Malcolm’s buildings are designed specifically to avoid that kind of feeling. Window position is carefully considered, and the interiors can seem even brighter than most normal buildings, with no lights required during the day. This gallery was one of hundreds of designs Malcolm created during his lifetime, but only a handful were ever built. It’s possible that his building philosophy was too far ahead of his time.
“It takes about 40 years for a really original idea to take hold, and I think that Malcolm was on the leading edge of that slow curve,” says Malcolm’s longtime friend, the biologist John Todd. He says that underground buildings are great for people to live in, but the real benefit is to the ecosystem. “Have you ever driven around subdivisions on Cape Cod? Deer Run, Bubbling Creek Road, Oak Way… they're usually named after what's no longer there! If people are primarily living underground, then the fabric of the earth – the trees, the shrubs, the meadows, and the grasses – are still there. They’re not destroyed.”
