The Importance of the past
“An invasion of armies can be resisted… But not an idea whose time has come.”
– Victor Hugo
This is not a proposed change in architectural style, which incorporates environmentally friendly features such as the so-called “green” buildings that have been marketed in the face of our modern crises to sell a façade of earth consciousness. It is an idea, derived from the past to meet our very real needs of the present to change the way we build, and more importantly the way we think, and this will only be done through powerful socio-cultural movements that cause paradigm shifts like they have in the past, and it all starts with the home.
The idea of sustainability in ancient societies was not a new phenomenon that was adopted and then implemented such as we think of it today, it was naturally occurring out of necessity and the design of one's home utilized every possible process nature had to offer . The challenges we now face in the modern era demand a dramatic shift that goes beyond architectural practice and into cultural values and the cultivation of a distinct sense of duty to future generations. The post industrialist framework around which we have built our impressive civilizations doesn't leave any room for considering the past as a useful resource, but we are beginning to see the effects of such condescending attitudes towards history, and how desperately we need to try and find that same cyclical harmony, rather than a linear path toward ruin.
The need for sustainable design in Ancient Greece transcended class lines, as all homes and buildings from palaces to hovels were designed with the same principles, that is to maximize the use of solar energy from the sun, and even urban planning and street layouts were designed based on this "solar phenomenon"(Tabb and Deviren, 2013). This would be attainable in the modern design of our homes and should be implemented, a certain set of building principles that all homes should adhere to, regardless of how extensive they are. This climate responsive architecture was, is not the physical manipulation of the environment but rather was just an advantageous harmony by design, and was not limited to Ancient Greece.
If we even implemented a fraction of some of these ingenious building designs of the past, and built homes as though we don’t have unlimited resources and the external sources of energy from utilities, which we wont in the near future, the results would be enormous, by simply using the indigenous forms of energy and resources to the environment being built in. The planning should take advantage of the environment in every way that it can, such as those in the Roman architect Marcus Vitrivius’s “The Ten Books of Archictecture”(Tabb and Deviren, 2013) in 100 B.C. which is a set of building principles indicating the importance of siting and positioning according to climate, all the way through to collecting rainwater and all it’s uses.
This isn’t to say that none of the modern housing we design account for these natural processes, however there are two aspects to home building that need to be redefined in order to limit both environmental impact and costs, which will then in turn alleviate many social issues that stem from the entrapment of the modern home. Firstly, there is all the materials and methods that go into building the house, our current system relies on imported manufactured goods of high embodied energy, which are beginning to cost more as resources are decreased, so these need to be simplified and locally sourced. Then more importantly there is the energy that a house will use over it’s lifetime, these are the utilities that are becoming increasingly expensive and within the century will become unreliable sources due to scarcity, this is where the importance of the inherently sustainable building designs of the past are applied. The needs we have today are just the same as they were in the past, however applying these principles is a much more complex problem and a reconciling of some modern tech and design with old principles of sustainability, which will be most difficult architectural remodeling that has ever been undertaken. The ideal of today is pragmatic design for maximum efficiency, and there is no reason that the same intense pragmatism should not be put into home building, with an emphasis on lowering environmental impact rather than profits, which is now in our best collective interests.
The most ancient sustainable building methods used for thousands of years in the geographical areas of desert climate like west Africa and southwestern Asia, which actually share many of the conditional needs that we have in western climates, whereas tropical climates do not have the same needs. The homes in temperate western climates need to protect from heat and cold and ancient desert climate was designed to have similar protective properties given a few major differences. The historical lack of resources in those societies led to them using simplistic mud architecture, mostly in the form of mud bricks that have been plastered over, and the materials are dug in their backyards. All the materials used in North America are those that take the most energy to produce, asphalt, glass, concrete, steel and industrial supplies of lumber shipped from wherever.
All species of animals share our same desire to maximize comfort, and even convenience, but we have taken this pursuit to far to the point where we are actually compromising our inherent livelihood on earth, and so we need to go back and find that happy medium. The main tenets of indigenous sustainable design are regionalism, which obviously requires certain methods to account for the climate being built in, and secondly, the maximum use of the sun, which is universal because all regions and climates have access to solar energy. The earliest example here in North America is the Anasazi cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde around 1200 A.D. which were built into a cliff outcropping with a large overhang to utilize the most basic forms of passive solar design, and thermal mass of the earth, and they flourished there. The peoples of the past also implemented certain uses of the “bio-mimicry” that is emerging in the science of construction today. “Animals give us solutions to problems that are the product of evolution. They are the results of experiments that have been performed without bias or prejudice for millions of years”(McLennan, 2004). This is to say that that there is useful knowledge of design to be garnered from nature, which is after all the most experienced practitioner of sustainable design, and the replication of some of these features in our homes are being revealed as quite effective.
– Victor Hugo
This is not a proposed change in architectural style, which incorporates environmentally friendly features such as the so-called “green” buildings that have been marketed in the face of our modern crises to sell a façade of earth consciousness. It is an idea, derived from the past to meet our very real needs of the present to change the way we build, and more importantly the way we think, and this will only be done through powerful socio-cultural movements that cause paradigm shifts like they have in the past, and it all starts with the home.
The idea of sustainability in ancient societies was not a new phenomenon that was adopted and then implemented such as we think of it today, it was naturally occurring out of necessity and the design of one's home utilized every possible process nature had to offer . The challenges we now face in the modern era demand a dramatic shift that goes beyond architectural practice and into cultural values and the cultivation of a distinct sense of duty to future generations. The post industrialist framework around which we have built our impressive civilizations doesn't leave any room for considering the past as a useful resource, but we are beginning to see the effects of such condescending attitudes towards history, and how desperately we need to try and find that same cyclical harmony, rather than a linear path toward ruin.
The need for sustainable design in Ancient Greece transcended class lines, as all homes and buildings from palaces to hovels were designed with the same principles, that is to maximize the use of solar energy from the sun, and even urban planning and street layouts were designed based on this "solar phenomenon"(Tabb and Deviren, 2013). This would be attainable in the modern design of our homes and should be implemented, a certain set of building principles that all homes should adhere to, regardless of how extensive they are. This climate responsive architecture was, is not the physical manipulation of the environment but rather was just an advantageous harmony by design, and was not limited to Ancient Greece.
If we even implemented a fraction of some of these ingenious building designs of the past, and built homes as though we don’t have unlimited resources and the external sources of energy from utilities, which we wont in the near future, the results would be enormous, by simply using the indigenous forms of energy and resources to the environment being built in. The planning should take advantage of the environment in every way that it can, such as those in the Roman architect Marcus Vitrivius’s “The Ten Books of Archictecture”(Tabb and Deviren, 2013) in 100 B.C. which is a set of building principles indicating the importance of siting and positioning according to climate, all the way through to collecting rainwater and all it’s uses.
This isn’t to say that none of the modern housing we design account for these natural processes, however there are two aspects to home building that need to be redefined in order to limit both environmental impact and costs, which will then in turn alleviate many social issues that stem from the entrapment of the modern home. Firstly, there is all the materials and methods that go into building the house, our current system relies on imported manufactured goods of high embodied energy, which are beginning to cost more as resources are decreased, so these need to be simplified and locally sourced. Then more importantly there is the energy that a house will use over it’s lifetime, these are the utilities that are becoming increasingly expensive and within the century will become unreliable sources due to scarcity, this is where the importance of the inherently sustainable building designs of the past are applied. The needs we have today are just the same as they were in the past, however applying these principles is a much more complex problem and a reconciling of some modern tech and design with old principles of sustainability, which will be most difficult architectural remodeling that has ever been undertaken. The ideal of today is pragmatic design for maximum efficiency, and there is no reason that the same intense pragmatism should not be put into home building, with an emphasis on lowering environmental impact rather than profits, which is now in our best collective interests.
The most ancient sustainable building methods used for thousands of years in the geographical areas of desert climate like west Africa and southwestern Asia, which actually share many of the conditional needs that we have in western climates, whereas tropical climates do not have the same needs. The homes in temperate western climates need to protect from heat and cold and ancient desert climate was designed to have similar protective properties given a few major differences. The historical lack of resources in those societies led to them using simplistic mud architecture, mostly in the form of mud bricks that have been plastered over, and the materials are dug in their backyards. All the materials used in North America are those that take the most energy to produce, asphalt, glass, concrete, steel and industrial supplies of lumber shipped from wherever.
All species of animals share our same desire to maximize comfort, and even convenience, but we have taken this pursuit to far to the point where we are actually compromising our inherent livelihood on earth, and so we need to go back and find that happy medium. The main tenets of indigenous sustainable design are regionalism, which obviously requires certain methods to account for the climate being built in, and secondly, the maximum use of the sun, which is universal because all regions and climates have access to solar energy. The earliest example here in North America is the Anasazi cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde around 1200 A.D. which were built into a cliff outcropping with a large overhang to utilize the most basic forms of passive solar design, and thermal mass of the earth, and they flourished there. The peoples of the past also implemented certain uses of the “bio-mimicry” that is emerging in the science of construction today. “Animals give us solutions to problems that are the product of evolution. They are the results of experiments that have been performed without bias or prejudice for millions of years”(McLennan, 2004). This is to say that that there is useful knowledge of design to be garnered from nature, which is after all the most experienced practitioner of sustainable design, and the replication of some of these features in our homes are being revealed as quite effective.