Eco Arts: Sustainable Architecture and other hypertext aesthetics

Contents


Introduction

Sustainable Architecture: sus- under + tenere, to hold, to keep in existence; 
maintain or prolong and archi-, chief + tekton, the science, art, or profession 
of designing and constructing buildings. Sustainable Architecture, from the 
Latin and Greek word origins, is in part, the enduring production of space, as 
described by Lefebvre. Architecture, to be retained from the past, must have 
value (perhaps beauty too), which distinguishes it from building, and defines 
its sustainability. The Parthenon is an example of endurance. 

Sustainable Architecture includes: 

Vernacular Architecture (natural building and ecological design); and 
Environmental Design (architecture, landscape, urban design, and regional 
resource conservation conforming to the principles of environmental, social, 
and economic sustainability). 
A list of relevant issues in Sustainable Architecture begins with: 1. Though 
the classical architect strove for lofty autonomy, the future of architecture is 
more likely to be expressed in contingent vernacular and sustainable 
practices required by increasingly severe environmental, social and 
economic constraints. "This contingency might open up opportunities for 
the intentional reformulation of a given context." (Till, 2009); 2. A systems 
theory, or cybernetic approach is suggested as the most central concept to 
sustainable architecture is "integrating different aspects of sustainable 
development in thinking and acting." (Ahlberg, 2004); 3. Further illustrating 
the creative power of Sustainable Architecture, "To talk about ecology in 
architecture is not to bring the thinking of ecology to architecture. Rather, 
ecology is, from the beginning, a certain kind of thinking about or from 
architecture." (Wigley, from Recycling Recycling); and 4. The ethics of the 
ecological footprint or "The amount of biologically productive land and sea 
area an individual, a region, all of humanity, or a human activity requires to 
produce the resources it consumes and absorb the waste it generates." 
(Vanderheiden, 2008)
Sustainable Architecture is then the enduring production of space with 
artistic, effective, and low cost and low or zero energy use architecture. It 
frees ecological, social, and economic resources from the illusory, and 
"black hole", surplus economies of consumerism, and effects a result that 
can, after Francoise Choay "accommodate pleasure and the unforeseen."




Theory
Process
Chapter One: Vernacular Architecture and Environmental Design
Chapter Two: Architecture and Resource Conservation checklist


Conclusion
References
Links