There Is No Wealth But Life: Architecture and Environmental Ethics from The Charter of Athens to The Charter of Elements (original) (raw)

ARCHITECTURE AND THE RIGHTS OF NATURE

Dialectic , 2019

This paper critiques the application of the rights of nature in the production of eco-friendly architecture from a decolonizing perspective. The question at the center of our argument is whether the rights of nature can be useful as a method to express deeper relationships between natures and not peoples in architectural practice, or is the taking up of the rights of nature just another colonial manifestation of terra nullius meant to ensure settler colonial regimes are maintained in perpetuity? To tease out this question a recent architectural competition in Hawaii will be analyzed and explored as a methodology, alongside other architectural projects that serve as far more successful attempts at addressing indigenous rights, epistemologies and ways of building, which acknowledge settler colonialism and the need to decolonize architectural practice through respectfulness and reflexivity.

Building within space: Thoughts towards an Environmental Ethics

Building within space: Thoughts towards an Environmental Ethics The need for constructing an environmental ethics that keeps sustainability in mind is the result of a collision of the realization that the natural environment is neither limitless nor impervious to actions with a view of nature that has been fundamentally instrumentalist and anthropocentric. This paper will borrow from architectural theory in an effort to do two things: First, it will point to some of the limitations of an anthropocentric view of nature and how it impacts efforts to influence environmental policy; second, it will suggest that ideas from Aristotle and Actor Network Theory can help provide a paradigm within which we can think about nature in a way that offers an alternative framing of questions about the environment.

'Sustainable' architecture and the 'law' of the fourfold

There are several senses in which one can understand a constellation that is set up between architecture and the ‘law’, the most salient of which is the way that the former is influenced, or directed, by laws of different countries or regions (such as urban or building laws which restrict or challenge architects’ creativity, or the environmental aesthetics that cities expect architects, by law, to honour). In this paper, however, I would like to focus on a ‘law’ that is arguably more fundamental – in fact, primordial – as far as architecture is concerned. Just like other laws, this one can, and often is, overlooked, or ignored by many architects, but at their peril (and that of those who occupy these buildings). The ‘law’ in question is that of what Heidegger evocatively named the ‘fourfold’ of earth, sky, mortals and divinities, which is further intimately connected to and informed by the ‘life-giving struggle’ that Heidegger perceives in the relationship between the constituent elements of a work of art, or what he terms ‘world’ and ‘earth’. The aim is to draw out the implications of these concepts, considered as a primordial ‘law’, for architecture, especially in the sense of ‘sustainable’ architecture, albeit not in the usual sense of ‘sustainable’. To enhance understanding of Heidegger’s fruitful heuristic, the paper draws on Harries’s illuminating elaboration on it, and its resonance with other, compatible concepts – like Lefebvre’s tripartite conceptualization of social space – is briefly explored.

Contemporary Perspectives on Environmental Histories of Architecture

Over the last two centuries, the way architecture related to the environment has drastically changed regarding how nature, or the natural world has been not only imagined by humans, but used and abused. This elective will focus on the origin of environmental issues, both the shiny utopias and the dark sides, through a transdisciplinary perspective, on issues which have emerged since industrialization and colonialism and are currently becoming problematic. In times of climate change and global heating, architecture's historical relationship to the environment, in all its complexities and contradictions, will be seen as contested and conflictual, with the environment not only being a passive backdrop, but an actor in its own right. Starting from the hypothesis that architecture and related disciplines and professions, by creating environments, extracting knowledge from and exerting power upon nature, the course will highlight certain episodes, beginnings and ends, also ruptures, when architecture's relation to the environment has been transformed, having become seen as part of the problem, yet presenting itself as contributing to a solution, too.

Environmentalism, Environmental Ethics, and Some Linkages with Landscape Architecture

Journal of Architectural/Planning Research and Studies (JARS)

Humans have long reflected on their relationship with the environment. In Western culture, environment is the product of a religious tradition (Cronon, 1996). Since the Second World War, concerns over protecting the environment against harm caused by human actions have been raised. Environmentalism first took shape with George Perkins Marsh, whose work, Man and Nature (1864), traced the various implications of forest destruction across the natural landscape. The paper first reviews the terminology of environmentalism and its related terms. It will accordingly examine the historical perspective of environmentalism and the moral values underlining relations between humans and the environment: namely, environmental ethics. In conclusion, the paper will review some linkages between environmentalism and landscape architecture, a discipline dealing directly with the shaping of land and environment, through the works of the two great figures in the disciplines, Frederick Law Olmsted and Ia...

Architectural Theories of the Environment: Posthuman Territory

Construction Management and Economics, 2013

As architects and designers, we struggle to reconcile ever increasing environmental, humanitarian, and technological demands placed on our projects. Our new geological era, the Anthropocene, marks humans as the largest environmental force on the planet and suggests that conventional anthropocentric approaches to design must accommodate a more complex understanding of the interrelationship between architecture and environment Here, for the first time, editor Ariane Lourie Harrison collects the essays of architects, theorists, and sustainable designers that together provide a framework for a posthuman understanding of the design environment. An introductory essay defines the key terms, concepts, and precedents for a posthuman approach to architecture, and nine fully illustrated case studies of buildings from around the globe demonstrate how issues raised in posthuman theory provide rich terrain for contemporary architecture, making theory concrete. By assembling a range of voices across different fields, from urban geography to critical theory to design practitioners, this anthology offers a resource for design professionals, educators, and students seeking to grapple the ecological mandate of our current period.

Architecture and the Global Ecological Crisis: From Heidegger to Christopher Alexander

The Structurist, 2003/04, 43/44: Toward an Ecological Ethos in Art and Architecture, 30-37, 2004

Contrasting the ideas of the architectural theorist Christopher Alexander with the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Alexander's work is defended as a practical orientation for overcoming the deficiencies in modernist architecture and built-up environments identified by Heidegger. The importance of this for addressing the global ecological crisis is shown.

THE CITY AS NATURE: PROGRAMMING A U-TURN IN ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN PLANNING / STADT ALS NATUR: EINE KEHRTWENDE IN ARCHITEKTUR UND STADTPLANUNG

2012

For the artcile with all illustrations have a look at: http://www.biotope-city.net/article/city-nature -programming-u-turn-architecture-and-urban-planning Beatrix, Queen of the Netherlands recently surprised the public with a remarkable speech. In her annual Christmas address she said: "Care is not just about individual welfare but about the welfare of all and about the stewardship of the earth. With our precious planet is handled carelessly and what it gives us is poorly distributed.....Selfishness and the desire to create abundance blind to the damage to our natural environment and undermine community. View the finiteness of what the earth can give."