Syllabus

Course Description

Enrollment

This is a seminar that is open to graduate students and upper division undergraduates. It has no stipulated pre-requisites and is open to all majors.  It is taught in the School of Architecture and students in professional degree programs in architecture will comprise most of the enrollment.  Total enrollment is limited to 15.

Focus

This course explores the evolutionary roots of form and order in the built environment.  While grounded in scientific evidence, a broad perspective of humanism is emphasized throughout, with discussions of how ideas, beliefs, experience, ideals, and human nature effect actions and decisions by individuals and societies and thereby effect the form of the things they make.

Subject of Readings

The assigned readings begin with a focus on the idea of nature and how it is manifest in ancient cities, architecture, and other artifacts that have comprised the human-made environment within which our cultures have evolved.  This is then contrasted with today's built environment and our world of increasing economic and cultural globalization, the advent of mega-cities and an impending worldwide scarcity of critical resources.

Weekly Format

The course meets twice a week for one and a half hours each session.  The first session each week is a lecture by the instructor on subjects related to the weekly reading assignment.  A one-page written assignment for the week, based on the reading and the lecture, is due at the beginning of the second meeting of the week and serves as the focus of that week's seminar discussion.

Readings Assignments and Assigned Paper

Most weekly reading assignments, as indicated in the calendar, are from the text for the course, while a few are from other sources.

In addition to the weekly one page papers, an extended paper (of 9 to 12 pages) is due the next-to-the-last week of the course.  Its subject may be selected from a range of subjects suggested by the instructor or it may reflect a particular personal interest of the student's, with the instructor's permission.

Texts for the Course 

• Norman Crowe, Nature and the Idea of a Man-made World, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994).
• Kwak, Alison, and Walter Grondzik. The Green Studio Handbook (Oxford: The Architectural Press, 2007).  -or-  Principles and Practices of Sustainable Architectural Design from The European Commission, Directorate General XVII for Energy . . . (London: James & James, 1999).

While these are the principle texts, readings excerpted from other sources are assigned during the semester as well.  See items denoted by an asterisk in "Readings" for references to documents listed as reading assignments in the calendar.

Grading

INTRODUCTION

Green Design

"Green Building Design," "Sustainable Design," "Environmentally Conscious Design" and "Ecological Design" are various shades of the same thing.  They reflect a growing awareness that the nonrenewable resources of energy that fuel the construction process and heat, cool, and provide light and ventilation throughout the life of a building, are finite.  In addition, the availability of raw materials that provide the basic stuff of building materials and manufactured building components are finite as well, while their procurement, shipping, and fabrication into building components consumes energy and produces pollution long before they take their place as integral parts of a building. Sustainable building practices begin with site selection, climatic conditions, and the urban or rural setting of a design; then proceed to the selection of building materials and components; and are finally reflected in the refinement of the completed design in the form of passive energy considerations.  The environmentalist's adage, "think globally, act locally," rings true among the critical ethical responsibilities of an architect or anyone else who is responsible, no matter how small the part, for the form and content of our built environment.  So-called Green Building design is a humanist enterprise as well.  This is to say that it includes how a building influences our awareness of the world in all its dimensions--how it insures our comfort and our sense of well-being and how it performs its role among many buildings that make up an urban setting that in turn nurtures the life of a community--all are part of the broader realm of "sustainable design."

A Dual Focus on Humanism and Science

A holistic view of the world was accomplished by ancient societies through a unity of their culture--religion, ethics, techniques of agriculture and craft, and how they built their houses and their towns--all drawn from a common cosmic vision or framework.  Thales of Miletus, an Ionian philosopher of the sixth century B.C., by means of intellect and logic, placed such a notion of unity into a consciously theoretical framework.  For having done so, he was regarded by Aristotle, two centuries later, as the founder of the physical sciences.  In our time, Thales' revelation has come to be known as "The Ionian Enchantment" and it has permeated scientific thought ever since.  This search for objective reality in science "is another way of satisfying religious hunger" according to the biologist E. O. Wilson.  Wilson goes on to say that the premise behind the Enchantment is that "when we have unified enough certain knowledge, we will understand who we are and why we are here.... The greatest enterprise of the mind has always been and always will be the attempted linkage of the sciences and the humanities.  The ongoing fragmentation of knowledge and resulting chaos in philosophy are not reflections of the real world but artifacts of scholarship."  Wilson offers, instead, a world view that extends beyond science and across the great branches of learning, a view that pre-supposes the possibility of a unity of knowledge and understanding.  He suggests a metaphysics that encompasses both science and religion, and in doing so, most fully addresses the human condition.  He calls it "Consilience."¹   His motivation arose from the environmental crisis, especially the failure of science to communicate the depth of environmental problems, and the failure of the humanities to adequately provide a world view that recognizes the consequent need to understand ourselves and our built world as reciprocal with nature.

A reverence for both nature and the man-made as part of the same thing sees "the environment" as something totally inclusive:

"Perhaps it is enough to argue that the preservation of the living world is necessary to our long-term material prosperity and health.  But there is another, and in some ways deeper, reason not to let the natural world slip away.  It has to do with the defining qualities and self-image of the human species.  Suppose, for the sake of argument, that new species can one day be engineered and stable ecosystems built from them.  With that distant prospect in mind, should we go ahead and, for the short-term gain, allow the original species and ecosystems to be lost?  Yes? Erase Earth's living history?  Then also burn the art galleries, make cordwood of the musical instruments, pulp the musical scores, erase Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Goethe, and the Beatles too, because all these--or at least fairly good substitutes--can be re-created."¹

"The issue, like all great decisions, is moral.  Science and technology are what we can do; morality is what we agree we should or should not do.  The ethic from which moral decisions spring is a norm or standard of behavior in support of a value, and value in turn depends on purpose.  Purpose, whether personal or global, whether urged by conscience or graven in sacred script, expresses the image we hold of ourselves and our society.  A conservation ethic is that which aims to pass on to future generations the best part of the nonhuman world.  To know this world is to gain a proprietary attachment to it.  To know it well is to love and take responsibility for it."²

Galileo considered science and religion to be two sides of the same thing.  He noted in a 1615 letter to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, "In my mind, God wrote two books.  The first book is the Bible, where humans can find the answers to their questions on values and morals.  The second book of God is the book of nature, which allows humans to use observation and experiment to answer our own questions about the universe."³  Today we may explain it by saying that God gave us curiosity and the intellectual capacity to explore our own questions about the universe.

The creation of architecture and the building of settlements provides us with the most obvious example how we regard the natural world.  Whether we take from nature without concern for the future, or consciously seek to build in a sustainable way, reflects intrinsic beliefs.  An argument may be made that an architect stands in a remarkably central position in the debate between world views that consider short term efficiency versus long term sustainability.  Economic and cultural forces, of course, decide what ultimately takes place; but it is the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of individuals that add up to those economic and cultural realities.  

Today, buildings stand as the largest consumers of energy throughout the world.  In the U.S. buildings account for an estimated 48% of all greenhouse emissions, compared to 27% for transportation and 25% for industry.  In fact, 76% of all electricity generated by power plants goes toward operating buildings.  As a result, architects are uniquely positioned to have a profound effect on energy usage, and consequently, the depletion of energy resources and pollution caused by the generation of energy.  From the perspective of global economics, nearly 1/10th of the global economy is dedicated to constructing and operating homes and offices.  There are both long term and short term considerations. For instance, a few months of building construction consumes more resources and generates more pollution than a decade of building operation.

Passive energy design in architecture has already demonstrated the extent to which architectural innovations can make a significant difference.  For instance, in response to developments in window design and insulating technology, energy for heating an average residence in the U.S. was reduced by over 40% between 1973 and 1990.  The residential market share for windows that include double-glazing, thermal breaks in sash and frame and other anti-energy loss measures, rose from 1% in the U.S. in 1985 to 38% in 1991.  The reason for this is largely practical as the design, manufacture, and sales of better energy conserving devices began before building codes ensuring the installation of energy conscious materials and practices were enacted. This shift is estimated to have resulted in a five billion dollar reduction in the U.S. in heating and cooling annually.  Estimates are that a more complete use of energy conscious design products and practices could result in a 22 billion dollar saving annually in the U.S.⁴  This is, of course, a computer generated projection of anticipated conditions, while global warming and other broader environmental circumstances will influence actual conditions.  It is an equation of too many unknown variables to provide accurate predictability.  But what we do know is that if we do not reverse the current dominant trends, things will get much worse.

Perhaps we as a society are finally approaching the point where everyone recognizes the truth of the argument that environmentally motivated measures are critical to our survival and are everyone's responsibility.  If this is so, the problem of just what to do and how to do it remains.  Continuous experimentation as well as the implementation of definitive long-term solutions must be made at all levels, and by all societies--because we all share the same earth.  Someone has calculated, for instance, that if China and India could eventually achieve the wasteful levels of consumption of resources and generation of pollution that is the per-capita average in the U.S. today, it would take several planet earths to fuel the earth's economies.  Obviously, catastrophic destruction and collapse would take place long before worldwide consumption rates ever total the resource availability from the one and only planet that we share.  The situation not only calls for comprehensive action, but it implies comprehensive, worldwide agreement as well.  Such measures as the Kyoto Accords, signed by all the industrial countries of the world except the U.S. and Australia, must be respected everywhere because they are a beginning of a necessary consensus that must be worldwide if it is to work. 

Still, the adage that one must think globally while acting locally will always apply.  Each individual, profession, and political entity necessarily acts individually and in concert with all else at the same time.  For architects, fortunately, the charge is remarkably clear.  While detail considerations for each building and for each urban design and physical planning decision must vary, the objectives are the same: to impact the environment as minimally as possible while still respecting human comfort and aspirations, and to perpetuate the richness of our inherited cultures as far into the future as our collective intelligence may allow.  In the words of the World Congress of Architects' "Declaration of Interdependence for a Sustainable Future," penned in Chicago in 1993:
 

We, of the world's architectural and design professions, commit ourselves to:

• Place consideration for environmental and social sustainability at the core of our design work

• Develop innovative practices, procedures, products, services, and standards that will enable us to implement such sustainable design

• Educate our fellow professionals, our clients, and the general public about the value and critical importance of sustainable design

• Work to change policies, regulations, and standard practice in government and business so that sustainable design will become the fully supported standard practice in the building industry

• Work to bring the existing built environment up to sustainable design standards.

A parallel pledge, the preamble to the Charter of the Congress for the New Urbanism, addresses the subject of urbanism just as the Declaration of the World Congress of Architects addresses architecture:

The Congress for the New Urbanism views disinvestment in central cities, the spread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and the erosion of society's built heritage as one interrelated community-building challenge.

We stand for the restoration of existing urban centers and towns within coherent metropolitan regions, the reconfiguration of sprawling suburbs into communities of real neighborhoods and diverse districts, the conservation of natural environments, and the preservation of our built legacy.

¹ These quotations are from Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1998), p. 6-9.

² Edward O. Wilson, "What is Nature Worth?" The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2002, p. 39.

³ Galileo Galilei, quoted in Neil de Grasse Tyson, "Holy Wars," Natural History, vol. 108, no. 8, 10/99, p. 82.

⁴ These statistics are primarily from Nicholas Lessen and David Roodman, "Making Better Buildings," State of the World: 1995, ed. Lester R. Brown (New York: The World Watch Institute and W. W. Norton, 1995).