Encroachment, Architecture and Impaired Ecology

In the contemporary built-environment the focus is very much on environmentally conscious design or so-called ‘sustainable’ design- or even the generic labelled ‘green’ architecture. Despite this popular and supposedly informed preoccupation with the importance of the role of ecology in architect...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Du Plessis, Naas
Other Authors: White, Gary
Language:en
Published: 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/2263/32791
Du Plessis, N 2014, Encroachment, Architecture and Impaired Ecology, MArch(Prof) Dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd <http://hdl.handle.net/2263/32791>
Description
Summary:In the contemporary built-environment the focus is very much on environmentally conscious design or so-called ‘sustainable’ design- or even the generic labelled ‘green’ architecture. Despite this popular and supposedly informed preoccupation with the importance of the role of ecology in architecture, ‘green’ architecture is usually fixated on energy efficiency within the envelope of an individual building. This dissertation questions this limited, and often artificial and technologically driven, relationship between man and ecology. Fundamentally it questions the role of architecture as negotiator in this relationship. The author proposes an alternative way of viewing ecologically conscious architecture, where the intent of the architectural intervention is to respond directly to a given environmental issue and where its existential impact relates to its surrounding situation and the tension between man and ecology existing within the landscape, instead of turning its focus inwards to achieve isolated ‘environmental’ efficiency. Examples of such a specific issue, context and program with a collective goal of achieving these aims are hence forth elaborated on in the content of this dissertation. === Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2014 === Architecture === MArch(Prof) === Unrestricted