Date of Award
Spring 5-30-2017
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Architecture (MArch)
Department
Architecture
First Advisor
Jonathan Knowles
Second Advisor
Emanuel Admassu
Abstract
Our cities are recognized as centers for jobs, entertainment and production; as icons of human innovation. However, they are also recognized as for their consumption. Being that our cities are mechanisms of consumption, they rely on imported resources such as food, water, energy and labor in order to continue to thrive. Though this relationship has fostered technological and mechanical growth, it has also been degrading the natural ecological processes that we rely on to survive. As our understanding of our relationship to the environment deepens, there is a growing push for architecture that embodies an attention to its connections to the environment.
Programs like LEED certification- the national standard for the evaluation of sustainable buildings- engage with how a building operates, its method of construction and its material properties. Tough important, these concerns are limited in aspects that do not consider an architecture as a soliday object. In his essay, “The Three Ecologies,” Felix Guattari explains that in order to property address environmental concerns, we have to dissect both the tangible and non-tangible conditions in which they have developed. He states, “The only true response to the ecological crisis is on a global scale, provided that it brings about an authentic political, social and cultural revolution, reshaping the objectives of the production of material and immaterial assets. Therefore this revolution must not be exclusively concerned with visible relations of force on a grand scale, but will also take into account molecular domains of sensibility, intelligence and desire.”(pg.28) Architecture has the capacity to embody critical issues of geographical context, social implications, historical contingencies and political agendas. Rather than considering an architecture simply as a vessel, a re-evaluation of systematic parts in which take engages with can broaden our understanding an architecture as component contributing to the systems intertwined
Recommended Citation
Smith, Carlton, "Envisioning ecological cities" (2017). Masters Theses. 201.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/201
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