Minimum Code Compliance Architecture

From World Watch Magazine, Nov./Dec. 94
"The Anti-Ecology of Modern Buildings"

"Buildings are the most important, most visible, and most resource-consuming
products of the industrialized world.  Surprisingly, they are also among the
most abusive:  Some recent comments:

"In the sweep of history, the twentieth-century American house will probably
be regarded as a temporary aberration, an embarrassment to enlightened
builders and planners.  It will be called 'the out of place house' or 'the
utterly dependent house.'  During this century the American housing industry
developed a house perfectly deisconnected from its environment, the needs of
its inhabitants, and the true notion of homeplace.  These cookie-cutter
houses filled with resource-gobbling conveniences are dropped on the land for
convenience of subdividers and builders, rather than placed to take advantage
of sun, wind, and storm."
 -- Michael Potts, in The Independent Home: Living Well with Power from the
Sun, Wind, and Water.

"If one word could summarize the lost opportunities in how we typically
build, it would be 'compliance.'  Buildings are increasingly delivered as
products: 'fast and cheap with a pretty face.'  Developers, construction
managers, and owners will sometimes brag that their building 'meets every
code.'  In fact, a more appropriate statement would be: 'If I built this
building any worse, it would be against the law.'"
-- Randolph R. Croxton, in Audubon House: Building the Environmentally
Responsible, Energy-Efficient Office.

"The true basis for the most serious study of the art of architecture lies
with those indigenous more humble buildings everywhere, that are to
architecture what folklore is to literature, or folksong to music, and with
which academic architects are seldom concerned..."
-- Frank Lloyd Wright

In the same issue of World Watch is a good article on the impacts of the
built environment and how things are beginning to change, entitled "Our
Buildings, Ourselves" by David Malin Roodman and Nicholas Lenssen - both
researchers at the World Watch Institute.

David Eisenberg
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Bucky Fuller said that the way to get people to change isn't to tell them
what to do, but rather to create a better alternative and let them choose it.

Rosabeth Moss Canter said  "Powerlessness corrupts and absolute powerlessness
corrupts absolutely."

I say the challenge is finding ways to convince people that they have the
power to change - themselves and the world around them.

Margaret Mead said "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed
people can change the world: Indeed it's the only thing that ever has!"