Many of the world's most prominent scientists (1,575 from 69 countries), including a majority of the Nobel laureate scientists, appealed to the peoples of the world to take immediate action to halt the accelerating damage threatening the global life support systems. It is self-evident that the built environment and the natural environment are inextricably linked and interconnected: Buildings account for more than 40% of all US energy use, while building placement, i.e. land use, accounts for 26%. Thus, about two-thirds of US energy use is determined by the way we design our buildngs and communities. The advent of more holistic design procedures as described in this paper must cover the necessary spectrum of functional entities that we take for granted in our human constructs for the necessary ecological balances to occur. Further, we suggest a need for a new language to conceptualize these entities and to understand both higher and lower orders within which any particular project falls relative to both the entire development construct and the natural order. It is important to realize that perhaps no civilization now or in the past has ever purposely set off to live within its bounds, and that we as a species must admit our absolute dependency on all other life forms from the tiniest to the broadest concept of GAIA herself. The breadth of scope might have to be treated as an entirely new condition facing humanity.
展开▼
