The Built Environment enables me, molds me, frustrates me, comforts me, guides me, inspires me, intrigues me, and repulses me, among other things.
The Built Environment allows me to develop opinions and taste, likes and dislikes.
You may be wondering about my choices of images for my terms above, but your wonderment completely proves my point. The built environment does all those things for ME. I mean, it does them for you too, but most likely with different examples. I tried to stay local with the examples until the last frame: “Repulses�- simply because I was reminded of this building earlier this week and I had to include it.
For me, the first step in deciding what effect the built environment has on me is outlining what, exactly, the built environment entails. To serve my purpose, I am including human organizations and programs in the “built environment,� not just buildings, for without human interference with the environment, much of what happens daily for us, would not normally occur.
This may seem contrived, but really the built environment develops its own frameworks and clockworks, separate from the natural interaction of life. For example, it creates its own hours of daytime. People rise at regular hours but do not need to follow the schedule of the sun after it falls. Ozayr spoke about this in class today. Work is not done with the setting of the sun, though it probably should be (mostly because I love to sleep). Another example is that a new schedule is created with the built environment. If you have ever sat outside on a day when you don’t have class, you would likely have noticed traffic patterns, i.e. an increase in people (and therefore collisions) in between classes, or a larger number of people heading toward Coffman during lunch hours etc. These clockworks go without fail, except of course the weekends, which really are a clockwork within themselves, i.e. the number of people waiting at the bus stop to go into the city significantly increase around 10:30 at night. Believe you me, I have experienced it. I guess even these simple patterns can be considered phenomena. They have beginnings, time frames, reasons, boundary conditions etc. Basically, our lives are led by our built environment and the frameworks, clockworks, and phenomena that result from them.
In a sort of twisted sense, the 6 oppositions are met on a daily basis in our lives, well mine at the least.
1. Man vs. Nature- Simple: I was not made to go 8 hours without lunch two days a week. No exaggeration: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9-4 without a break.
2. Climate and Enclosure- Due to the frigid temperatures, all of my walks have been shortened by at least 3 minutes because I want to get indoors faster.
3. Gravity vs. Movement- When I go for runs, hills suck. Case and point.
4. Permanence and Entropy- Is what I learn in lectures really going to stay with me forever, or is it temporary? (Permanent of course, Ozayr… but for the sake of argument)
5. Mass and Form- I would like think I represent the “form� end of this one. I mean who wants to be compared to a sumo wrestler?
6. Material and Tool- My drawing class in a nutshell. What paper? Charcoal or pencil? Do I even have talent? (ummm yes!? Wow now I feel bad)
On a more scholarly note, though, the oppositions completely effect the built environment. I think some of the oppositions are more prominently represented. For example the effects of the opposition of permanence versus entropy can be seen on virtually any building you pass. I live in Comstock Hall and the styles, furnishings and appliances are all out of date, though probably not more than 20 years old. We had a toilet overflow earlier this year and flood our entire hallway. It was great… Another prominent opposition, in my opinion, is man versus nature. Nearly everything we have built in the cities is in opposition to nature, or at least without ever really considering the natural life around it. Yes, there are parks and the river, but the parks are unnatural and the river is tampered with daily. We detach ourselves from nature because it is inconvenient. Similarly, the opposition of climate and enclosure is simply for convenience and comfort. I know it sounds like I am being anti-development right now, but if we could just be more aware of our surroundings and careful with our impact on the land we could greatly decrease the amount of environmental issues we have today. (Which, of course, relates to my term project issue of sustainability.)
Also I really enjoyed making the image above so I thought of a few more verbs that I associate with the built environment, though these are more focused on places anywhere in the world. I think it is a nice close to this lovely blog.
