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Old Posted Mar 29, 2011, 7:25 PM
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In the Built Environment, the Tyranny of the Big, the Beauty of the Small

In the Built Environment, the Tyranny of the Big, the Beauty of the Small


Mar 11, 2011

By Jason McLennan



Read More: http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/in...y-of-the-small

Quote:
The world’s tallest built structure, Burj Khalifa, looms 2,717 feet over Dubai’s central business district, boasting the human species’ modern architectural and engineering capabilities. This glass and steel behemoth outstretches Chicago’s Willis Tower by 1,266 feet and is more than two and a half times the height of the Eiffel Tower. Less significant than its stature, though, is Burj Khalifa’s profile. Viewed from any angle, the building’s shape is reminiscent of an exaggerated line graph that begins at zero before shooting sharply upward to its highest point then plummeting dramatically back to nothing.

- In my opinion, Burj Khalifa’s silhouette stands as a poetic—and prophetic—representation of the past and future of ridiculously oversized ways of building and living. The tower’s profile reminds us that we began our architectural history by designing modest-sized dwellings (close to the earth and the y-axis) before “progressing” over time to our current skyscraping, unsustainable abilities. Soon, environmental realities will force our return to designs that better suit the human scale. The fact that Burj Khalifa was funded by vanishing oil money only reinforces the idea that the era of enormity in our structures, roads, homes and egos must and will come to an end, just as the global inventory of fossil fuels is undeniably finite.

- Environmentalists still relate to Schumacher’s message that a person or a thing need only be as big as required to fulfill its intended function. Otherwise, beauty, meaning, and accountability are lost. Simply put, we have let things get way out of hand by distorting scale. Our tendency to oversize says more about our egos than our wisdom; our lust for power generates a craving for big things. Whatever the cause, we must arrest this toxic tendency to build/eat/live large. Now is the time to return things to a scale that is relatable and survivable. Nature does this, so why can’t we? And where nature doesn’t (such as when populations surge beyond capacity) the system quickly corrects itself.

- Our modern societies have elevated the “build to honor power” effect by engineering taller high-rises, longer bridges, larger dams, and more expansive power plants. Similarly, in the name of progress, we shear the tops off of mountains and rely on huge factory farms for our food. Across the globe, mega-metropolises (Los Angeles, Mexico City, Mumbai, Tokyo and Moscow among them) are expanding as if growth alone was a desired outcome. Our economies are driven by enormous corporations and financial institutions that dwarf previous economic paradigms. All of these large-scale societal components work together to yield little more than greed, waste, and inequity as far as the majority of humanity is concerned.

- Now, we realize that we have a brewing crisis on our hands, which is coming from numerous angles. Our economy is nearly ruined, a victim of its own belief system, and we devote what little capital we have left trying to prop the machine back up. Our centralized food system is wreaking havoc on citizens and the planet and making us increasingly vulnerable to widespread disruptions. The attention that is finally being paid to global climate change has essentially been lip-service with only the vaguest goals to reduce emissions—in the future, rather than now—to still unsustainable levels. Yet we attempt to solve these problems using more mega-solutions since it’s all we know how to do.

- My belief is that we cross the scale barrier with buildings somewhere between 12 and 14 stories high. Moreover, we can reach suitable densities well beyond current American norms with average heights closer to six to eight stories. We’ll return our focus where it belongs: closer to the ground. Our structures may end up being less lofty, but we’ll be able to reach all we need.

- The future of our built environment will need to be rooted in solutions that endure through time. The unique carrying capacities of each place—its community, its watershed, its ecosystem—must define the scale of the projects it houses. When solutions and systems cross these boundaries, they become too big. Elegance is lost when overshadowed by size. The only oversized movement we need is the one that takes us closer to small, localized solutions.

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