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+--- Thread: Let’s open our sealed-off lives to semi-permeable architectures (/thread-4542.html)
Let’s open our sealed-off lives to semi-permeable architectures - C C - Nov 25, 2017
https://aeon.co/ideas/lets-open-our-sealed-off-lives-to-semi-permeable-architecture
EXCERPT: Traditional buildings are designed to provide protection against a savage world, with us safe on one side and our waste on the other. Architects have long relied on ‘hard’ materials such as masonry, aluminium and glass, specifically chosen to prevent the outside environment from getting in. Impermeability was, and is, a driving goal.
It is time to rethink that approach. Our current built environment squanders too much fresh water and other vital resources, and tips too many poisonous substances into our surroundings. To develop a more sustainable relationship with the natural world, we need to allow chemical exchanges that take place within our living spaces, and between the inside and the outside. We need to embrace permeability.
Until the rise of modernity, a certain amount of the outside world always leaked into our living spaces, entering through crumbling brickwork, broken seals and open windows and doors. However, with the rapid growth of industrial cities in the mid-19th century, pollution, overcrowding and disease posed new external threats. The remedy was to exert tighter control over our habitats, with the result that buildings became true barriers....
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/lets-open-our-sealed-off-lives-to-semi-permeable-architecture