A New Metric for Architecture

iconecology

i-con : noun
A person or thing regarded as a symbol of something.

e-col-o-gy: noun

1 the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings.
• (also human ecology) the study of the interaction of people with their environment.
2 (also Ecology) the political movement that seeks to protect the environment, esp. from pollution.


Throughout history civilizations have dovoted their efforts to many icons. The great icons of Egypt were built for the dead. The Great icons of the Greeks and the Romans were devoted to the gods. In modern times our great icons are devoted to man and has acheivements. Museums filled with our creativity, libraries filled with our knowledge, and stadiums filled with our egos. Throughout history humanity has defined itself increasingly further from nature. Not more that 12,000 years ago nature was all there was. It was not until the city, and agriculture, that any contrast ever existed of nature. Perhaps that contrast exists only in the eyes of humanity? Slowly, then more quickly, we drove out nature. In the city, everything grew up, literally; offices and buisinesses, parcking garages and warehouses all sprouted up like weeds and squeezed out every square inch of nature. Agriculture moves to the country and was defined as the contrast of the city. In reality, modern farmong is as mechanized and technologically dependant as wall street, Yet the concept of rural in the most common perception, sees farmlife and nature as one. It is our common misconception that wheat feilds and lush forests belong in the same image. Our farming practices are desroying nature at the same rate as the cities; they are one in the same and we call them civilization. A new dichotomy must emerge and it deserves all of the devotion that we have dedicated to our previous icons. As we begin to understand our connection to the world, and we begin to push the limits of the ecological stresses we are impressing on planet earth, the new icon that must emerge must be the icon of nature.

In Paris, France, the great icon of the magnificent city is the Eiffel Tower. Constructed in 1889, the tower is an iron latticework of industrial innovation. It is the most visited paid site in the world with milions of visitors ascending it each year. This new metric for architecture proposes that a icon such as the eiffel tower be converted into a green tower. The hearth of the city raised above all being that which provides the sustinance of the city. Nature Celebrated. This metric is to be implemented at manty scales, where nature resides as the hearth of the house as well, and we can only hope that such adoration and care be taken to heart by future generations whol will grow up in a world that values the only thing that really matters, our existence.


Strategies for metric:

-Implant ecological icons into the center of our cities, our homes, and our hearts.