01 Introduction: Ways of Seeing

ESM ARCH3421
TU832/3
Sarah Sheridan
ESM: 5 credits= 100 working
hours
24 contact hours= workshops + lectures
….76 self directed learning
 MODULE CONTENT
1. INTRODUCTION: WAYS OF SEEING

2. ARCHITECTURE, LANDSCAPE AND WATER

3. ARCHITECTURE + PERCEPTION

4. ARCHITECTURE + HUMAN COMFORT

5. ARCHITECTURE + CLIMATE

6. ARCHITECTURE + AIR

7. TRACKING AN ENVIRONMENTAL POSITION

8. WORKSHOP I (SS + ANO)

9. WORKSHOP II (SS + ANO)

10. WORKSHOP III (SS + ANO)
11. WORKSHOP IV (SS + ANO)
12. WORKSHOP V (SS + ANO)
 Why ENVIRONMENT?
Habitat destruction/deterioration (biodiversity loss)
Global warming
Stratospheric ozone depletion
Soil erosion
Depletion of freshwater resources
Acid deposition
Urban air pollution/smog
Surface water pollution
Soil and groundwater pollution
Depletion of mineral reserves (especially oil and
some metals)
 Climate Change
Global Warming…

Mass Extinction.. which is the net effect’

Morton, T, 2018, p5
‘It sucks by having no time for things that are
in between true and false, black and white…’

Morton, T, 2018, p18

‘WAYS OF SEEING’

John Berger
If we could shrink the earth’s population to a village of exactly 100 people, with all the existing
human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like this:
There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 North and South Americans
8 Africans

52 would be female
48 would be male

70 would be non-white
30 would be white

70 would be non-christian
30 would be christian

6 people would possess 59% of the village’s wealth and all 6 would be American
80 would live in sub-standard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would have a college education
1 would own a computer
The Whanganui River in New Zealand is a legal person. A
nearby forest is too. Soon, the government will grant a
mountain legal personhood as well.
‘I am the river, the river is me..’ Te Wainuiarua Poa
‘These rocks are of schist and marble; that is, they are of clayey
and limey materials originally deposited in layers on an ocean
floor and later metamorphosed and upended by geological forces.
The Dalradian ocean in which they were born once stretched
from what is now the Shetlands to the west of Ireland, and it lay
within a vast supercontinent that comprised most of the Earth’s
present land masses, for this was long before the Atlantic came in
to existence… Eventually the stretching and rifting of the
continental plate culminated in the birth of the Iapetus Ocean, the
predecessor of the Atlantic, which lasted for some 100 million
years and began to close up again around 510 million years ago.
The Dalradian sedimentary rocks were caught up in the reunion
of the continents; they were crumpled and torn, pushed down
into the hot depths of the Earth and thrust up into mountain
chains of Himalayan proportions.’
Tim Robinson, Listening, p364
‘Earth as client’ Grafton Architects
Tokhiro Sato, 2009
On Signal Hill, Overlooking Long Beach, Robert Adams, 1983
Top row: American Elm, White Oak, Pignut Hickory
Bottom row: White Ash and Red Oak

Adaptive behaviour
Stuart Franklin
Kentish Cherry Blossom, Agnes Warburg, 1930s
Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees illustration by Yan Nascimbene
Chauvet Cave, S. Jaillet/Edytem
Kimberley Rock Art, Australia
 ‘In human- animal worlds, companion species are ordinary
beings-in-encounter in the house, lab, field, zoo, park, truck,
office, prison, ranch, arena, village, human hospital, forest,
slaughterhouse, estuary, vet clinic, lake, stadium, barn, wildlife
preserve, farm, ocean canyon, city streets, factory, and more.’

Harraway, D, Staying with the Trouble, p13

Pentti Sammallahti
Pentti Sammallahti
Pentti Sammallahti
Pentti Sammallahti
Pentti Sammallahti
Pentti Sammallahti
Pentti Sammallahti
Pentti Sammallahti
Pentti Sammallahti
Pentti Sammallahti
Pentti Sammallahti
Pentti Sammallahti
‘Terrapolis is a fictional integral equation, a speculative fabrication.
Terrapolis is n-dimensional niche space for multispecies
becoming-with. Terrapolis is open, worldly, indeterminate, and
polytemporal. Terrapolis is a chimera of materials, languages,
histories. Terrapolis is for companion species, cum panis, with
bread, at table together – not ‘posthuman’ but ‘com-post’’
Terrapolis is in place; Terrapolis makes space for unexpected
companions. Terrapolis is an equation for a gunman, for humus, for
soil, for ongoing risky infection, for epidemics of promising
trouble, for permaculture. Terrapolis is the SF game of response-
ability.’

Harraway, D, Staying with the Trouble, p11

WideWhiteStage
Andrea Branzi
Anaïs Senli. 2019
Andrea Branzi
Maryann Harris
Rats emerge from a gap in the sidewalk on Pearl Street, in New York City.

Charlie Hamilton James

‘The Thick Boundary’
Michael Hensel
The Birds and the Bees, Ariane Lourie Harrison
The Birds and the Bees, Ariane Lourie Harrison
The Birds and the Bees, Ariane Lourie Harrison
The Birds and the Bees, Ariane Lourie Harrison