Lecture 2- Site (7 Scale of the built environment) (27/08/08)

Scale

1. From nano to celestial

Milk Way- Our Galaxy

The Solar System

The Earth

CellCromatin in nano scale

However, there are only 7 scales used by various profession in the build environment.
1. Object
2. Interior
3. Building
4. Premise
5. Urban
6. Regional

We can describe the 6 scales by the images below:-

An object

An object in an interior space

Building

Premise (with some lanscape)Global

How about the 7th scale? The global scale. How do we look at the globe?
The Eurocentric view?

The Pacific, Malaka perspective?
Or the Buckminster Fuller's view?

As for me, i would look at the globe in the eurocentric view as it is what i familiar with. Most of the globe map today is in eurocetric view and this make it easily available.


Something interesting i found about Buckminster Fuller in Wikipedia...
Buclminster Fuller was an American architect, author, designer, futurist, inventor, and visionary. He was the second president of Mensa. He also worked in the development of numerous inventions, chiefly in the fields of design and architecture, the best known of which is the geodesic dome. One of his work:-

The Montreal Biosphère by Buckminster Fuller, 1967

The earth as a dying planet can be explained with the production model:
Intension- Gold, glory
Act- Design & build
Actor- earthling, inhabitant of earth, global villager, designer, builder, developer.
Rule- Economic
Site- Earth
Product- Destruction

How do i look at the world as a dying planet?
As for me, when i look at the globe i see destruction, anger and chaos scattered around. One of the most obvious example is when we look back on September 11, 2001, with an aching sadness, with our memories of that awful day crystallized around images seared into our minds and hearts. For many people that day changed how they thought of the world, of their country, of their country’s place in the world. Sometimes it feels like we have been thrown into a world in which everything is chaos, nothing is recognizable, nothing goes according to plan. Human are destroying mother earth by their selfish mind and create destruction and pollution. Our globe is sick and it seems like no one have realise it. What we think is that "some one will take care of it and my contribution to the destruction is just very little and it dont count at all". With this kind of selfish mind, how is our mother earth going to get well?



Iatrogenic

Article on Iatrogenic:

Iatrogenic is defined as disease caused by medical examination or treatment. This includes disease, illness, or death from Drug Reactions, Vaccines, irresponsibly prescribed drugs such as Ritalin, et al, turning a blind eye to the dangers of such approved (and deadly) chemicals as Aspartame, ignoring many societal caused maladies (everything from EMF Dangers to Computer Game Problems), disregarding negative effects of Mental Health on individual’s general welfare, and mistakes, errors, omissions, and blunders by hospitals, medical doctors, nurses, and other individuals in the mainstream medical establishment.


A recent study published in The Journal of The American Medical Association (2000:284:94) by Barbara Starfield, MD, MPH, showed that in the U.S. there are:
· 12,000 deaths/year from unnecessary surgery

· 7,000 deaths/year from medication errors in hospitals

· 20,000 deaths/year from other errors in hospitals

· 80,000 deaths/year from nosocomial infections in hospitals

· 106,000 deaths/year from adverse effects of medications
This totals 225,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes, placing iatrogeny as the third leading cause of death in the U.S., second only to heart disease and cancer.


It would be humanly impossible to eliminate genuine mistakes entirely. "But how many times does a mistake happen until it's not just a mistake anymore, but negligence?"
This author believes that 225,000 deaths every year may be an example of when mistakes cross over to the darkness of negligence. If so, then we are witnessing the greatest holocaust to befall mankind ever.