Characteristics of The Built Environment

According to what I understand, when one product is produced, it will involve the six elements that we has learn at the first lecture . Those six element is PRODUCT, ACT, INTENTION, ACTOR, RULES and SITE.

In the lecture three, those six elements are:

Actor : Encik Wan Burhanuddin, All HBP students in the class

Intention : Introduce the Characteristics of Built Environment - Scale

Act : Shared what he had studied, teach all the HBP students about the knowledge of built environment

Rules : Punctuality, reach the hall in time

Sites : E 48 B

Product : Get the information about the characteristic of built environment

Scales:

In the lecture three, Encik Wan Burhanuddin had discussed about the characteristics of built environment. The first thing he would like to introduce us is the SCALES. Scale is A system of ordered marks at fixed intervals used as a reference standard in measurement. Scale must be relative to another measure and measure is base to human being. Basically, scale is very important to identify the size of something from small to big.

Example of the scales:

From big scale to small scale :

Even though there are a lot of scales exist, but we only use 7 scales to see things, i.e. object, interior, building, premise, urban, regional and global.

~1st layer is object.

~2nd layerl is interior.

~3rd layer is building.

~4th layer is premise.

~5th layer is urban.

~6th layer is regional.

~7th layer is global.

LEVEL 100 COURSE INTRO TO BUILT ENVIRONMENT 1997 – 2006

Spatial construction (consist of node and path)

The lecturer also introduce us the spacial construction, which consists of two elements, i.e. node and path.

NODE is a place where a path changes its direction or a plece where a path stop.

PATH is the directions before and after the node. It also is the link between one node to another node.

This two elements always work together.

Example: In Cyber World

For example, when i open Google website (node), it links (path) to Blogger.com (another node); then when i open Yahoo! website (node), it links (path) to Yahoo! Mail (another node).

Sustainable Development

In the lecture 2, we were instructed by Dr. Mohd. Faris Khamidi with the title ‘Sustainable Development Issues and Built Environment’.

Dr. Faris started his lecture with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi—‘When there is LOVE, there is LIFE.’ According to him, a built environment can change the environment if we understanding the sustainable environment.

But, what is the meaning of ‘sustainable development’?

The definition of ‘sustainable development’ is the development that can just fulfill the human needs. It is important in protect the natural environment so that the natural resource and environment can be enjoyed by the future generation.

Sustainable development has divided into 4 category:

1. Environmental sustainability

According to Wikipedia, environmental sustainability is defined as the ability of the environment to continue to function properly indefinitely. This involves meeting the present needs of humans without endangering the welfare of future generations. The goal of environmental sustainability is to minimize environmental degradation, and to halt and reverse the processes they lead to.

2. Economic sustainability

3. Social sustainability

4. Political sustainability.

These 4 categories relate to each other, where this can be shown in the graph below :

From above,

~ Socio-economic is between economic growth and social progress.

~ Eco-efficiency is between economic growth and environmental stewardship.

~ Socio-environmental between environmental stewardship and social progress.

To obtain sustainable development in a built environment, many issues should be considered, such as energy issue, water conservation, design issue, materials and systems issue and water management. From what I know, energy consumption of building and construction is shown below:

~other industries – 62.7%

~production of materials for construction – 10.9%

~operation of building – 10.2%

~operation of business facilities – 9.9%

~transportation related to construction – 5.0%

~construction work – 1.3%

However, there are some challenges ahead in the built environment, which is URBANIZATION. Urbanization means that there are more and more people in a city, where more people means more houses, shops, work-places, roads etc. The demand on the products and services will be increased, and thus increase the demand for land. By the way, if there are more people, then there will be more cities existed, and there are more impact to the environment. Hence, new Ideas, new paradigms, new approaches to building and construction are URGENTLY needed.

Therefore, there is a new house system being introduced, i.e. Dry-Masonry Brick House System (DBHS) as an ‘Adaptable Building’ model. According to Dr. Faris, DBHS is an example of “adaptable building” model, where it is a building system that is worth to be emulated for sustainable housing scheme among developing countries.

From the lecture, I know that during construction of DBHS experimental house in Kumamoto Pref., 98.34% of bricks used in the construction can be reused and the rest 1.66% of the bricks can be RECYCLED. Other parts of the house like steel bolts, nuts and plates can 100% be RECYCLED caused they can be easily recovered and separated.

This means that, DBHS has promotes the concept of 3R, which is reduce-reuse-recycle. Adapting DBHS is relevant and important in the developing countries throughout Asian region, as almost all countries here regard brick as the main building material.

Last but not least, the environment in our mother earth is getting worse from time to time. We should take action and protect the environment immediately before it is too late.