NEW PERSPECTIVES TOWARDS SOCIAL ACCEPTABILITY OF EARTH- CONSTRUCTED BUILDINGS

Abstract

Efforts in the preservation of earth built heritage and the promotion of contemporary earth construction by members of the UNESCO-Chair in Architectures de Terre cultures Constructives et Développement durable, have overcome many challenges associated with the appropriateness of earth as a building material the last two decades. However, negative perceptions remain one of the biggest challenges to date. The Earth Unit has established itself within a South African tertiary institution to address all aspects of earth architecture through teaching, training, and research. A technical and design based approach is driven by many institutions in the promotion of earth construction as a discipline. Although this is one of the best ways to deal with misconceptions and reservations, a direct approach from a social scientific and philosophical stance is equally essential to understand and address negative attitudes associated with raw earth as a building material in contemporary built environments. The latter approach can help to develop a planning strategy for new projects in settlements and cities. This article will identify “Orphic” ideas, attitudes and phenomena, synonymous with “ecologically-sensitive” approaches. Orphic attitudes will be opposed to “Promethean” attitudes that spread via the historical domination of Christianity, science, technology, capitalism, whose attitudinal underpinnings have provided an ideological impetus for ecologically problematic actions. The dominance of the Promethean has resulted in steadily growing ecological crises. Furthermore, upward social mobility and migration patterns, which arguably have arisen from the global spread of Promethean systems, influence the values of city dwellers. These values affect their attitudes and behaviour towards the natural landscape and the built environment. The key impacts of these considerations help to reveal the bigger picture often blurred while strategizing promotion efforts in favour of private and public contemporary earth-constructed buildings

Keywords

• earth construction,behaviour,Promethean,Orphic,ACIDWord count: 5855

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