Interesting Thing I Found.

“The first traceable concepts of environmental designs focused primarily on solar heating, which began in Ancient Greece around 500 BCE. At the time, most of Greece had exhausted its supply of wood for fuel, leading architects to design houses that would capture the solar energy of the sun. The Greeks understood that the position of the sun varies throughout the year. For a latitude of 40 degrees in summer the sun is high in the south, at an angle of 70 degrees at the zenith, while in winter, the sun travels a lower trajectory, with a zenith of 26 degrees. Greek houses were built with south-facing façades which received little to no sun in the summer but would receive full sun in the winter, warming the house.”

This fascinated me; we tend to think of environmental design as a new ideal, one which relates to stopping global warming and saving pandas by avoiding bamboo. It also led me to consider how innovative the human race has been and we see ourselves as having progressed since then, the technologies we have may be drastically different but perhaps we have not changed much, only our exposure. Could this be detrimental to us? I mean yes we can adapt new things but do we almost neglect the world around us in this strive for new? Should we almost seek to emulate the way of life of our ancestors and see how our perception of what is important changes?

I believe we find ways to design around our world rather than to embrace it, we try to use materials that are eco-friendly but should we actually do more to live with our world. What do you think?