In David Leatherbarrow’s seminar on Architecture and the Natural World (Arch 811), asked the question about ecological and technological determinism. Beginning with Banham’s claims about the evolution of conditioning equipment in buildings and the complex dynamics of the natural environment, tried to situate the designer’s work within that highly determined web. The challenge seems to [...]
Environmental Accounting: Waste and Value
“Emergy” means waste, it also means value, and so poses a fundamental question for environmental accounting.
Emergy is Howard Odum’s neologism for embodied energy or energy memory, the total energy used in the production or preparation of a product or process, whether natural or artificial. Put the other way, it accounts for all the energy transformations [...]
Odum: Cascades of Power
It is all about POWER.
One of Howard Odum’s most compelling ideas concerns the cascade of energy (food) that develop in established ecosystems.The diagram by Thomas Abel illustrates the classic example: the large amount of photosynthesizing plants required to support a smaller population of herbivores, who in turn support a smaller population of carnivores, and so [...]