December 06, 2013

Pardon Me, May I Borrow Your Umbrella?

In a recent issue of the Journal of Architectural Education, Research Director Billie Faircloth asks a simple question: How is knowledge of the environment acquired?  

Excerpt from "Pardon Me, May I Borrow Your Umbrella?"

Journal of Architectural Education, Volume 67, Issue 2, 2013 

The fully considered response to "How is knowledge of the environment acquired?" is not one solely based on synthesis of data collected by a device—a weather station, temperature sensor, or suite of sensors. Nor is it one solely based on a methodology which compresses many years of weather data into one "typical" annual data set. The answer to this question requires us to engage the pursuit of a more thorough epistemic interrogation as it may be hypothesized that for some of us numerical values collected from the environment—irradiance, sky cover, temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, wind speed and wind direction—are a proxy for our lived-out bodily experiences of the environment. We hypothesize that the more we get to know the metrics of a particular micro or macro climate, the more we may advantageously inhabit it with our bodies and buildings. And this is precisely the hypothesis that should leave us wondering, "What if?"

 
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