Page One

1. Introduction

For more than two years now, ecotecture has been hailed as the USM’s Architecture Program's niche, forte, strength, concentration, specialty - something deliberated upon the instruction of the Ministry of Higher Education to differentiate one university from another. Despite the supposed usage of this concept, especially in the design studio, there does not seem to be any elaboration of it anywhere, let alone a common stand as to what it is. It is envisaged that this “open interpretation” would just merely promote relativism where people, especially students, shall be more befuddled by more labels - green, sustainable and the like.

Since I proposed several terms to identify USM's Architecture Niche, and the Architecture Section chose ecotecture, and since the Architecture Section has not come up with any defiinition except antagonizing other sections in HBP, I feel compelled to put this in writing so that it would help clarify the many misconceptions and misinterpretations surrounding it. And if need be, this may even be a taught-course in HBP going strictly by USM's  Accelerated Program for Excellence (The APEX).

2. Arriving at the Definition of Ecotecture

Ecotecture, a hybrid of the Greek oikos (house) and architecture (Illustration 1), literally means "house technique". To get a better feel for the term, there is a need to see the context in which oikos has been used, especially in economiy and ecology (Illustration 2). ecotecture gets further defined as 'to/house technique".

A house is more than just "a building in which people live". Illustration 3 shows that word house may mean the state, the mechanism for running a state...

And Webster dictionary lists out as follows:  ""1. residence for human beings". 2. a household. 3. (often cap.) a family, including ancestors and descendants: the great houses of France; the House of Hapsburg. 4. a building for any purpose: a house of worship. 5. a theater, concert hall, or auditorium: a vaudeville house. 6. the audience of a theater or the like. 7. a place of shelter for an animal, bird, etc. 8. the building in which a legislative or official deliberative body meets. 9. (cap.) the body itself, esp. of a bicameral legislature: the House of Representatives. 10. a quorum of such a body." If house is home, then the earth is also a home (Illustration 3). Ecotecture then is about placing, locating, siting whatever we need to place on earth, and making the object "at home".

3. Siting Problem

The problem with siting, i.e. placing an object on site may be seen in Illustration 4. Inhabitants of the site (humans, flora & fauna) may have to be displaced, the earth reshaped. What would be severed is not so much the inhabitants, but the relationship between them (Illustration 4) - human-human, human-earth, human-flora, human-fauna.

When the relationships between the elements to be displaced, the object to be located and natural elements such as air and the celestial bodies are plotted out, the links appear to be very complicated (illustration 5) but may be understood like we understand the fractal (Illustration 6).

Illustration 4: The inter-inhabitant relationship to be dislocated.

Illustration 5: The complex relationship of the inhabitants to nayure.

4. Back to Basic.

To understand the production of the meaning of ecotecture therefore, we have to go back to the basic Production Model  (Illustration 7) which says everyone (actor) act to produce something all the time. That the act of production must follow rules, and the product produced, located somewhere (on a site) would depend so much on one's intention.

4. Application of Model & Definition of Ecotecture

The application of this formula may be seen in the 1997 Penang Declaration of Architecture for Millennium 3 (Illustration 8) where the six elements are all covered in this definition of what architecture architecture should be (as opposed to what it is now). The translation is as follows:

"We, Malaysian students of architecture, being part of the global architecture community, (dengan penuh hemah dan kesadaran)declare that:

1. that architecture belongs to man [actor] and that we create for their holistic well-being.

2. that the earth is the site [site] entrusted upon us to place our product to be inherited by the generations to come.

3. that nature is our source of rules [rules] which we shall study to bring about continuity and balance in our creation.

4. that knowledge is our tool [to act] in our production.

5. In the name of the Ruler of the Nature, our creation [product] is just for Him.

6. Viva Architecture!" [intention].

Putting what we create "at home" therefore would require what has been declared - that we understand humans, law and place. The Penang Declaration of Architecture is therefore an operative definition of ecotecture.

We may also diagramatically put this definition as follows:

Actor	Intention	Rule	Act	Site	Product
Architecture Community (students, architects et al)	Long Live (Sustainable)Architecture! or Ecotecture	Law of Nature	Produce With Knowledge	Planet Earth	Creator-Approved

The definition may then be reworded in any way we want.

5. Applying Ecotecture on Project Site

The year two architecture eco-tourism project of UiTM Perak may just be appropriate for the deployment of ecotecture as a guiding principle, concept, philosophy. Illustration 9 (area in yellow) shows the site delineated as Territory 1 which the students have identified for development.

By considering other site elements such as primary and secondary circulation, the circulatory axes identified may extend the site for development (Illustration 10) to cover a larger area making the potential site for the development of ecotecture a part of the whole settlement, community and nature.

Illustration 10: Extended Site for Proposed Ecotecture

To add functionality to the site, we have to superimpose the site plan over the masterplan (Illustration 11). The proposed site is located in the Coastal Protection Zone, and can be of mixed use. Now here is the opportunity to sugest that the latest (or even the traditional) system for coastal monitoring and potection be used. If there is a need for a tower, it would function as a lighthouse, beacon, monument, radio transmitter/ receiver, viewing tower for water traffic control, and the like. There is then a lot of room for design ideas to flourish.

6. Conclusion

Must an ecotecture project be sustainable? The 2012 video shows that the predicted alignment of the sun, earth and the black hole in the centre of the milky way shall bring about a global change, most probably in the form of a large scale calamity.

Illustration1:

Illustration 2:

Illustration 3: House

Illustration 6: Fractal, may be understood from its formula.

Illustration 7:

Illustration 8: Definition of Ecotecture.

Illustration 9: UiTM Students' Proposal

Illustration 11: Deriving Building Use from Masterplan.

Illustration 12: Sustainability?

When that happens, that would also be the expiry date of the whole development. What sustainability are we talking about then? This is something that we can share here.<