5 Dwellings and the built environment

A defining characteristic of humans is the need for shelter and the capacity to design and build such shelters. Over thousands of years, this capacity has evolved from the level of single-family dwellings made of found materials to massive apartment or condominium structures at one scale and portable, light-weight camping shelters made from synthetic materials at another scale. Now human societies are engaged in a major new effort to redesign shelters to be sustainable, with minimum or zero requirements for non-renewable energy, use of materials whose composition and processing represents minimal environmental impact, and explicit use of physics to manage the temperature, ventilation, moisture, lighting, acoustics, and other elements of comfort under variable (and possibly challenging) climatic conditions.

Early human societies eventually organized and built villages that have evolved into towns, cities, and now vast urban megalopolises. These required a larger number of additional structures that are highly interconnected: places for buying goods, places to eat, storehouses, workplaces, meeting spaces, schools, hospitals, banks, public safety and military bases, places of worship, sports arenas, theaters, museums, transportation centers, factories, offices, research & development facilities, etc. Conduits for transportation vehicles, aqueducts, sewage & drainage, power distribution, parks & recreation facilities, and other elements of modern infrastructure add to the built environment. As the majority of earth’s population has settled in condensed urban environments, while the remainder plays essential roles in growing and transporting food, the needs for complex, sustainable, and resilient built environments has become one of the critical needs for future human survival and well-being.