The use of building materials and structural systems in the architectural environment

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Sandra Lynne Alberg (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Advisor
Jane H. Crow

Abstract: From every direction today one hears the alarming news of the deteriorating quality of our natural environment—destruction of wildlife habitat; depletion of our natural resources; over population; pollution of the air and water. With this recognition, however, has come a rallying to preserve, if possible, the ecological balance of man's natural surroundings. At the same time, man has been equally guilty of neglecting the environment in which he lives and moves—his man-made surroundings. His cities have grown in chaotic sprawls; endless ribbons of super highways cut across the landscape and divide cities, leaving a wake of competing billboards; buildings rise higher and higher, as if to blot out the sun; there is an incoherency and formlessness in much of these, his man-made surroundings—a sort of visual pollution. One of the most outspoken critics of this visual insensitivity has been author and artist, Gyorgy Kepes. In his book, Education of Vision, Kepes bluntly states that our man-made environment . . . has not grown according to nature but has been shaped by one-sided and shortsighted interests. The appearance of things in our man-made world no longer reveal their character; images imitate forms; forms cheat functions; functions are robbed of their natural sources emanating from human needs. Our cities, our buildings . . . are often without visual integrity. The world that modern man has constructed by and large lacks sincerity and scale (14:1).

Additional Information

Publication
Thesis
Language: English
Date: 1972

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