behind the LINES

Architecture is life, or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is

the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived
today or ever will be lived.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
EKISTICS THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS
2.0 EKISTICS THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS
At the end of the lesson the students must be able to:
1. Understand the origin of ekistics
2. Connect the past ekistics or human settlement to the present one.
3. Understand better the ekistics of the present then renew or connect it to
the future.
Human settlements are no longer satisfactory for their inhabitants
economically speaking
- dont have the means to satisfy their basic needs
- remain homeless or live in houses of very low quality
social point of view
- man appears to be lost in the big cities
- feels abandoned by progress in many small towns/villages
political level
- new types of societies and new types of people have not found their
corresponding political institution.
technical point of view
- most settlements dont have the facilities indispensable to their proper
functioning in spite of the technological achievements
aesthetically
- the ugliness of human settlements around
creating better conditions for tomorrow can be understood better if we look
into the different elements of the human settlements
Human Settlements & their Elements
Human settlements are settlements inhabited by man. Human settlements
should satisfy man.
Human settlements consist of:

a. the CONTENT (man, alone or in societies)

b. the CONTAINER (or the physical settlement, which consists both natural
and man-made or artificial elements)
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When taken together make up the human settlement whose largest
possible dimensions are defined by the geographic limits of the earths
surface.

The total surface of the Earth:

the largest possible container of man
the whole cosmos of man
the cosmos of the anthropos
the anthropocosmos
Such definition of human settlement implies that it is not merely 3dimensional but 4-dimensional. . .
- man & society change continuously and by so doing, create functions
which unlike shells (which can be conceived in 3-dimensional terms)
require a fourth dimension ---TIME in order to be carried out
- a 3-dimensional conception of a settlement is very like a film which
suddenly stops and arrest all the figures in their movements. A still
photograph of a building looks real only if there are no human figures in the
pictures; if people have been arrested in the process of walking in front of
the building, then the picture is frozen, unreal.
A human settlement needs both categories of elements in order to
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come into existence
man alone or in groups, if not settled anywhere cannot be said to form a
settlement or even a part of one.
once he does settle somewhere even temporary, we have a temporary,
elementary settlement in which a pattern of relationship between man and
his container comes into existence for a certain period of time (one day,
many days, or one season) regardless of whether the container is a natural
one ( a cave) or man-made (tent or a building).
Nature alone, without man, cannot be said to form a settlement or even a
container, since it has no human content

 a man-made settlement is only the corpse or the abandoned shell of a

settlement, which must be considered dead as in any other corpse.
some people call dead settlement a settlement but this is no more
correct calling the shell of a snail a snail.
term is used in many such cases for reasons of simplicity, but this is not
accurate and should be used with care to avoid confusion.
2 basic elements of human settlements (Doxiadis)
THE CONTENT AND THE CONTAINER
This can be further subdivided into 5 categories (in hierarchical order)
(Container) NATURE providing the foundation upon which the
settlement is created and the frame within it can function
(Content) MAN an individual, Homo Sapiens
- biological needs (oxygen, nutrition)
- sensation and perception (5 senses)
- emotional needs (satisfaction, security, sense of belonging)
- moral values
(Content) SOCIETY a group of individuals sharing the same culture,
values, norms, and traditions
(Container) SHELLS or the structures within which man lives and carries
out his different functions, the built component.
(Container) NETWORKS or the natural and man-made system which
facilitate the functioning of the settlement, or links within
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the settlement, roads, communications systems, utilities, etc.
Hierarchy of human settlements
a hamlet, a neighborhood, a small village
a community, a town
a city, an urban area
a metropolis
a conurbation a composite of cities, metropolises, urban areas
a megalopolis merging of two or more metropolises with a population
of 10M or more; a 20th century phenomenon (Megalopolis - concept coined
by Jean Gottmann for urban complexes in the Northeastern United States.)
a hierarchy of settlements is characterized by a few large cities, some
medium-sized cities, and many small settlements.