rally manage rainwater, reduce the risk of flooding, capture carbon, and improve water quality. It is concerned with protecting, restoring, and imitat- ing the hydrological functions in the built environment. In cities and urban areas, this network can extend across the landscape and its architecture in elements that accumulate rainwater, green roofs, tree plantings, permeable pavements, and other drainage capa- bilities of urban landscapes. When English botanist Roy Claph- man coined the term ecosystem 90 years ago, Le Corbusier had recent- ly published Towards a New Archi- tecture . Here, Le Corbusier exposes his well-known idea of housing as "a machine for living in" where "baths, sun, hot-water, cold- water, warmth at will, conservation of food, hygiene …” 12 are provided for a healthier and more complete life. When speaking of the machine, Le Corbusier referred to these op- erational qualities of the dwelling, from the function and rationality of the architectural order, but he did not define how that machine for living is provided with the necessary supplies. He partially takes it for granted that water and energy are connected to the house from the urban matrixes. That confidence in urban infrastruc- ture, after several generations, ended up dissociating us from the environ- mental processes related to those that previously had a direct link to the environment. Deep down, we continue to build in the same way as we did 200 years ago. The materials and their techniques have been perfected and the programs have evolved, but the discoveries of science in relation to the ecosystem have not changed the way we design buildings.
Le Corbusier. Vers une Architecture. Paris: G. Cres [1923]. Edición original. Le Corbusier. Vers une Architecture. Paris: G. Cres [1923]. Original edition. ↤
LA MÁQUINA Se ha propuesto que la historia del mundo a partir de la revolución industrial nos ha introducido en una nueva era o período de la historia de la Tierra apropiadamente llamado El Antropoceno. 9 El hombre, a través de procesos mecánicos, físicos y químicos a gran escala ha logrado interferir en las grandes fuerzas de la naturaleza, interviniendo o apresuran- do procesos climáticos, biofísicos y evolutivos a una escala planetaria. La forma de habitar del ser humano, que por milenios fue la villa, empieza a transformarse en ciudad. En 1890, 200 millones de personas vivían en ciudades, número que en poco más de 100 años llegará a 3 billones. 10 Este acelerado proceso evolutivo vino de la mano con el desarrollo de la conectividad de sistemas dentro de la ciudad. Esta infraestructura, incluyendo luego cines o pe- luquerías, son los servicios que definen a la ciudad y que nos sacan de la precaria situación del salvaje de Laugier,
Ten years after Towards a New Architecture, in 1935, Sir Arthur Tansley refined the definition of ecosystem by recognizing the integration of the living community with its physical environment as a fundamental unit of ecology 13 , with systems of various scales ranging from the atom to the universe. The interaction of living and non-living com- ponents (biotic and abiotic) or the exchange of energy along the trophic chains, make communities inseparable from their environment and together form a single physical system. Meanwhile, his contemporary Aldo Leopold (Fig 3), wrote in 1949 his most outstanding essay, The Land Ethic. Here, Leopold proposes a new relationship between society and nature, a third ethic, no longer just man-man or man-society, but man-nature, widening the frontiers of community to include soil, water, plants, animals, and land as a unit. " A Land Ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from the con-
(9) Crutzen, P. J. (2006). The “anthropocene”. In Earth system science in the anthropocene (pp. 13-18). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. (10) Steffen, W., Crutzen, P. J., & McNeill, J. R. (2007). The Anthropocene: are humans now overwhelming the great forces of nature. AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment, 36(8), 614-621.
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