Elaboration 64

Animals, lacking the freedom of foresight, cannot build their nests with the damage to environment and climate in mind. Man could do so, therefore 'should' do so. Today, we see all about us the results of building-design as ritual, as fashionable, conforming to the rule: 'the least usable volume by the most energy losing surface' (see the University of Nijmegen). Buildings that are 'not' grown-over, (and railway-lines, highways, etc.) damage the climate not only because of occupying soil, they also damage by catching radiation that is (as speedily as possible) passed on as heat into the free air. Living in huge concrete hutments, with the necessary artificial lighting and so on, only 'seems' illogical to many. A question, again, of merely changing one's ideas, one's customary thinking. Naturally, the artificial lighting will be converted into warmth, but it all is far better controllable than in a glass sheettype, a needle-type building, in which, after all, for many hours a day, artificial lighting remains in use. When we see a man walking the Moon and come back safely (on television), it should be impossible to also see the utter human misery in collapsed buildings through an earthquake. We can easily house everybody on earth in modern, up to date, subterranean buildings that are earthquake proof, or earthquake resistent to a high degree. The soil-covered dome is the form par excellence. It may crack, but the scales will not come down easily. This, of course is the more easy when three zero's are taken off the 5,000,000,000. The buildings then, 'participate' in vegetative growth, instead of ruining every green aspect we see about us. The (so called) Psychological Laboratory, in reality a laboratory for psychology (pseudology), that I am in now, could have been built with half the materials and a quarter of cost, as a half sphere. Its cubic meters of volume could be trebbled or doubled by using all the materials. Even in cube form it would have been cheaper and would save an enormous amount of surface potential for the energy to go out. Builders should know that the surface-to-volume ratio is important for the use of materials AND the continuous energy waste. Size automatically makes the ratio favourable, next comes form, (sphere, half-sphere, short cylinder, half short cylinder, cube, ...) and that is that. Sheets, boards, needles, pyramids, sieve forms, etc. are purposeful wasters. From the very entrance up till the merest nook and niche, the stupidity glares one straight in the face here, in this laboratory.