ABSTRACT

Environmental design only became a coherent theme of education in the construction industry during the 1960s. Even then it was preoccupied with energy rather than the broader concerns of sustainable development. Conceptually, however, the environmental tradition exists in texts that are the very bedrock of architecture and building design. In Vitruvius, for instance, comfort and climate are central to the tripartite model of utility, beauty and commodity. Vitruvius declared that the site of cities, the direction of streets and the orientation of buildings should be determined by environmental factors (Hawkes, 1996, pp10–11). The very nature of building design was the primary agent in the mediation between internal comfort and the external environment. Vitruvius was the first theoretician to recognize that architecture had a part to play in affording shelter which exploited the resources of nature (sun and wind) rather than excluded them.