Water in dwellings : nature's water as an element in urban domestic architecture

Abstract

"What does a fish know of water in which it swims all it's1 life? What does a man know of nature of which he is an integral part? The ancient answer is: he knows and he knows not." Baidyanath Saraswati. Nature was an arena of man in early societies, where attitudes towards nature were a result entirely of his of his intellectual capacity of the natural environment. Infact coherence with natural assets through generations established unseparated relationship with the environment. Man through the ages, through popular wisdom, philosophies, religions and sciences, has tried to understand their place in nature, their linkage with the universe. Coincide of man and natural setting, is a result through the revolutionary process of years, and it is presumed that irrevocable combination between man and natural elements in early civilizations rooted to modern environment and societies. Modern era, from the beginning of the 17th centuary, the society has been dominated by a scientific - technical worldview, where man is regarded as the central player. Industrial revolution was it's original and direct consequence. Experimental technological development created a new confidence in man. The shadow side of this turning was the disintegration of a coherent cosmology and the danger of a catastrophe. With the new machine age the forces of nature were harnessed, the face of the earth was drastically altered, and the "new man" began to look at himself as the master of nature, the matter of history and matter of all. The traditional vision of man, on the contrary is Cosmo centric. Man is made up four or five cosmic elements. The cosmic order that governs the dynamism of all reality, envelopes human life, creates awareness and signifies patterns of culture. As a result, the cosmic equilibrium is maintained both in nature and culture. The idea, that the world was created in phase made the elements structured in sequences. In the beginning was a state of nothingness. Although this nothingness is described not as an absolute void. Before the earth was created, everything was water, or cloud, or nothing, nothing at all but two eggs which stone like gold. Water is a primordial element, which under lays certain creations, myths and stories around the world. The Egyptian Heliopolitan creation story recounts that the sun - god Atum(Re) reposed in the primordial ocean(Nun). In Assyro - Babylonian mythology, first the Gods and subsequently all beings arose from the fusion of salt water (Tiamat) and sweet water (Apsu). The holy books Hindus explain that all inhabitants of the earth emerged from the primordial sea. At the beginning of the Judeo - Christian story of creation, the spirit of God creates a firmament in the midst of the waters to divide the waters. In the Koran are the words "we have created every living thing from water." In the human civilization, role of water shows that present day water designers come from a longstanding tradition. Through human history, water has been realized to be the source of life. It was by springs, rivers and lakes that over ancestors settled. They decorated their wells and cisterns to pay homage to the deities of their life - giving waters. Then and now, the survival of towns and cities has depended on a source of pure water. For the reason it's need is deep in our collective unconscious and keeps us from forgetting the preciousness and the mystery of water, if we look through our history, we can see this appreciation continuing up to the present.