LECTURE 3: Characteristics of The Built Environment

Our 6 elements ( actor, intention, act, rule, site and product ) are continuously being used to see their effects and changes to the built environment.


ACTOR : Mr Wan Burhanuddin Wan Abidin, all 1st year HBP students (2007/08)
INTENTION : The Characteristics of Built Environment - SCALE
ACT : Use our senses by listening, seeing, thinking & follow our heart in making
decisions. Jotting down notes and informations.
RULE : Punctuality. Follow the rules, be in the lecture hall right on time.
SITE : E 48 B ( lecture hall of HBP )
PRODUCT : Getting informations about the characteristics of built environment.


Today, our lecturer discussed about the characteristics of the built environment. Our first discussed characteristic is SCALE. A scale of an object is range from small to large and it depends on which perspective and how far we look at the object. It is a set of levels or numbers which are used in a particular system of measuring things or are used when comparing thing. The scale must be relative to another measure and the measurer is human being. For a gigantic thing or a thing that is very small, scale is no longer important. eg: try to imagine what it would be like to the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk walking through a normal- sized village?


A picture paints a thousand words. Let us look at the picture and make a comparison.




The Milky Way,





The Sun,

Our Mother Earth,




A view of a beautiful landscape,

The plant cells,





The DNA helix,




Eventhough there are a lot of scales exist, but we only use 7 scales to see things - object, interior, building, premise, urban, regional and global. Ranging from the smallest to the largest.




Our production can happen at different scales. The invention of products are based on informations and knowledge. eg: the intention of creating a camera is to capture photos and food-colouring can increase the sales of a certain products because it may makes the food more interesting. So, to meet the demand of people, our products has to be changed from time-to-time.


Today, we have the Occidental and the Oriental in our world. The Occidental is the west and it is relating to the countries of Europe and America while the Oriental is referring to the east. In East, there are developing world and the third world countries. That is why we had the North and South Dialogue so that we can keep up the pace with the West. We have to use a holistic way of looking at the world in whatever scales we are dealing with. There are many layers in the built environment. To understand them, we got to uncover them layers from layers. We highlight, suppress and pick up what we want.

The spatial construction consists of nodes and paths. The node is a place where a path ends or changes direction and the path is always link to the node. eg: our human anatomy is a great way for giving an example. To walk, our brain can send impulses to the muscles so that we can move.

With all these informations, I hope that I can understand the built environment better.