Clinical psychologists in the latter part of the 20th century made use of individual personal attitude towards basic shapes, as an instrument in assessing personality. Now make your emotive and rapid choice between a square , a circle O, and a triangle ∆....
The home loving, security seeking squares came forward all too easily. Those who chose the circle revealed themselves more interested in the rounded objects of pleasure including the beckoning mouth of a pint pot. Whereas the choice of a triangle set the participants aside favouring the sometimes uncomfortable spikes of the intellect. I clearly regretted my initial choice of shape when presented with this conundrum, however am I am pleased now to select the triangular short bread overlooking all other tempting shapes in the box when it is presented to me. This may or may not have a bearing on interpretation of the following observations:
Homes and houses are conventionally square, however reflection on the shape of the individual basic building block reveals that its shape tends to influence the eventual look of the building. Rectangular bricks and blocks tend to produce square or rectangular houses whereas sapling trees when used by our ancient forefathers tended to produce the Round House of the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron ages. New building materials such as glass, plastic clad sheeting etc. can and do add to the production of innovative building designs. The above is certainly not an absolute law, merely an interesting observation. The round shaped dwelling makes space within it very accessible whereas the rectangular or square structure loses space at the 90 degree corners. This shortfall is compensated for by furnishings or TV filling the lost space.
Alternative configurations where they have been proposed, have tended to be more a feature of artistic expression in addition to meeting client requirement, or indeed absolute necessity.
A move away from the conventional rectangle to a Hexagonal shape or multi Hexagonal for instance yields benefits in internal space utilization and further may create versatile areas where personnel and material access may provide advantages. Multi hexagonals such as that shown below provide us with the opportunity to use the internal hexagon for the optimum “Radial Service” of traffic to people who may inhabit the living space.
The inclusion of a “Dry” Separator Toilet at the planning stage will rid the user community of a massive investment in utilities infrastructure which otherwise would have to be installed. A retreat from water based sanitation systems, means that any structure used for the purpose must be “collection friendly”. In other words it is necessary to make the physical collection of solid waste odour free safe and without any hazard. Onward movement of waste containers within the Multi hexagonal building is now as user friendly, hazard free, and simple as it can be. This process may now be conducted very simply with modern design and materials technology to aid. It is also possible to convert existing properties to this Dry Sanitation collection system although it would not be as efficient.
The knock on effect of the change results in the community being ability to recycle waste:
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Total Nutrients back to agriculture from whence it came!
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Reduce Drinking water consumption by at least 35%
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Stop land pollution by the Water Companies putting Heavy Metal Contaminated BioSolid to agricultural land.
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Eliminate 42,900,000,000. Kilowatts from the energy consumption of England and Wales.
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Enable Food Security measures to be put in place for Local Communities.
Along with a host of other advantages not to mention the £2 billion cost Londoners must face to prevent their Water Supplier being sued again by the EC for breach of regulations.
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