Suatu sore yang indah (yang hanya datang beberapa kali setiap bulannya), saya mencoba meluangkan waktu untuk sekedar berkontemplasi. Inspirasi ini datang setelah hampir satu jam saya menyadari bahwa, artikel dalam surat kabar yang saya baca sore itu hampir semuanya membahas bencana-bencana alam yang kerap terjadi di dunia. Yang membuat saya lebih prihatin, karena hampir 80% dari bencana-bencana yang disebutkan di dalam surat kabar tersebut terjadi di negeri kita tercinta. Ada apa sih (dengan Cinta)? Apakah kitatidak dapat lagi hidup dalam kedamaian?

Kualitas hidup di lingkungan dewasa ini, telah sangat dalam memberikan teguran bahwa teknologi pembangunan memiliki sisi gelapnya sendiri-sendiri, apapun bentuknya. Percepatan perkembangan dan kemajuan teknologi selalu saja membuat manuasia semakin lupa akan kodratnya sebagai “sahabat” bagi alam. Akibatnya ekologi terancam, permasalahan semakin pelik, bencana terjadi dimana-mana.

Masyarakat layaknya sebuah mata uang, memiliki dua sisi. Sisi pertama telah lama berteriak mengajak untuk memulai perbaikan kualitas lingkungan, sampai-sampai suaranya menjadi parau. Sementara di satu sisi yang lainnya, justru semakin berlomba-lomba merusak.

Dalam dunia desain, khususnya aritektur, baik praktek maupun teori kehidupan urban seolah-olah telah menjadi kelinci-kelinci percobaan, bahan ekperimental, ajang eksplorasi. Pada kondisi ini saya memandang sebuah rancangan kota, apapun bentuknya merupakan juru kunci yang sangat menentukan kondisi lingkungan. Karena pada hakikatnya, produk arsitektur dan desain sudah pasti menempati sebuah ruang. Ruang bagi manusia. Ruang bagi masyarakat. Ruang yang bukan hanya dipengaruhi oleh keberadaan tapak (dalam hal ini lingkungan), melainkan juga akan memberikan pengaruh bagi tapak tersebut.

Saya jadi ingat, sewaktu masa kuliah tingkat 2, sewaktu salah satu dosen kampus, memberikan satu referensi buku The Green Imperative : Natural Design for The Real World, karangan Victor Papanek. Di dalam buku tersebut, dijelaskan betapa seorang perancang yang baik idealnya memiliki kesadaran penuh untuk menciptakan karya yang tidak hanya sekedar bersifat empirik. Karena sebuah rancangan, apapun bentuknya akan mempengaruhi kehidupan banyak orang dalam satu periode tertentu. Dan dilihat dari sisi historis, tentunya kelak rancangan tersebut juga akan menjadi cerminan dari sebuah peradaban tertentu di masanya (masa di mana rancangan tersebut tercipta).

Di dalam buku yang lain (masih dari referensi dosen yang sama), saya mencoba mengingat-ingat inti dari sebuah buku Timeless Way of Building, karangan Christopher Alexander. Dalam buku tersebut dijelaskan bahwa seorang perancang idealnya dapat menciptakan sebuah bangunan yang tidak hanya memiliki bentuk yang estetis, melainkan juga memiliki jiwa, spirit inside. Pada akhirnya membuat saya berasumsi, itulah mengapa bangunan-bangunan pada jaman terdahulu, lebih memiliki arti, memiliki jiwa dan abadi, ikatan emosional yang tinggi. Tidak seperti saat ini, dimana modernisme telah membuang poin-poin penting dalam tahapan merancang, seperti yang telah dijelaskan oleh para dosen kuliah hingga mulutnya berbusa. Berapa bagian dari perancang-perancang jaman sekarang yang masih mengikuti etika dalam merancang??

Percepatan moderinisme berbanding terbalik dengan kesadaran para perancang. Tidak ada lagi jiwa dalam hasil rancangannya. Padahal hasil rancangan seorang perancang harusnya dapat menjadi terjemahan kondisi batin perancang tersebut.

Seperti argumen Sayyed Hossein Nasr dalam kutipan makalahnya yang berjudul The Contemporary Moslem and The Architectural Transformation of the Urban Enviroment of The Islamic World bahwa ”Lingkungan luar yang diciptakan manusia untuk dirinya sendiri tak lebih dari satu cerminan keadaan batinnya”. Sebuah desain lahir sebagai luapan emosi, karakter dan sifat-sifat dari perancangnya. Sehingga dapat dikatakan, dalam suatu waktu, desain tersebut akan menjadi identitas si perancang.

Tapi hakikat manusia sebagai makhluk sosial, kepuasan batin akan tercapai jika desainnya dapat bermanfaat bagi orang lain, dipergunakan oleh orang lain, oleh masyarakat luas. Perancang juga berasosiasi dengan banyak pihak untuk mewujudkan idenya. Eksplorasi konsep, bentuk, material, dan tahapan pembangunan merupakan proses penentu apakah sebuah hasil rancangan akan memberikan pengaruh baik atau justru sebaliknya membawa bencana bagi lingkungan sekitarnya.

Layaknya profesi kedokteran, dunia desain juga membutuhkan kode etik. Etika yang nantinya akan menjadi sebuah aturan main dalam merancang. Ikatan Arsitektur Indonesia (IAI) sudah cukup menaruh beban terhadap hal ini. Terbukti dengan selalu menjadikan Penataran Kode Etik sebagai salah satu agenda pada setiap pelantikan anggota-anggota barunya. Tetapi sekali lagi, seorang perancang, khususnya arsitek tidak pernah bekerja sendirian. Tapi setidaknya seorang perancang yang baik dapat menghasilkan hasil rancangan yang lebih bersahabat dengan alam. Sehingga alam dapat menyerukan kepada dunia untuk meniupkan angin perdamaian di seluruh penjuru dunia.

peace&out

Ira Sophia
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Members of Indonesian Architects Association (IAI)

Also can see on : http://beritahabitat.net/2007/05/09/etika-dalam-desain-aturan-main/

Nostradamus, the most famous astrologer who ever lived, was born in France in 1503 and published his barely scrutable collection of prophecies, The Centuries, in 1555. Each four-line verse (or "quatrain") purported to foretell world events far into the future, and ever since Nostradamus' time devotees have claimed his work accurately predicted wars, natural disasters and the rise and fall of empires.

Yet it is plain to see that Nostradamus couched his "prophetic" verses in language so obscure that the words can be, and have been, interpreted to mean almost anything. What's more, the interpreting is always done after the fact, with the benefit of hindsight, and with the concerted aim of proving the relevance of a given passage to an actual event.

If the aftermaths of past catastrophes are any indication, in the coming weeks and months we can expect a bumber crop of arcane tracts purporting to show beyond doubt that Nostradamus foresaw the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks of September 11, 2001. In fact, thanks to the efforts of anonymous Internet pranksters, the he-told-you-sos have already begun. "Spooky" quatrains allegedly foretelling the events of 9/11 with incredible specificity were circulating online within hours of the first jetliner crash in New York City — completely bogus quatrains, as it turned out. It wasn't a question of whether or not they accurately predicted anything; Nostradamus simply didn't write them.

New York, the 'City of God'???

The first quatrain to hit email inboxes on 9/11 contained the prediction that a "great thunder" would be heard in the "City of God":

"In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb",
The third big war will begin when the big city is burning"

- Nostradamus 1654

Let the interpreting begin. Assuming "the City of God" is New York City, then the "two brothers torn apart by Chaos" must be the fallen towers of the Word Trade Center. The "fortress" is clearly the Pentagon, the "great leader" succumbing to Chaos must be the United States of America, and "the third big war" can only mean World War III.

Spooky, right?

Let's go back and apply a little intellectual honesty to our analysis. What earthly (or unearthly) justification could there possibly be for describing New York City as "the City of God?" Why would the great seer refer to the World Trade Center towers as "two brothers" when a more apt word like "buildings" or "monuments" — or even, egad, "towers" — is at hand? Granted, the word "fortress" is not a completely unreasonable moniker for the Pentagon, but by what stretch of the imagination could one justifiably assert that the United States "succumbed" to the 9/11 attacks?

Faux Nostradamus

Quibbling over individual words is futile anyway, given that Nostradamus didn't even write this passage. He died in 1566, nearly a hundred years before the date given, 1654. The quatrain in question is nowhere to be found in his entire published oeuvre. In a word, it's a hoax.

More precisely, its attribution to Nostradamus is a hoax. The passage was lifted from a Web page (long since deleted from the server that originally hosted it) containing an essay written by college student Neil Marshall in 1996 entitled "Nostradamus : A Critical Analyst". In the essay itself, Marshall admits inventing the quatrain for the purpose of demonstrating — quite ironically, in light of the way it was subsequently misused — how a Nostradamus-like verse can be so cryptically couched as to lend itself to whatever interpretation one wishes to make.

Interestingly, a variant of this faux prophecy turned up in the soc.culture.palestine newsgroup only one day after 9/11 under the heading "They followed his prediction." It went like this:

In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb'
'The third big war will begin when the big city is burning'
- Nostradamus 1654

...on the 11 day of the 9 month that...two metal birds would crash into two tall statues...in the new city..and the world will end soon after"

"From the book of Nostradamus"

Here again, even though the text boasts all the pomp and musty vagueness one finds in Nostradamus' actual writings, it does not exist, in whole or in part, anywhere in The Centuries. This, too, is an Internet hoax, a cheeky elaboration on Neil Marshall's invented quatrain.

'Two steel birds'

Our third example is "spookier" yet:

Subject: Re: Nostradamus

Century 6, Quatrain 97

Two steel birds will fall from the sky on the Metropolis. The sky will burn at forty-five degrees latitude. Fire approaches the great new city (New York City lies between 40-45 degrees)

Immediately a huge, scattered flame leaps up. Within months, rivers will flow with blood. The undead will roam earth for little time.

This passage, it turns out, is not entirely fake. Rather, it is what you might call an "imaginative revision" of an actual verse from The Centuries. The authentic passage on which it is based is usually translated from the French as follows:

The sky will burn at forty-five degrees latitude,
Fire approaches the great new city
Immediately a huge, scattered flame leaps up
When they want to have verification from the Normans.

As you can see, Nostradamus made no mention of "two steel birds" in the original passage, nor did he predict that "the undead will roam the earth." As to the geographical location of New York City, it is found at exactly 40 degrees, 42 minutes, 51 seconds north latitude. So, while it isn't false to say that it lies "between 40-45 degrees," it is imprecise, not to mention an obvious, disingenous ploy to make what Nostradamus actually wrote ("The sky will burn at forty-five degrees latitude") seem germaine to the events of September 11, 2001.

Nostradamus predicts World War III

Specimen #4, also circulating via email, is merely an elaboration of the above:

Nostradamus' prediction on WW3:

"In the year of the new century and nine months,
From the sky will come a great King of Terror...
The sky will burn at forty-five degrees.
Fire approaches the great new city..."

"In the city of york there will be a great collapse,
2 twin brothers torn apart by chaos
while the fortress falls the great leader will succumb
third big war will begin when the big city is burning"

- NOSTRADAMUS

He said this will be bigger than the previous two. 2001 is the first year of the new century and this is the 9th month. New York is located at the 41st degree Latitude.

Once again, a very few words actually written by Nostradamus — individual lines drawn from two disparate quatrains, in fact — have been taken out of context, rearranged, and supplemented with made-up lines by person(s) unknown to make them seem pertinent to the event. The result, as before, is pure bunk. Not even Nostradamus would want to take credit for this "prediction."

Further infos : http://www.nostradamus101.com/