Architect Frank Harmon, interviewed in the previous issue of Dwell (Dec/Jan 2008), suggests that good architecture respects climate and region, and this is why vernacular architecture is inherently sustainable: it makes use of what is available locally - materials, labour and building methods that suit local conditions - and produces buildings that are comfortable without the need for climate-fighting technologies.
A colleague of mine recently suggested that the sustainability performance of a building is 80% design. The rest is some combination of technological interventions and changes in building management and operational procedures. For example, if you want to reduce the amount of waste coming out of a building and ending up on a landfill site, you might set up an on-site recycling operation to create new products; or you might reduce the load on municipal sewage treatment works by using biogas digesters to turn some of it into a useful energy stream. More likely, you will take the less ambitious approach of looking at what products and resources are brought into the building, and how packaging and other waste is handled and disposed of, and set up waste sorting systems to send it off to recycling plants. Yet, in many countries, even basic recycling is rare; and while incentives and penalties would help focus minds, part of the issue is still design. Buildings should be arranged and fitted out to make waste management an obvious part of doing business.
In dealing with waste, energy, water and other aspects of building operations, there are some things that might take place without people in the building even knowing it (like grey water recycling or using solar-generated electricity), but we can't expect that technology will sufficiently reduce environmental impacts without some change in behaviour, so there must be awareness. This is why some buildings are designed deliberately to have occupants open and close ventilation openings and adjust sun shades throughout the day, when it is perfectly possible to have this done by electric devices run on timers and temperature sensors. The combination of active and passive systems is a design choice that, again, depends on regional and site conditions, and what the building will be used for.
Sustainability performance is about a lot more than resource management, and one of the less tangible aspects is social wellbeing. On its own, this is a worthy design consideration, but there are obvious financial and economic impacts related to how people experience buildings. Or, judging by the ongoing development of big box stores across North America, perhaps it's not so obvious.
During my brief and uncomfortable stint doing traffic impact studies for big box stores while I was based in Toronto, I was amazed at the complete lack of sensitivity of companies like Wal-Mart towards local conditions. If the box and its parking didn't fit on a potential site for a new store, they would rather abandon the site than change the building. They had a formula, and it worked. It was efficient - or so it appeared to them - and they saw no need to change. Over time, the formula does indeed change, as evidenced by current explorations into ways to make big boxes somehow greener; but once a path is set, the designers and other professionals tasked with rolling out acre after acre of steel and tarmac are instructed to stick with the plan.
With this mindset, sticking solar panels on the roof and installing grey water recycling and low-flow toilets might win green points, but it will do little to improve sustainability performance in its broader sense. I confess that I was a regular Toronto customer of Home Depot - another big box retailer - because of the convenience, huge selection of products, and reasonable prices. I am sure that's why people will continue to flock to shop at these places as long as they are able. But I also suspect that the likes of Wal-Mart and Home Depot have never seriously considered whether they could attract more customers through a building design strategy that is genuinely responsive to sustainability principles.
Will more people come if there is natural lighting, fresh air, variety of local building materials, aesthetically pleasing building designs, and a view of the adjacent forest? MPreis, a chain of design-conscious Austrian supermarkets, thinks the answer is 'yes', and have built dozens of supermarkets that respond to the local context. According to an article in the same issue of Dwell as the interview with Frank Harmon, "each MPreis market is architecturally unique and linked to the others not through the same front entrance or predictable location of the deli, but by an effort to make MPreis and modern design synonymous." Put one of these next to a standard Canadian Loblaws supermarket, and you are bound to get shoppers preferring to hang out at MPreis. As the move towards organic food products has demonstrated, it's not all about price and efficiency and the perfectly shaped apple.
One last thought. To make buildings that respond to the natural landscape, there actually needs to be a natural landscape, and for the vast majority of North American developments now being built (whether big box stores or residential neighbourhoods), that is not the case. Developers invariably clear-cut and level the site before plonking down the box or house or apartment block. A design-conscious approach will have to change more than the building design process. It will have to change the whole approach to site selection and preparation. This will cost more, but if MPreis is right, people do respond to high quality environments, making them financially worthwhile. And we will all benefit from kinder cities.
And finally, an example from architect Eduardo Cadaval in Mexico, making design decisions based on what's available locally.
[Update on 30 January 2008: Here's a report on green building design analysis software.]
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Posted by: ophelia fletcher | 19 August 2008 at 12:52 AM