showcase of young South African architects

The Iziko SA National Gallery is hosting the Daimler Chrysler SA Architecture Award Exhibition until 30 March. From Andrew Horn's return to thatching, to Heinrich Wolff's urban eco-design in Du Noon, this should be an interesting show. From the Saturday Argus [requires subscription]:

An admirable humanitarian approach is exemplified by Zimbabwe-born and Johannesburg-based Heather Dodd, who pinpoints the urgency facing the South African government to embrace the fact that forming communities depends on housing. The negative impact of a lack of sensitive fore-thought keeps a legacy of neglect and cruelty alive on our doorsteps in the Cape Flats and horrifically engineered sub-economic housing remains the breeding ground of gangsterism and depravity.

Pointing out that she is "trying to make neighbourhoods", Dodd mentions a "spatial fabric" and social structure that is influenced by and indeed shapes the experience of the individuals who live in the structures she designs.

Exactly. If we don't provide the environment needed to get the social structures right, as part of building cities, we can forget about sustainability.

community housing can play a leadership role

A year ago I would have assumed that it would be difficult to incorporate measures in low-cost community housing that would improve the sustainability performance of the buildings. For one thing, budgets are very tight. For another, community housing projects are led by government departments that tend to put carbon impacts low on their agendas. They have bigger issues to worry about, what with huge housing backlogs and tenants who can barely pay the rent and buy groceries every month.

Today, the challenges are the same, but the response is starting to change. I've blogged previously about the Cape Town Kuyasa housing project that incorporates solar water heating, insulated ceilings and energy-efficient lighting (and was a CDM project under the Kyoto Protocol).

Now in Toronto, the Community Housing Corporation (CHC) even has a green plan manager who is cutting the greenhouse gas emissions produced by their projects, and cutting their own costs along the way.

On a tour [of one of the CHC buildings], the manager points out all the green fixtures: low-flow toilets and shower heads in all 215 apartments; energy-efficient fridges, stoves and washers; compact fluorescent light bulbs in every socket; new and well-sealed balcony doors; and, in the basement, four spanking new efficient boilers. The exhaust is recaptured on the roof and used to preheat the air circulating into the hallways.

And this is not only in new buildings:

So far, the housing corporation has spent around $90 million on energy retrofits and thus cut its annual greenhouse gas emissions by 19,000 tonnes – the equivalent of taking about 10,000 cars off the road every year.

What makes this achievement even more remarkable is that this ecological saving is coming off an already small footprint. These tenants are "not living in 3,000-square-foot houses in the suburbs and driving their SUVs 50 miles to work and back every day," they are the city's poor. But there are lots of them, occuping 2,000 buildings run by the CHC, and only a few buildings have received this sustainability makeover, so the potential carbon reduction for the city is significant. And it's not being done for ethical reasons, but purely as a cost saving measure. Other developers should be taking note.

green architecture is not about solar panels

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.]

low-cost solar roof

Taking the solar roof to new heights, an Argentine scientist has designed a low-cost solar roof that is more sophisticated than any other I've seen, performing both heating and cooling functions. As one of the Treehugger post's commenters has noted, the devil is in the details - but I like the idea that this system can perform more than one function, and still be affordable.

cooling buildings the smart way

Centralised refrigeration systems have the potential to achieve the dual benefit of reducing total energy consumption and reducing demand during peak periods.

A station at the Yalongwan Holiday Resort in China is being built by Hainan Guodianhuade Energy Investment Co. Ltd. to reduce the use of traditional air conditioning. It will make ice during the night, when energy demand is low, and send cooled air to buildings during the day. The project, upon completion, is projected to save 15 million kwh of electricity and 2 million cubic metres of liquefied petroleum gas every year, compared with traditional decentralised cooling systems.

eat this, dude

Airborne pollutants are eating away at stone buildings - national treasures - in Italy, and now there's a technology that can be used on the outside of buildings to turn pollutants into harmless nitrates and sulphates that can be washed away with rainwater.

The key to the solution is a natural process known as photocatalysis, which, in the presence of light, breaks down carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, benzene, and other pollutants. It achieves this by dramatically speeding up the oxidation that converts those substances into less harmful compounds, such as water, carbon dioxide, and nitrates. The photocatalyzer TX Active was developed by researchers at Italcementi Group. It is essentially a blend of titanium dioxide, and can be incorporated into paint, plaster, and mortar, as well as cement. In turn, the compound can be used almost anywhere in an urban environment, including repainting walls, plastering new and older homes, and repaving streets when needed.

[Source: Pristine Planet]

slow train coming

There is nothing yet to force Cape Town developers to incorporate sustainable features in their buildings. At least, no regulations; but there's a quiet revolution gaining momentum that will soon change the building industry.

The first office building to be built in Cape Town with anything resembling green credentials was the BP head office, completed around 2003 in the V&A Waterfront. With solar panels, rainwater collection and a few energy-saving design features, the building remains the city's most well-known green building. It would not achieve a very good rating under formal green accreditation schemes such as LEED, BREEAM or Green Star, but it was a trail blazer.

This BP building helped raise awareness of green building design among Cape Town's architects and engineers, but it only happened because of the global transformation of BP's image 'Beyond Petroleum'. In fact, the absence of a strong local driver for the development of green buildings in Cape Town may be one reason why some of the BP building's green systems aren't working as intended.

Sustainable processes and technologies are pointless if there is no commitment to keep them going. If you want waste to be reduced, sorted and recycled, you need people who occupy the building and manage its operations to believe in waste management as part of a broader sustainability strategy.

Today, the context is different. While there is still no legislative imperative to get sustainable systems installed and operating in South Africa's buildings, there is another force at work. Just as the groundswell of public opinion has forced more politicians to consider environmental issues and brought them, however reluctantly, to the Bali negotiating table, public opinion is also shaping the markets that guide developers.

If it achieved nothing else, the BP building did play a role in evolving public awareness that is now encouraging Aquacor to plan the Red Brick Building in Cape Town's inner city. The property developer is placing strong marketing emphasis on the incorporation of solar water heating, grey water recycling, energy-efficient lighting and on-site electricity generation in the block of flats. With construction only scheduled to begin in March 2008, recent advertisements claim that 70% of the units are already sold.

Probably the first building in Cape Town that will take green building to the next level will be the planned extension of the Cape Town International Convention Centre. (Rendering of the extension is in the foreground of the picture, taken from Skyscraper City.) Competing in a global market, the CTICC has no choice but to ensure that it achieves some level of environmental accreditation under an internationally recognised scheme. Increasingly, convention organisers are including green credentials in their venue selection criteria. For the first time in Cape Town, this will subject a developer to a formal commitment and an auditing process that guarantees the inclusion of more than token green technologies in building designs.

The public is becoming more discerning, and the days of 'greenwashing' will soon be over. The green building revolution will be supported by the Green Building Council of South Africa, which is developing a South African accreditation system, but in the absence of a legal framework the real force for change is the investing public.

upcycling

We generally assume that the initial use for which something is designed is its primary use, and any opportunity to give the thing a second life by using it for another purpose is just a fortunate way to avoid sending it to the dump. Here's an idea that turns that concept on its head: a water bottle that is shaped deliberately so that it can be used like a brick in a building, by filling it with soil. One product, two uses. The designers call it the united bottle.

The Earth Architecture site has loads of other ideas and information on building with natural materials. Which brings me to the thought that while it is certainly a worthy achievement for the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center to be the first-ever LEED-platinum carbon neutral building on the planet, and for this office building to use LED lighting as the only source of artificial light, let's not forget that over the millennia, billions of people have lived in carbon neutral, zero-impact dwellings.

RED is the new green

After posting on Wednesday about biophilia, I came across another paper on the topic that adds a new twist to the whole concept of sustainable design.

Restorative Environmental Design [126 KB PDF], or RED, proposes a reformation of not only our conventional development paradigm but also prevailing approaches to sustainable design. It's "a framework of development that combines the objectives of avoiding adverse environmental impacts while also promoting positive connections between people and nature in the built environment."

The gist of the argument by Stephen R. Kellert of Yale University is that most sustainable design guidelines, such as LEED or BREEAM, are based on the objective of achieving "low environmental impact", which is not enough to achieve true sustainability in the long term. Noting the work of William McDonough, who argues that "a broader and more sustainable design approach must move beyond simply avoiding environmental damage, seeking to generate ecological health as well", Kellert uses the biophilia hypothesis to suggest that McDonough's approach should be extended "to include humans in this ecological health equation, recognizing how people’s physical and mental well being and productivity in the built environment is also contingent on the quality and quantity of their experiential connections with natural systems and processes".

The implication of this argument is the need for a fundamental change of mindset in how we design the urban environment:

The environmental crisis of damaged natural systems and impoverished humannature relations is fundamentally a design crisis that can only be resolved through constructing more efficient and environmentally benign buildings and landscapes. Restorative Environmental Design goes beyond avoiding harm and damage to natural systems and human health to also seeking the restoration of positive and beneficial contact between nature and humanity. Lacking this more affirmative dimension of design and development, sustainability will rarely if ever be achieved no matter how much improvement occurs in resource conservation, energy efficiency, waste minimization, or pollution abatement. Absent the positive human experience of nature, people will not commit the energies, emotions, and resources necessary over time to sustain buildings and landscapes no matter how technologically sophisticated.

Quoting from Judith Heerwagen, Kellert suggests that well-designed buildings with biophilic features "contain the ‘essence’ of natural objectives without being exact copies. They draw on design principles of natural forms". Reading this, I can't help thinking of the vernacular design of rondavels: the round, thatch-roofed, mud-walled homes of Southern Africa. Built entirely of locally-sourced, natural materials and containing no corners or straight edges in their design, and often built on hillsides with spectacular views of the surrounding countryside, they surely represent the ultimate in biophilic design.

As Kellert would have it, the key to successful modern design is to translate these ideas to the urban context, and he believes it can be done. I hope he's right.

habitable buildings

The biophilia hypothesis maintains that humans have a built-in affinity for natural things, feeding our desire for keeping pets, climbing mountains, hiking in forests, and being where we can enjoy natural views. This attraction can explain why we like keeping plants in our homes and places of work, and presents an opportunity for architects and engineers to address the social aspects of sustainability at the same time as energy and health issues, through building design.

Having the right plants inside can directly improve air quality, but biophilia suggests that a whole range of design features could improve well-being through exposure to natural elements. In an introduction to biophilia in the Rocky Mountain Institute Newsletter of Spring 2004 [962 KB PDF], Corey Griffin writes:

Today, the technology and knowledge exists to create a building that touches the earth lightly during both construction and day-to-day operations. However, what has been often neglected by creators of low-impact “green” buildings is the need for spaces to be habitable. Occupants of built environments don’t want simply to work, play, eat, or sleep in a functional building. They want to be inspired, invigorated, comforted, and reassured by their surroundings. They want spaces that will make them more productive and healthy, and they want spaces in which they love to be—spaces that, as RMI’s Amory Lovins puts it, create “delight when entered, pleasure when occupied, and regret when departed.”

Biophilic design elements to achieve this could include:

• the use of dynamic and diffuse daylight,
• the ability to have frequent, spontaneous and repeated contact with nature throughout and between buildings,
• the use of local, natural materials,
• a connection between interior and exterior surfaces,
• natural ventilation,
• a direct physical connection to nature from interior spaces, and
• direct visual access to nature from interior spaces.

Griffin also mentions previous work on the hypothesis that provides some motivation for society's choices of landscape design and urban configuration, suggesting a link with our ancestral needs for food, shelter and places to explore. Perhaps our strong tendency towards urban sprawl is an instinctive response to the unnatural aspects of the concrete-and-steel urban jungle. If so, it's vital that attempts to increase urban density to support various aspects of sustainability should incorporate biophilic design elements, lest we become like caged tigers, sapped of life and spirit. OK, I'm being dramatic, but if we need that natural connection to be happier, healthier people, then we damn well better incorporate it in our sustainable cities of the future.

[Update on 3 Dec 2007: BLDGBLOG shows us the air brain, a high-tech version of "plant filters" to clean the air inside buildings. Nice and neat and... sanitized. Not at all like going out in the garden and getting your hands dirty.]