A call to arms
By Graeme Finlay,
Healthy buildings are good business for a better future. Where do we start?
[Architecture]
Why do humans so often refer to ‘the environment’ as if it were a detached, abstract notion?
Take news reports, for example. Coverage of environmental developments is often as abstract as a story about a change in house prices or a horrific crime; there’s little sense of our inextricable link with the environment. The reason for this is that technological advances are blunting our affinity with the systems of the natural world, and nature’s commonsense solutions.
As we’ve moved boldly into the future we’ve assumed we can outdo millions of years of evolution with technical alternatives to natural solutions.
So it is with building design. For eons, humans have created structures to shelter them from their environments, using materials that are naturally available, readily replenished and designed to suit the location.
For shelter, indigenous cultures learned from, and were in equilibrium with, nature. Vastly different peoples from widely differing regions used replenishable, natural materials and similar approaches to ensure comfort and health: passive solar design to harness the sun’s natural energy, passive ventilation to circulate air and natural insulation to regulate indoor temperatures. (Think of the igloo!)
Technology has enabled us to create synthetic materials and to design and build forms that are more likely to work against, rather than with, their surroundings. In creating buildings to shield ourselves, we’ve tended to create structures that shut us away from the world.
We’ve thus constructed many sick buildings: buildings made of synthetic materials that harm the health of the occupants and sicken the environment during their creation, use and demolition. Many of our buildings need artificial pumps and ventilators to regulate temperature and air quality, to keep them and their occupants ‘alive’.
This isn’t just about comfort. Data show that buildings designed to be environmentally sustainable can be more cost-effective for tenants than a traditional workplace when the savings of reduced absenteeism and energy use, as well as productivity gains, are measured against the cost of floor space.
For most businesses, staff costs are significantly greater than the cost of premises. The difference that environmentally-sustainable buildings can make to staff wellbeing and productivity also has the potential to significantly boost business profits.
It would be naïve to suggest we should go back to a less technological past, even if it were possible. There’s no return to the garden before knowledge. Moreover, only a fool would say it’s all bad—the developed world now enjoys a degree of comfort (and health) unimaginable in the past. No one wants, or needs, to wear a hair shirt. Technology underpins the modern free market.
Fundamentally, the answer to regaining a better balance with nature lies in the proper use of technology.
While the environmental benefits of sustainable design have long been recognised, the cost of sustainable building has tended to be prohibitive. The evidence is that times are changing.
Learning from nature
Arrogance often rides on the back of ignorance. We have only to look around us to see that our synthetic creations are often a ‘dumb bastardisation’ of nature’s materials. The solutions we’ve created to shield us from our environments are achieved at growing economic, social and environmental costs.
The web of a spider is stronger, gram for gram, than steel. It’s also wholly natural and renewable, a simple by-product of the spider’s bodily processes. It is biodegradable, its chemicals resorbed and reused in nature. In comparison, steel is enormously costly and polluting to smelt. Its useful life over, steel does not decompose but clutters our landfills.
Scientists and engineers are starting to design new materials and technologies that mimic biological processes—so they function in the same way as natural products, which use nothing, or are waste products, and can self-repair. Developments in nanotechnology and biotechnology copying nature assist this approach.
In the discipline of architecture, we’re starting to think not only about using (and demanding) these materials, but also about designing buildings more like natural organisms—like bodies—functioning optimally as more than the sum of their (technological) parts.
It’s an exciting development that will, with time, represent mainstream thinking on building.
Biomimicry—nature meets science
And so to a future far from science fiction: biomimicry.
It’s not just the materials used in buildings that will change—the buildings of the future will be clothed differently. Their very ‘skin’ will emulate natural bodily processes, like breathing, temperature regulation and healing.
The recently completed Riccarton Library, designed by Warren and Mahoney, is one of New Zealand’s first examples of a building with an ‘intelligent skin’, which reacts to the external climate to control internal conditions, similar to the way skin protects the human body.
External louvres track the sun through the day, admitting light and heat when they are needed and excluding them when they are not. As the sunlight levels in the building increase, artificial lighting dims. When it gets colder, the floor slab is warmed by ultra-efficient heat pump technology. Similarly, windows open automatically when ventilation is required and shut when it starts to rain or the wind gets too strong.
These features are simple technologies in themselves, but overall create an innovative, environmentally friendly building when combined with simple, passive, low-energy features, such as high levels of insulation and double glazing.
As a result, considerably less energy is needed to operate Riccarton Library, and less CO2 is produced. Other features reduce the amount of water used: rainwater is collected and used for non-drinking purposes and low-flow plumbing fittings have been installed. Stormwater run-off has also been reduced.
We’re still in the early stages of understanding how we can create buildings that truly mimic nature and natural processes, but in buildings like the Riccarton Library we’re taking small steps towards that goal. The exciting thing is that we can’t fully imagine what the future will bring. What we do know is that we need to instigate this thinking now.
The Riccarton Library building tracks the sun, regulates heat, adjusts for wind and natural light and even opens and shuts its own windows
It’s time for zero
The warnings are sounded every day. Our world simply does not have enough fossil fuels to meet long-term energy needs. Millions around the world are already feeling the effects of global warming caused by the burning of those fuels.
We don’t know when demand for fuel will exceed affordable supply, but we do know that our future buildings will need to produce their own energy.
And while true biomimicry in product, material and building design has some way to go, we have the technology at hand, right now, to create ‘zero energy’ buildings.
‘Zero energy’ is something of a misnomer. All buildings use energy. But we have the means to create buildings that use only renewable energy and generate their own power.
We also have the ability to construct buildings that are carbon-neutral, producing minimal CO2 (during construction and their lifetime) and incorporating strategies such as planting to replenish the oxygen they consume. Many of our buildings could also be ‘water-neutral’, collecting and using rainwater for most purposes.
Zero-energy theory, and water- and carbon-neutral design, work better the larger the scale. And we waste energy everywhere in our cities.
However, we don’t need to rebuild our cities from scratch. Retrofitting current buildings to approach zero energy is not difficult. The roofs of a city provide a phenomenal opportunity for collection of water and solar energy, or even for harnessing wind power.
And for those worried about aesthetics? Will the buildings of the future be ugly, blighted by solar panels and water collection tanks, the paraphernalia of environmental efficiency? Will art just ‘catch up’? No. In great, successful buildings art and technology are inseparable. Technological design solutions are art: art is technology. That’s another lesson from our past, before the separation of the disciplines of engineering and architecture.
In these areas, New Zealand is years behind the rest of the world, mainly because we have not felt the pressure that more populated countries with fewer natural resources experience. We’ve been lucky and so complacent. We haven’t experienced the fallout of acid rain or the effects of pollution in high-density urban centres.
The opportunity is here for smart, design-focused Kiwi businesses to produce and market biomimicry products and solutions internationally, to take our expertise beyond our small national market.
The exciting reality is that we could build a carbon-neutral building now. Warren and Mahoney pitched the idea to three clients last year, but none took up the challenge. I’d like to pose a challenge to industry to sign up for the first carbon-neutral building in New Zealand. This is a call to arms! Someone must rise to the challenge!
Comments
Kerstin Rosemeier
I do agree wit most of what you say. Not with regard to Zero Energy Buildings, though. I know they are all the rage. But what does it really mean and is it worth aiming for?
If “zero“ refers to heating energy – a Passive House, defined to the international standard, needs almost zero, but stops shortly before the big naught, for a reason: the last mile on the road to zero is by far the most expensive! In terms of comfort there are no additional benefits of zero energy houses compared to ultra low energy houses, like Passive Houses. While I would never want to wreck someone’s ambitions to take the last step, in terms of saved kWh per invested money it is not the most sensible thing to do.
The main ingredient of Passive Houses is insulation, insulation and more insulation. This can easily be "natural" insulation, although I do not believe that natural materials are necessarily superior. But unlike most high-tech solutions, insulation has a very high life expectancy, ongoing savings without the need for regular maintenance, and unparalleled comfort benefits. In addition, insulation is a comparatively cheap building material. It is less sexy, though and will not raise anyone’s pulse. But it is the smart thing to do. If after heavily investing in the best possible insulation measures and a highly efficient ventilation system there is still some money in your bank account – you can always try to go all the way. The additional benefits for yourself and the environment will be minimal, though.
If “zeroâ€? however means to be completely independent of external energy supply, and all energy required to run the house has to be produced by or within the house itself, zero energy houses create energy islands. This, too, comes at a hefty price. Of course it is in most cases a lot less expensive to participate on an energy grid (except in very remote areas), rather than to try and produce all energy by your own means.
If funds are plentiful and do not compromise other investments in efficient energy use (e.g. still allow buying an efficient vehicle), this is all very well.
But is it worth aspiring to? Not in my opinion. Networks are the beacons of civilisation. Especially when more unsteady renewable energy sources (like wind and solar) are harvested, the grid plays a valuable role as a buffer zone. Therefore, I am all in favour of linked-up energy supply, and believe the money spent on energy islands can be put to better use elsewhere.
It is, however, easily possible to turn an ultra efficient building into a zero emission house: the remaining energy demand can be covered by a supplier who only uses renewable resources, like e.g. Meridian Energy. Smaller, privately or collectively owned networks are another alternative.
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