Vital Design

I suppose our subject is related to what’s vaguely termed ‘sustainability’. I hate that term for its vagueness. In fact its so difficult to figure out sometimes if it’s being used in the way I understand it, that I do a little test; If the S word can be replaced with, ‘feasibility, durability, acceptability, continuability, viability, profitability, affordability, defensibility, or plausibility’ then its probably not what I mean.
What I’m usually talking about is physical (usually biological) sustainability. We refer to it usually as ‘ecological’ - for a couple of reasons.
Ecology is a science. It’s the science of living organisms (from virus to whale and oak forest to algae) in a living relationship. So it’s got biology, form/space and exactitude as its vocabulary- a perfect place to bring in our design training as architects.
And it is all about design- The ‘comprehensive anticipatory decision-making’ (Bucky) that creates more that the sum of the parts.
Design must start from where we are. Starting where you are is a very sane thing to do, and we are on a small island on the surface of a small planet in a solar system.
In a sense everything we are doing is about responding to that condition. Earth is a solar planet so we must accept that we live in relationship with the Sun
The Sun is a star, and its one of my favourite stars! A nuclear fusion plant located by Nature where such a plant should be located (as Bucky said); a nice safe 150 million kilometres away from the nearest inhabited area. There is some scientific conjecture that there were once 2 stars in our system (which would certainly make things different) but for the last few billion years there has only been one and We can expect it to last another 4-5 billion years, so studying where it is in relation to us is is worth the effort and is critical to design.
And we are on Earth, the ‘3rd planet’. Earth is completely in thrall to the Sun, It moves 800 times faster than a speeding bullet around it, and it’s existence and continuation is dependent on a supply of the Sun’s energy. Earth’s position, rhythm of season, day-night, it’s climate, is determined by gravity and rotation around the sun.
So Earth is certainly solar and is in a dynamic, thermal (thermodynamic) relationship with the Sun, but what else is it?
Well let’s look at how life emerged on Earth,
And forgive me a moment of if I go scientific on you, but it is important, and provides a scientific and perhaps poetic underpinning to the WHY of sustainable and ecological design.
Earth is about 5 billion years old. After the ‘supernova event’ or whatever of the many theories we attribute it’s first creation to, it emerged as a highly radioactive, hydrogen and carbon-dioxide filled dense cloud, an inhospitable, even contaminated, zone filled with elements and chemicals now considered toxic; copper, arsenic, antimony, hydrocarbons and uranium, cadmium, plutonium. The presence of these originally ensured it remained uninhabited. It took a billion and a half more years for the first cell to somehow appear and survives in that environment, eventually evolving to become bacteria, algae etc. Species appeared and lived long enough to devour some of this chemical soup, changing it along the way through their own metabolism, making it just a bit sweeter for the next species. Planetary systems also combined to sequester and bury much of this toxic chemistry, far below the surface (which like the atmosphere changed slowly in the process. Gradually the thin layer of the planet we inhabit; a mile or two deep of oceans, a mile of land thickness and the immediate atmosphere above us (called the bio-sphere or simply Nature) arrived at the point where these nasties were beyond reach, beyond being available for ingestion, or contact. It arrives at the point where it is sweet enough to support higher life forms; allowing plants, amphibians and eventually mammals emerge.
Right through this time, and since, the planet continued to provide the conditions for life. Not too impressive when put like that, but look at it a little closer. Life could only emerge when the toxicity and salinity was low enough, the oxygen level stable enough (too little and life asphyxiates, too much and it spontaneously combusts) and the temperature and pH optimum enough. And then life continued to evolve and flourish right up to our own time - (3.5 billion years of continuous presence of life).
This is a balancing act and in ‘old’ science terms is physically impossible. The Sun’s heat output has increased by 25 to 30% over these 3 billion years. ie it should be 30% hotter now than then, yet within the envelope of the bio-sphere, it isn’t. Fossils show temperatures havent changed here in billennia. Also the gaseous content of the planet has changed and evolved many times over this period, at times containing ostensibly toxic gases or combinations of gases yet the critical level of oxygen, nitrogen and C02 available at the bio-sphere has remained optimum for life. If we look at the chemistry of the atmosphere we find gases that cannot co-exist without explosion in a lab (oxygen and methane) co-habiting dynamically in Nature.
These scientifically undeniable contradictions, allow only one conclusion: the bio-sphere of planet Earth is a living structure able to react, feed back and adjust itself to maintain the conditions for life:
This theory, first tabulated by NASA scientist James Lovelock (funnily enough while on holiday in Kerry in 1975), is that the various elements of the planet; oceans, forests, rivers, insect colonies, earthquakes, rainfall, coral reefs etc seem to work together to balance out the changes and maintain the conditions of purity, oxygen availability, salinity, pH, warmth, moistness etc to keep all life forms thriving... Up till recently that is.
Humans have over the last thousand years evolved another set of elements that, like it or not, are stitched into this biosphere, affecting it greatly since their emergence; the city and the building. Well over 60% of humanity will reside in cities by 2030, and cities and buildings consume half of all energy, water and materials used by man, and create a similar amount of waste. We are working against the bio-sphere at a time when we could so easily redesign to work with it.
So Let’s look more closely at the design of the bio-sphere or Nature as we can call it. Clearly it’s a complex system with very many parts, all working together to maintain the system, to maintain conditions for life.
The theory is that, like the fur of a cat or the feathers of a bird the bio-sphere is a vibrant, systemic, active element which reacts in an integrated, though not necessarily self aware, way to maintain the conditions for life.
Every element, every process, supports the system and the system supports every part. In the words of Edwin Datschefski
No 1: It’s Solar; – uses Sun’s energy.
No2: It is Cyclic, materials water air etc. are all cycled from one form and place to another,
And No 3: its Benign- no heavy metals or toxic compounds are necessary, indeed all are safely sequestered out of contact.
Imagine the complexity of this living entity. We can imagine how complex it is by looking at what things would be like, are like, when it isn’t operating. Imagine if you were setting a design problem. Could you set someone in your office the brief to design a ‘place’ where the water is too dirty to let children play in, where the rain is too acidic to drink, the air so full of carbon the ‘place’ heats up uncontrollably. A place where you need a motor that burns 1 million year old precious molecules from deep below the habitable layer of the planet, emitting toxic gases, rubber particles, etc to get a pint of milk or go to school, a place where buildings make you sick and hospitals make you sicker ? (With credit to William MacDonagh).
Could we do ? this Well we have. We do, at enormous cost.
What about another design problem?
Can you design a place, which creates more clean air then it consumes, where it’s own materials increase in quality with no effort or fossil energy, where free light is absorbed by surfaces and turned into nutrients and structure, to create comfort and maintain this ‘place’. Where carbon dioxide is neutralised, air and water cleaned by simply flowing through the place, and where people heal just from being there.
Which project would you like to get an A in ?
Clearly the latter is a very complex place, with many parts each necessary. By the way, this ‘place’ is a forest. It could easily be the brief for an advanced mixed-use urban building.
Could we design all our buildings, our cities, to operate with as much humility and elegance as this ? to play a role in the system, the way the hydrological cycle, the flow of rivers, the light reflection of the ice caps, does ?. to have our buildings be tuned and integrated into this system ?
So how can we human beings compose our buildings, cities, societies so that they work with this system?
Well we must learn the operating system and work within it.
It’s a design approach where we study the operation of nature and try to mimic it - ‘bio-mimicry’.
We already see example of this everywhere; reed beds that copy nature’s water filtering systems,
the navigation techniques of fish and birds, fibres attempting to emulate spiders silk, a material stronger, per cross sectional area, than the strongest man made metal, Kevlar, but made using digested grasshoppers mixed with spiders stomach juices all at low pressure and room temperature.
The way we at Solearth try to integrate all this we are beginning to call ‘vital design’. It’s the hope that we can move beyond sustainability, beyond doing less bad, to doing more good, creating for now, ecologically advanced buildings and eventually striving to create truly ‘vital’ buildings, systems that create more energy, harvest more rainwater, clean more air and waste than they use or need and that create materials within the system.
That’s what we have to aim for; to create abundance and restorativeness.
In our practise of course we are not there yet. In fact we are only starting. You will quickly realize that I’m using many ideas and images here from other architects I admire, as well as showing some of our own projects and ideas, along the way.
In practical terms I suspect we need to accept that perhaps there are actually two briefs in any project; the ‘apparent’ brief, the requirements of the client, budget and user, and an ‘embedded’, or universal brief, which underlies the first, that we must tune the building to the cycles and flows of nature and regard this as a professional duty-not to mention a design opportunity.
Let’s say there are three components to a building that would be in tune with earth as living system- a ‘vital’ building.
The first is the part we as architects are intimately familiar with, the structure, spaces and skin of the building, the infrastructure that runs it, in short the ‘hardware’ of the system.
The second part is the component we sometimes engage with, often reluctantly, the ‘thinking’ part of the system, people - in the form of desires, rituals, their programme, budget, cost, benefit, operation, maintenance, and even ritual and memory. We call it the ‘software’ of the system. In Nature living systems posses self-awareness in the form of sentience, or the ability to feed back positive or negative outcomes, to adjust to circumstance (food availability, predators, climatic conditions etc). The instinct for re-production, adjustment to conditions etc are all bound into the awareness, the DNA or seeds, of animal or plant, and by extension into the overall ‘awareness’ of an ecosystem - such as a forest as it reaches maturity. To create a building, which is successfully integrated into Nature, we must embrace the necessity, the opportunities and the limits of people as the system’s software.
The third part of the system for us is the most exciting. The sum total of the wildlife, living plants and trees, the cycles of air and water and the flow of energy. We call it ‘Lifeware’ and it’s the component that powers, fuels, feeds, cleans and animates the others, it’s the delight and the life in the system.
The first stop is the site, Someone said that it’s is the ‘original sin’ of buildings that they have to occupy land at all. Perhaps it is their ‘redemption’ to touch the earth lightly while repairing the ecology and habitat around them by their existence, such as here in this inflated, helicopter or airship delivered,access platform allowing non intrusive research into the rainforest canopy.
Here is a project of ours which begins to show something of ecological site planning. A sustainably planned community that will extend an Irish village into its backlands, and raise its environmental game considerably. All homes are laid out to a solar masterplan with separation of vehicles, waste to energy power as well as pre installed centralised water harvesting, and natural water treatment, and it’s a commercial venture.
On to the ecological design of buildings then: Remembering Rule 1. A living system is made up of materials drawn from the natural material cycle.
Let’s take a look at that cycle; the very notion at the heart of ecology that materials (solids, fibres, biomass, water, air, nutrients,-earth, stone, wood etc) cannot appear or disappear but simply change from one from to another.
Firstly I want to look at the role of water in the design of vital or ecological buildings. Lets keep in mind its about finding design opportunities
Water, like any materials in nature, is created/formed, stored, consumed and reprocessed in that typical ‘4 stage’ cycle.
In architecture we have to trap or harvest it first. Using the roofs of our buildings to do so. This represents a break away from the thinking of roof as overcoat of yesterday to the roof as basin
Next we have to store it, a method here from the Aran islands , as old as agriculture. While at the most privileged end of the spectrum The Casino at Marino in Dublin a building that could well afford servants to go and draw water, collected all water from its roofs hundreds of years ago.
Collecting rainwater can be as discreet or as sculptural as we like. Here in this garden show installation, night condensation is collected and directed to specific plants for irrigation, beautiful.
Then we use it at the highest level of efficiency possible for both drinking, cleaning, transporting waste (one oh societies dumbest ideas, but very much unquestioned) We also us it to create comfort, oxygenating and humidifying the air, sound masking etc. such as here at the ING bank near Amsterdam where the water flowing down the handrails is part of the building’s air cleansing system
And then we must re-process it. There are many methods, from the low technology, flow forms that oxygenate to the higher tech approaches, for more challenging waste or sites such as these LMs such as these at Findhorn and The /Earth Cntr, building by Will Alsop, or here in a more haphazard way in Kreutzberg Berlin displaying the amazing spatial and architectural flexibility of these modular systems (perfect for urban sites, when the budget is there).
Not to be forgotten the humble reed bed, (now accepted in Ireland under the new EPA manual)
Next lets look at materials in the design of vital buildings.
Again part of this 4 stage cycle. Wool believe it or not is emerging as a valuable insulation material, with obvious ‘software’ benefits for employment.
There are a number of aspects to materials; health, sustainability, durability
We must remember we are trying to tune our design to the ‘life assisting’ role which the bio-sphere as system has. As we take materials from one part of that system, transform them, use them to create buildings we must remember that they ultimately have to return to the biosphere, and be absorbed back into it, ie we must consider Nature’s health as we make our decisions.
Architect Bill MacDonough and colleague have postulated that in fact the world is badly designed. This talk of recycling even, is misleading as essentially we are taking products (from buildings to computers) which were designed to perform one role well, (to keep us dry, to run Excel) and nothing more. After their usefulness has passed, we try to recycle them spending vast amounts of energy and money to even tranform them into uses of lower quality. Essentially we are ‘downcyling’ (conc. beams becoming aggregate for instance). They suggest that we must redesign the world, accepting Nature’s operating rules, so that everything in it to remain within two loops, governed by two beautifully simple rules:
The first is the ‘natural’ cycle. Most of our products and components should be designed in this group, whereby every molecule, component and part can ultimately go back to the bio-sphere for assimilation safely. They even suggest that as designers we might include some extras for nature; a few nutrients buried in our wall panels, some seeds dormant in our solar blinds, which will give nature a head start on restoration after the product has been absorbed back, the earth walls of a building ploughed under etc .
The other rule is for more complex, intensive products; solar panel s, photo copiers, trains etc; they suggest that these are designed to stay in a closed ‘industrial’ loop, ie they product is not ever owned by the consumer. It is leased, ie its service is purchased on an ongoing basis. The company that invented, supplied and services it will have a captive audience, a proprietary patent. They also would have an obligation to keep all parts out of nature and thus an incentive to design it so it can be ‘upcycled’ continuously and possibly according to their own protected ‘recipe’. Interface Carpets’ evergreen carpet tile lease is an example of this.
The difference is that everything is designed to cycle in its correct loop not just to do its temporary ‘job’, again there are always two briefs.
Another aspect to materials is of course the direct affect on our own health. If we have excavated some of these nasties which Nature carefully buried far below the surface, or if we have toxified the materials in our buildings with chemicals etc then we are subverting the system and hurting ourselves.
We spend 90% of our time indoors, and our buildings now are made of over 70% synthetic compounds that add toxins (PVC, formaldehyde, solvents etc) to our air. In addition we tend to make our buildings progressively more airtight cutting us off from the outside in a crude way which compound the indoor pollution problem.
The answer is to interface with the exterior; creating interaction with light, air and moisture, in a designed way. Controlling the temperature and vapour flow, modulating air temperature must be the role of the envelope of our buildings- our 3rd skin.
A newish technology shown in this home we designed makes the whole external skin act as a sort of vapour valve driving internal moisture (the cause of damp mould, etc) out by careful selection of the vapour resistivity of the component layers.
Until we get to the closed loops of above our palette of materials is wide and varied. From renewables based on plant fibre to natural materials based on the action of nature process in pressurising, eroding and relocating the earths crust, to benign modern technologies which are purpose designed to be cycled back to Nature
Wood and timber, as long as we don’t toxify it in attempting to make it last forever, or to work in unsuitable situations, can, as we know, re-assimilate to nature, or be reused sometimes for long periods.
In using round pole construction what is essentially a waste product in forestry terms is made useable with the addition of ingenuity, in this case high engineering, giving length, strength and durability,
This stunning projects by Ted Cullinan at the Parnham Trust and here at the Weald and Downland museum in Sussex show the structural possibilities of small section wood and the revolutionary (because it finally been done) structural possibilities of gridshells etc
Using material from a similar ecological niche, but in Bolivia, Simon Velez has pioneered buildings from the grass crop bamboo. It is the modern invention of sophisticated jointing techniques that makes these approaches practical finally.
A few years ago IMMA promoted this outdoor art installation. On its completion these bamboo pieces, specially imported from the far east, were to be dumped. We recommended that our clinet buy them and they will be used in a semi structural role here in the green gantry, a structure that supports the bicycle sheds, composting galley and originally the living machine (now cancelled) , of the Daintree Building.
The holy grail of building buildings from the purely renewable paper in the form of structural cardboard has taken leaps forward with Shigeru Bans work.
And in the US, and increasingly in this climatic zone straw bale construction, valuable for its insulation, acoustic and even load-bearing capacity is being used. While I regard it as proven in drier climates (whether hot or cold) it could still be considered experimental here. Straw is natural and has excellent qualities, in the US however straw is a waste product and rarely required for bedding animals, so there are competing uses for it here in Ireland and it’s proliferation as a construction element will probably not happen as quickly here, though the recent buildings doing it are a welcome example of research by building (or putting your money where your mouth is !).
Earth on the other hand is a material from out own heritage, and yet as with must of the approaches here, modern technology applied to it can improve its usefulness to the point where it meets regulation and becomes cost effective. Earth in the form of cob, brick (sun or air dried), and as rammed walls such as this one in the CAT in Wales show the beauty and versatility, not to mention (as in this case) its thermal value as a radiant wall. These walls are so beautiful and tactile that they have to be protected from gropers, the oil of whose hands causes staining, a fate not experienced much by more conventional walls.
I mentioned wool as insulation and recycled newspaper, known when processed as ‘cellulose’, both provide breathable and high performing insulations.
Also there is much virtue in designing buildings to use up the waste inherited from other industries and our own. Vehicle tyres are one of the biggest civilian solid waste problems in the planet, here they are used to great affect in the Earthship buildings of the southern US, and in the deep South in this buildings for rural poor by Samuel Mockbee’s Rural Studio
Food; A further challenge for us as designers is to create areas for food production. Whether it is food in the sense of nourishment for humans, or crops as fuel for our heating systems.
Food miles, or the energy embodied in our food before it gets to us, can account for almost one third of our environmental impacts because we are creating cities, and increasingly suburbs, where cultivation is impossible our design decisions cut present and future users off from the possibility of meeting some of our own food needs. Growing food in cities (here in temple Bar) is possible and with purposeful design (hardware) and the willingness of the users (software) and soil, nutrient seeds and light (lifeware) produce food for little effort. Some designers
And what does that look like ? how does one design cultivation in rather than out ? At Arcosanti the energy apron provides a way to cultivate food, collect heat and rainwater harvesting, a real poly-functional element.
And then in order to complete the cyclic nature of the system we need to close the loop, allowing for the treatment of food waste, assimilation or ‘hygenisation’ as its being called.
Vermiculture, thermophillic compost piles are useful ways to break down organic matter, turning paper, waste food and sludge into nutrient and biomass. Compost facilities should be designe dinto all buildings even high rise housing
The challenge of a really vital building; to grow its own spare parts. Some calculations suggest that an acre of sweet chestnut can grow a building every 6 years. Ie a 6 acres would grow one very years and a fiftieth of that would allow for complete replacement of the building every 50 years-the usual design life of a building.
The possibility of literally growing a buildings spare parts, within the complex must also be on the agenda of a Vital Building
There is great story recounted in Alexander’s Pattern Language I think, of a 300 year old dining hall in Oxford where woodworm finally wrote of some incredibly long oak roof beams. In distress the college fathers called their forestry department to ask for advice in sourcing oaks of such length in this day and age. A few days later, apparently, an old, and nearly retired, forester from the college’s estate called the don and explained that when he began work years before, the previous forester instructed him to look after those old oaks over there which had been planted centuries previously in a corner known as the ‘dining hall plantation’ to allow for replacement of the dining hall beams when the time would come.
As well as the tangible materials we can relate easily to, as part of the bio-sphere’s material cycle; water, earth, wood etc there is of course another less tangible materials which is also in a cycle,, changing form, degrading being regenerated and all the while moving around the planet through our site,- and as it happens through our bodies; air.
The cooling ventilation and conditioning of buildings is one that we have always known offers tremendous design opportunities, especially when done in a way which tunes the buildings airflow, literally its own respiratory system to the greater one outside. Of course far more intelligent species than our own have practised these design principles for millenia
Buildings can need cooling simply because they are in a hot climate, but mostly here in Ireland its because they are generating heat inside them (as well perhaps as gaining excess heat from solar gain). We usually think of this with bigger buildings, more densely populated internally (ie load dominated) where indeed, cooling is the usual challenge. As you know a person in a commercial building like this can emit as much heat as a 100w incandescent light bulb, so many people working together emit the heat of quite a lot of light bulbs -though often far less light.
But all buildings need ventilation whether to guarantee oxygen availability (and removal of toxins) or to remove heat in order to create a comfortable indoor environment.
Looking at natural ventilation, there are many approaches. The simplest ‘cross ventilation’, requires careful thought; ratios of depth-to-height and opening-to-elevation, need to be considered. The GSW tower in Berlin by Saurbuch and Hutton does this.
The ‘venturi affect’ relies on the fact that air accelerates as it passes through a constriction; wind towers, aerofoils etc are used to induce accelerated airflow, again GSW is a great design example of this with its distinctive aerofoil constricting, and accelerating air movement, increasing the pulling power of the airflow up the dual facade.
Another, ‘stack affect’, uses the fact that warm air rises: chimneys, atria, double skins and the domestic passive vents and heat exchangers specially developed by Ove Arup and Bill Dunster at Bedzed are great examples.
And we may well need to be more ingenious and intensive with our design approach, while still observing the principles. Preventing overheating by shading is as old as architecture, and can be made artistic and even sculptural. The library at kling alfreds College by Mike Haslam while with FCB, and by The Menil Gallery Piano in Texas and the polycarbonate chapel by Jae Cha in Bolivia really exploit the delight opportunities. Sometimes, in other climates where the air temperature itself is the problem cooling can be done by adding water, again a source of sensorial delight as well as psychro-metrics.
The simple thing shouldn’t be overlooked either though, Using the lifeware, perhaps a tree, for shade is as old as time, while the approach of encouraging the users to adjust, say their location, within the building as a way of adjusting to temperature shown beautifully here in Texas where occupants move up to sleep in these ephemeral mosquito net clad ‘bedrooms’ on the roof where some airflow will keep them cool in the worst month of summer, works easily.
And speaking about adjustment, we said that adjustment to changing conditions and feedback was one of the primary responses of living elements to achieve comfort. Following this its fair to say that the many buildings which respond architecturally to changes in light, temperature, precipitation are nodding toward nature (of course it depends on how much energy is used up making the adjustment, but passive or extremely low energy movements are possible. The most efficient being when the user themselves make s the adjustment.
The canopies at Mecca which adjust to noontime temperatures are a very elegant example of this.
And these approaches can give us an excuse to integrate sculptural, vertical elements (lost since modernism became embraced by the QS’s for its cost efficiency), sails, canopies and towers back into our designs.
There are great budget benefits here a subtle a re-allocation of resources from the ‘maximise’ mentality of ‘machinery and plant to achieve comfort’, to the ‘optimise’ mentality of ‘form and shape to achieve comfort’. This re-allocation of budget can reduce the M&E budget from 30% to maybe 15%, transferring it back to the architect for fun and games
As with other cycles we must clean the air after we have used it. NASA who have a clear incentive to find ways of keeping air in closed systems pure, discovered that plants can uptake many pollutants, and we know they turn C02 into Oxygen
Finally then, and I have left this to last for good reason, we must look at the one great natural process that powers the lot; energy. Described as a ‘flow’ rather than a ‘cycle’, since it emanates from an unending ‘source’ the Sun, and proceeds, degrading in usefulness all the while as it is used up, to it’s ‘sink’ , -entropy.
Living systems draw energy in from outside themselves, that is they run spontaneously on ambient energy. They even use the flow of energy through them to maintain their physical structure (imagine a whirlpool as a diagram of this or remember how quickly the physicality of a tree or flower ceases immediately its energy source- light- or its ability to convert that energy, is interfered with).
In a reworking of Mies, Sim Van der Ryn founder of ecological design wrote
Form Follows Flow’.
So to design our way into this flow, again We use Nature’s energy and our ingenuity. Using PVs that track the Sun, modelled on a sunflower but requiring modern technology to achieve, is an elegant example.
We are trying to make use of the ambient energy around us- sunlight, ground and water heat, the velocity of water, the flow of air. Remember in a living system all energy comes from the Sun, either directly or through it’s action on heating the Earth’s surface. All natural energy drives from the sun- ie SUNstainability (apologies to Joanne Tippett of Holocene).
In fact the Earth receives enough solar radiation in 30 minutes to power society’s activities for a year. Renewable energy is diffuse though, spread out in space and time, and of low quality in terms of meeting society’s current expectations -not surprising when you realize that modern ‘society’ was built on the combustion of hydrocarbons, rather than the production of carbohydrates as nature was.
On this, its important to remember that we, as intelligent species, have to anticipate the change, be prepared for and lead it- by design. It wont be an oil shortage or war that propels us room this archaic age into a solar one, ‘the stone age didn’t end for lack of stones’ !
Many hold onto the mistaken belief that solar design is not viable in Ireland. What’s the point ? they ask, The sun never shines here anyway. Wrong.
We often compare ourselves to Europe but this doesn’t tell the tale. Denmark receives less useful solar radiation yet makes far more use of its is yield than we do here. Its been calculated that a square of PV panels, 200 miles long on each side, positioned at the equator could power all of man’s activities
And Ireland actually gets 60% of the solar radiation levels of the equator.
There is at least 2kWh of solar radiation falling on a msq of vertical south facing surface in Ireland per day, that’s about 750 kWh per year on (each 1msq of) a similar elevation in the centre of Ireland, that’s 18,000 kWh on the south façade of a single storey house (assuming the whole south façade is a collector).
If you could convert all of that to useable energy, it would give you almost enough energy for a house (includes heating and electricity). However with current technology and budgets it’s difficult to get anything like 100%. Theoretically though, all needs could actually be met on a good site by reducing the demand, using the roof, reducing heat loss, and unwanted gains. The day is not far off.
So what are the design approaches? Let’s take a quick look first at low technology solutions.
We usually think of passive solar, but as with any problem, its worth question even that. Why passive solar heating ? Why not design a building that needs no heating? -heavy insulation, high levels of thermal mass It is technically possible to design a no-energy (except the occupant-, remember the light bulbs) building, a clever design using an approach of lessening the demands with super insulation or indeed earth sheltering such as at Holy Island monastery here by Andrew Wright can do it. Site planning is key.
Earth coupling/earth sheltering is possible, tapping into the ground’s ambient heat.
For passive solar design site planning is also important. Buildings should be arranged along east west axes;-the long dimension of the building facing south. Totally south facing is optimum, for each 6 degrees off south, the heating done by the Sun drops by 1%.
At all times remembering where the Sun and wind are in our location (bio-climatic) is essential.
Then we shelter the site, using landscape, berms, etc.to build between the limits of shadow and shelter if possible.
So what about form ? There has been much research into the ideal solar shape, for example by Ralph Knowles, while throughout history there have been many variations on this theme; Curves, terraces, earth sheltered building etc.
In more usable terms longer and narrower forms are optimum, with principal spaces to the south, and service spaces to the north. We all know this.
What about height ? Higher buildings are often better in solar (as well as in other) terms. The reason is that warm air and warm water rise,- the two ways to transport heat without using energy.
Even in urban apartments the rising warmth from the neighbour is useful.
The next thing is to collect the heat:
Conservatories, windows, solar panels, transparent insulation.
All are solar collectors, some low tech some high tech, some with moving parts some with moving liquids. The principle difference is cost, yield etc.
All need unobstructed access to light and all work on the greenhouse affect;
But common sense reminds us that windows lose heat too. The best window technology is still only a quarter as good as an average insulated wall.
So how much glazing, where, when ?. The textbooks say, that for residential design, 25% of the floor area of a building as window area is a good balance. That 60-70% (houses only) should be on the south façade with the rest shared out among the others. For commercial buildings it can be shared more evenly among all elevations incl. north is okay, due to different usage patterns and the fact that heat gain occurs from inside also.
The ‘no brainer’: to not lose more heat in winter than we gain between spring and autumn, not to lose more heat out a window than we gain in through it.
I haven’t addressed all aspects of solar design; windows, heating systems , management systems are all complex elements that help make up a bio-climatic building and could take a lecture, or a consultant, in themselves.
For example at The Daintree building, which is still waiting to start on site, a 20% cost margin (ie a mixed use high spec commercial and residential building costed at €2000/msq) will allow for a design that create heat costing only €75 a year per apartment.
So how can we make architecture, as well as ecology out of all this ? Remember we have two objectives; to make buildings that fit into the working process of the planet; solar cyclic and safe, and to make them be beautiful. Well, making virtues out of duties I suppose. In the Solar Living Centre (designed by Sim Van der Ryn) the vital task of holding the heat in, or designing how it comes out, is executed elegantly with night shutters that drop down to be daylight reflectors in the Real Goods building. You can really see the meaning of the maxim ‘passive buildings need active occupants’ here when I tell you the original design found these too heavy to move manually. Night shutters, seasonal layers and screens have to be used, and designed to allow the building mimic nature-to adjust and compensate for fluctuations in weather, heat, light, precipitation etc.
Active solar is the use of technology to accelerate, and concentrate (diffuse) solar radiation to the point where our modern lifestyles and demands, which are fairly concentrated, can be catered for.
We use solar thermal, creating heat from the sun’s rays to heat water or air.
There are many examples of this and indeed this is technology that is making a real inroad here.
Or we create electricity using the Sun. One type of PV panel actually uses waste silicon from the computer industry. These are suitable for integration into building facades, can replace tiles, act as visual and solar screens and are now approaching the price of marble cladding, clearly expensive but increasingly justifiable.
In fact every structure and surface we spend so much money building as a society is a candidate for utilisation as a productive surface.
The idea can be extended to a city or region wide. Look at these examples
PV motorways embankments, overpasses in Switzerland. These urban wind turbines in Amsterdam. Imagine all the south facing structures of Dublin, the new national roads’ embankments covered in energy production devices.
And the same could hold true for water collection,
This is really the way forward. Particularly if you start to envisage a city or community of buildings as a network. That idea would be that instead of having a national grid, which is really a one way pipe, in most cases, delivering energy only, we would have a national ‘web’, allowing energy be generated in many places, and consumed in many other places, the way the WWW allows information be transmitted from many sources to many destinations along a myriad different routes. No logjams, no power-cuts, resilient, flexible, like nature (a forest never gets a black out !).
So a building fitted with wind turbines would be beside one fitted with bio-gas, and others with solar PV, each feeding the web as the minute to minute weather shifts favoured their technology, each consuming from the others when they were unfavoured by the weather. The idea could be broadened to include heat webs, water supply and recycling webs.
We can really see that we need to redesign, as well as reduce, reuse, recycle. Real exploration of the forms inherent in powering the building or craft through ambient energy evolve new forms, made of new, natural or bio-compatible, materials. We see it clearly in wind power also. These building designed by future systems to draw wind into their turbines by the buildings form should power themselves. It’s beyond aesthetics in some ways.
There are many other examples of designing to tap into the flow of energy from the sun. Other methods revolve around picking up the suns indirect heat rather than it’s light. This little building in Co Wicklow is 80% heated from this hydrothermal heat pump, costing little more than twice a regular boiler but saving on 80% running costs from day 1.
And there are many other methods including growing fuel crops, such as willow, ‘waste to energy’ many of which we are doing on our projects
Another element that belongs here is the question of daylight. While we experience it oftentimes as being reflected off sky and surface it is actually an energy (light) flow from the Sun. Design for daylighting is as old as architecture but new research shows we need light more than we thought (even blind people) while new pressures find us having to pipe light underground to high rent, low visibility spaces like supermarkets in urban areas.
Creating light filled spaces is central to architecture and vital to our well-being.
Can this really work ? Lets look at 2 projects quickly for examples of how all this is brought together into a real system. First the Oko Haus in Frankfurt by Eble and partner.
The project is for the originally client of the building that was on the site of Fosters Commerzbank in Frankfurt. A network of not for profits in this mixed use commercial building. The dense urban site responds to the Sun drawing light and air into its heart. The roof is made of various types of green roofs, offering urban habitat, minimisuing run off and cleansing what rainwater does get collected. This is then drawn into the atrium. The atrium works as a large heating space, pre-warming the air drawn into the passively ventilated offices adjacent. The water from the roof flows through atrium, masking background noise, and humidifying the air before flowing outside to act as a threshold. Altogether a great move toward ecologically benign buildings.
Also the design by myself with the ERG for Earthlab, a proposed National centre for sustainable solutions to have been located along the Tolka in a city park in Dublin. The building would have had a host organisation who carried out tree plantings so the building had a plant nursery element, and offices, conference rooms, a restaurant and residential accommodation. It was to be sited with a long axis east west offering optimum solar exposure and wrapped by its own reed bed system around it to create effectively a moat or island. The building is in form a conservatory within which many different buildings provide the different functions and are constructed of different ecological methods as demonstrations. Visitors would approach along the causeway bridges over the ponds to arrive, through this long rammed earth wall,in the west end reception and exhibition area. To the east are the office and conference modules made of structural cardboard, earth blocks, breathing walls, straw bales etc. The tour continues up this ramp past the clivus block under the circle, to stop at a vantage point from where the ecological function of river and wetland can be explained. Further on the visitor can see into the energy centre where a real time readout of the buildings resource profile, both income, and expenditure is displayed. The circular hanging pavilion is the demonstration toilets block, all toilets being dry with the clivus composting unit underneath (past where visitors have already come. The remaining elements are an organic café and demonstration kitchen where visitors can look in to see low energy and water cooking and composting etc in action. There are two identical apartments fitted with advanced eco features, one available for visiting the other operated by a caretaker. Further on the circular form of the conference suite is made from straw-bale. The while ensemble demonstrates passive solar, active solar and water is collected from roofs for use throughout the building. The gardens grow food and receive finished compost from food and toilets.
So to return to the topic, vital design, or design of buildings to merge with the cycles and flows of nature is possible, and is becoming probable as necessity, awareness and technological advancement increases. It’s not a choice, the flow of energy and the cycle of material is as constant and unavoidable as gravity. We will have to embrace it sooner or later.
But most of all its an opportunity, an opportunity to do well, feel good and to add value, logic and delight to the physical world
In closing I will leave you with a thought
The filters that will protect the environment in the future are not at the end of our pipes and at the top of our chimneys, they are in our heads. We have to think our way out to, intention our way out, and design is the first signal of intent-as William McDonagh says
Thank you