Green Building and Ecological Design.

Up to about 70 years ago this article would have been an unnecessary exercise. Almost all building was, to a large extent, green; composed of natural materials, built using local skills, assembled to harmonise with the local climate, and requiring little energy to run.
Over the last five or six decades the affect of on Earth has worsened to a catastrophic level. Apart from car use the single biggest impact each of us has on the environment in Ireland is probably attributable to our building(s) and the way we run them. Most buildings behave like the gas guzzling cars of the 70's; consuming energy voraciously to heat, cool, light, secure and maintain themselves and creating waste profusely. In Ireland and the UK building(s) account for 40 - 50% of the energy, water and resources consumed and for a similar amount of the pollution created.
Looked at on their own most buildings are huge, leaky, inefficient and, to anyone who sees with more than their eyes, ugly, even when new. Looked at together with other buildings the affect is compounded; our cities are growing cancerously- appallingly Dublin now sprawl at the same density as Los Angeles. Looking at them as habitats for human life they are actually dangerous; the majority of their materials being chemical based synthetic compounds. Since we now spend almost 90% of our time indoors exposed to these synthetic materials our own health is being affected alarmingly.
Added to this we have begun to use buildings unsustainably too. They have become commodities more valuable as an investment then a home. The skills of shelter-making, long considered as vital as the ability to cook or cultivate food, are disappearing increasing our dependence and alienating us from our place. The very fact of building built a sense of community in the past, now the opposite is true.
Planet Earth acts as a living system (Gaia), continuously adjusting to changes in solar energy levels to maintain the conditions for life, its health and our own well-being are dependent on each other. What is healthy for us is to live in buildings and cities that allow the natural environment influence us, what is healthy for the planet is to have these buildings (including the occupation and activities within them) operate as an extension of its own natural processes.
The question then is how can we create buildings and towns that are low impact, healing, durable and beautiful and that foster connection with our environment.
Firstly building greenly involves following two approaches to construction. The outward facing approach tries to avoid any adverse impact on the environment, present and future, while the inward looking approach attempts to avoid adverse affects on the health of the occupants. In fact a green building can go further, to actually regenerate the environment and be a source of healing for the occupants.
Firstly thinking greenly about building requires that we avoid building at all if possible, no development is the greenest development. Ways to avoid building include managing an existing building more creatively to use the same spaces more intensively, time shifting activities around and sharing spaces with other buildings to exploit underused facilities nearby. Thinking greenly at the design stage of a project uses 'intelligence to displace energy' ie by spending much more of our time questioning where the building should be, what it must do, how it will evolve etc, we can avoid investment of excessive material and energy in the building itself.
Ireland in some ways is the most easy building context in the world in the world for green building; our geology and climate is largely benign; earthquakes are unknown and our solar radiation levels are actually more favourable than in say Belgium. The presence of the gulf stream prevents prolonged periods of snow or frost. In other ways though building here is a difficult proposition, continuously high levels of dampness, means that condensation is a constant problem and ambient temperature ranges of 4°-17°C mean that keeping a building within the comfortable usually will require some heating.
Building greenly must be based on combining traditional techniques and skills (which have always responded to local material and weather conditions) with advances in designing, construction and building management techniques, blending tradition with technology to create a good ecological 'fit'.
Secondly a green building must try to mimic an ecosystem or habitat. It must be built to power itself as directly as possible from solar energy (the only form of energy that is sustainable ie 'sole-nergy'). It must cycle materials as ecosystems do; using natural materials, changed as little as possible, and allowing them be reused as raw materials or cycled back to nature afterward. Also the building must integrate both the hard form of the building itself (walls roofs etc) and its living elements (plants, flowing water, green roofs) must be integrated together.
Lastly a green building must facilitate us being stewards of the planet and being aware of it health. To do this we must create buildings that help us maintain our connection to the planet by preserving our openness to the influences of the environment. Human beings emerged in the comfortable part of the planet between 20 °N - 20° of the equator. Our bodies and spirits evolved as a response to the physical conditions present there. These conditions; temperature, humidity range, electrical environment (ions etc), range of smells, sounds colours and textures are the ones we now find ourselves most comfortable and healthy in. Good buildings now must be constructed to match these conditions and to preserve our relationship with the environment.
It is vital to remember then that building greenly is undermined if the building is not operated in a green way after construction. In most cases buildings are so greedy for resources that the energy and material in their construction is actually overtaken by the day to day resources required to run them within about five to eight years. The section on Homes and households contains many of the approaches (the software) needed to run a building sustainably which is vital to creating a green environment.
In the future we will see building being arranged as both producers and consumers linked together to share energy, heat, water and food. this web like network is similar to the food webs found in nature and provides the blueprint for the sustainable building and sustainable towns of the near future.
Though it is romantic to think of green building as being a return to the past, that is not the case. Ecological design and sustainable construction are, in and of themselves, new approaches to shelter-making and land use. To a greater or lesser extent all large scale cultures now build and use buildings in a non sustainable way. Green building represents a step forward in our evolution as a society and is one that need not imply significant sacrifice. It is also one that, in hindsight, will seem as (r)evolutionary as it was inevitable

Mike Haslam
25.02.02