Sustainability is an afterthought
Philippe Rahm's article "Towards a Meteorological Architecture" presents an interesting perspective on how architecture should be designed with meteorology and the climate in mind. This perspective suggests that architects must consider climate-related aspects of space, such as convection, conduction, and evaporation, as new tools for architectural composition. Exploring the atmospheric potential of new construction techniques for ventilation, heating, dual-flow air renewal, and insulation to bio-mimic exchanges between body and space is essential.
Young architects and students are already pushed in the direction of sustainable design, limited carbon emissions, and lowering the energy required for operability. In our program alone, we spent an entire semester focused on sustainable strategies during the COTE studio. Most of the time, sustainable strategies feel more like an addition than like an integration in design. For example, water collection tanks and solar panels sit on or beside buildings like accessories. It would be compelling to study the most fundamental processes of our buildings in terms of their own convection, conduction, and evaporation to challenge our pursuits of making a genuinely living building.
I agree that in a lot of cases, sustainability is an afterthought. A great example is cote 10 vs comprehensive, sustainability wasn't the focus for many group's projects and now Ulrike is telling us to include them. Hence many people will just slap some solar panels on their buildings and call it a day. I think for a building to be sustainable it has to be considered of in the beginning with climate analysis greatly playing a role in it.
ReplyDeleteKat,
ReplyDeleteGood points. Maybe we should be challenging how sustainable strategies are done. Why can't a water collection tank be well designed and included in the building/site design? It could be a beautiful element of a project, instead of swatting next to the building like a dumpster.