Bioclimatic Design

Being a ridiculously long entry into the journal (but only because this is my favourite part of the movie)

“All that you fashion, all that you make
All that you build, all that you break
All that you measure, all that you feel
All this you can leave behind…”

Which pretty much sums up what I feel is (or should be) the rallying cry of the architectural profession (come to think of it, of all of us). What I build or do as an architect or a human being (which is not to say that the two have to be mutually exclusive!) is what I can and will leave behind. It’s as simple as that.






Always assuming, of course, that some idiot doesn’t take to it with a wrecking ball or a nuclear bomb.  

On a seemingly irrelevant note, I just bought a second hand Ford Festiva to help me commute to my new job, which is a good one at an architectural office (andIthankGodandhopeitworksout). Which kind of goes against my professed love of nature – I plead guilty to a momentary lapse of reason. But I had no choice! (said the defendant in the dock). Using public transport to be sustainable would involve something like 3 hours of commuting a day, which leaves me less time to concentrate on studying about sustainability and habitability. There seems to be a paradox here, but I’m not exactly sure what it is. Oh well. I’m basically making free associations of words and ideas here – hopefully it will lead me back to the topic in hand. The mind and God move in mysterious ways.

Okay, here goes. Before going into the research and observation part of this journal (dealing with the actual content of the lecture), I just want to elaborate on some ideas I have about architecture. Not immediately in terms of the technical aspects of bioclimatic architecture per se, but ideas about the ‘nature’ of architecture. Basically, I think it (architecture) is about melding dualities – old and new, built and natural, order and chaos, and so on. There are many of these dualities, but I like to think of all these in terms of ‘the 5’, my cool contribution to architectural jargon:

Life + building – the science and art of biology and architecture(al morphologies and anatomy)
i.e. the “natural” and the “built”
Music + machine – the beauty, rhythms and discordances of our cultural and technological constructs
These 4 combine differently (possible iterations include music + building and life + machine as well), bound by

The Tower – a metaphorical construct binding multiple realities and possibilities together
i.e. what I build using the first 4 is always influenced by the knowledge that it belongs to a larger (and/ or smaller) universe, and that a small contribution today might reverberate (who knows?) across centuries. I know it sounds ridiculous (multiple universes, alternate realities and ha! the possibility of magic), but as a personal construct it helps me focus and drive my designs, so why abandon it?

So maybe bioclimatic architecture doesn’t just mean planting trees on roofs (though I’m all for it) or having mechanical blinds like the Red Centre, but a symbiosis of man, architecture, society and machine… a unity that justifies my buying a car (don’t ask me how – my guilt-wracked conscience is making me rationalize like crazy).
Q. ?

A. If you must buy a car, you better make up for it elsewhere.

‘WELCOME TO THE MACHINE (… WHAT DID YOU DREAM?)’ 

I have a confession to make: I love Architecture. So much so that I first toyed with the idea of titling this section ‘A Call to Arms’ – a Manifesto aimed at overthrowing the evil perpetrators of Bad Architecture. After some serious consideration  – and I mean serious – I finally jettisoned that particular idea. It’s too easy to think of life as a war between good and evil (or bad) and all that jazz; it isn’t. And it’s pretentious. I’m no revolutionary; I don’t know the answers… well, not all of them. What I do know is that “good” architecture is a tad short in supply. Which begs the question, what is good architecture, and how does one go about it? Well, first we need to recognize that Architecture with a capital A is (much) more than just a problem-solving exercise (no surprise there). A lot of baggage comes with it – mostly trivial garbage and some genuinely valuable stuff. Good Architecture (I’m not talking great here, good will do just fine) is about throwing the garbage overboard and keeping the good stuff. Why? To reverse entropy, that insidious measure of disorder which we tacitly accept in our lives. This isn’t a Manifesto, but it does state dreams to make Built – what Architecture has been, is, and what it may be.

THE NATURE OF ARCHITECTURE: BUILDINGS

The beginning is as good a place to start as any. 4.5 billion years ago (give or take a few paltry million), the earth was born: molecules held together in dynamic stasis in the vast reaches of space. A billion years later the first self-replicating cell was born (aka life), the result of solar radiation and electrical energy acting on the chemical soup that was the primordial ocean. With the advent of multicellular organisms, evolution was up and running; new species born, fuelled by mutations in the genetic profile, others dropping out of the race for survival. Good DNA was passed on, bad DNA left by the wayside. Through the relentless forces of natural selection – Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” – life supposedly evolved to adapt to changing environments. Environments change in part because of life itself. The advent of photosynthetic plants increased atmospheric oxygen levels, paving the way for animal life; Life and the physical environment constantly interact. Every 26 million years or so waves of mass extinction wipe the slate clean, allowing new species to progress up the food chain. Once physical evolution reached its present plateau, social r-evolutions followed. (Pollution, and nuclear bombs are just some nifty by-products of these revolutions. But I digress.) 

‍Now, a mere 35,000 years after some early primates decided to get clever and stood up to look out over the tall grass, we stand at the centre of a vast empire, exerting an illusory control over the forces of nature that we see as outside of the human realm. However, animals we remain, survivors (not necessarily the zenith) of all those years of evolution: taxonomic classification Homo sapiens, Order of the British Apeish Empire. Like all animals Man seeks to shelter his frail body from an unforgiving nature, enclosing his physical self in (at first) existing refuges such as caves, decorating the walls with paintings of his self and/ in nature. Later came his built constructs… what we now know as Architecture – Loos’s “primitive hut”, Corbusier’s “machine for living in”, and Venturi’s “decorated shed” (and they were all good). I think “Architecture” can be summed up by:- 
‍

4 DESCRIBERS

1. Intent: The Vitruvian triad of firmness, commodity and delight (in plainspeak, structure, function and beauty respectively) represent the design goals of the Architect.
2. Summative: Major form, construction system, surface treatment and fenestration are the scalar parts that make up the whole he builds to attain these goals.
3. Interfaces: Delimiting surfaces interface “inside” and “outside” of the built whole to discharge the intent - the roof (delimits) the sky, walls the landscape, and the floor the ground.
4. Meaning: The building evokes responses that are either psychosomatic (physical reactions to its qualities of motion, weight and substance) or memory-triggered (to formal or iconographic signs representing individual or collective experience).

Why meaning? The primary function (commodity) of a shelter is shelter, obviously. Shelter is a universal need of animals, followed by territorialization and personalization (high-rise curtain walled buildings are the Capitalist equivalent of animals marking territory). Man is a social animal (like ants), gregarious by nature. So (like ants) he clusters his buildings into settlements where each person undertakes (or is assigned) a role that contributes to the communal good – ideally speaking of course. Unlike ants (presumptuously speaking), those splendidly conscientious denizens of the insect world, Man has the gift of consciousness (cynics in our ranks might prefer the word ‘curse’, more fools them). He abstracts and assigns meanings to his physical constructs over and above their base functions. This ascribing of “meaning” to inanimate objects is a seemingly unique human idiosyncrasy. They could be culture-specific (of collective consciousness) or person-specific (of individual consciousness). The Taj Mahal is a tomb – it fulfills the collective Islamic rite of burial, but it is also a “symbol” of love (a personal meaning that has attained collective symbolism). Man allocates the esoteric qualities that cover the gamut of human emotions to his buildings: love, hate, anger, and faith (to name a few), all find a place in architecture. Signs, elements of the built skin that transmit and receive information to observers, represent these meanings – functional, territorial and emotive. Meaning is critical to Man. 

THE NATURE OF ARCHITECTURE: CITIES

‘And the earth becomes my throne…”

Further, man sees himself and his constructs as removed from nature, ‘separated from the body of earth and wrapped in a shell of articulated space, made symbolic and meaningful’. The building (and collections thereof) and its delimiting surfaces become signifiers of the perceived duality of built and natural landscapes. Man is the dispassionate observer, nature the subject of his observation. And if the observer can make a quick buck at the expense of the hapless subject (he rules), what of it? Our mismanaged reality stems from this basic fact: we see Nature as the outsider. Untrue. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle proved Objectivity is not feasible – what you see is what you change. It is impossible to know the exact position and velocity of a particle simultaneously; sticking instruments into the mix affects the readings, so one is always Participating and never Observing. Chaos theory says a seemingly insignificant action snowballs over time with unanticipated consequences, and then of course there are the synapse-exploding theories of quantum mechanics, inversion of causality and effect, multiple universes, and non-linear passage of time. Of course, these are only theories: what the scientific jargon points to, in a nutshell, is that we are very much a part of nature. Buildings shelter us from elemental nature – the weather and our more ravenous cohorts – but they are integral elements of the micro and macro environments. Settlements plug into the natural matrix, forces flowing inextricably between them. The cynics were right – the city is a jungle, people and (other) animals moving within and without it. Rain falls, runs off into rivers or soaks into the ground. Trees grow, photosynthesize and die, as they do in the rain forest. Fluids (air + water) and buildings interact.

Which leads up to what?

WHY NOT BUILD LIVING MACHINES THEN?

‘I had once fleshed out a scenario of a bio-technological future of a regenerative architecture… started with the requirement of building components to respond to varying weather conditions outside and the varying requirements and moods of the persons inside the space… I postulated that there would exist, hopefully within my lifetime, a wonder tissue that would allow living building components to be made… I thought it would be more likely that this building material would probably be organic (chemicals and living tissue). Today I feel that it may not even be a material at all, but a set of processes to culture and grow a group of such materials and organisms in a controlled fashion…There could be, for instance, a living window which would respond to the time of day, the amount of sunlight, the mood and requirement of the inhabitant, the nature or state of health of the window itself, to create variable degrees of shade, light, air exchange, security, colour and so on.’ (Prakash, 1994)

I don’t know if we’ve come up with a wonder tissue yet, but we’re getting there. The spheres of Architecture and Society mirror each other like a veritable two-faced Janus. With computers, technology, bionics, knowledge revolutions taking over our lives, Architecture needs to hold knowledge within itself. Not to “overcome” it, as Peter Eisenman would have it, but to represent it (now) and nature (as always). Representing through iconography is evanescent at best, self-indulgent at worst. If we generate buildings by these systems perhaps we can satisfactorily re-present them. This is what I see bioclimatic architecture as – the theory and practice of Architecture sifted through to arrive at a system (or maybe process is a better term) to design “Living Machines”, standalone or grouped seeds plugged into the City Machine matrix to crystallize antientropy (whew!). Sort of like the Bio-House proposed by Sanjay Prakash in the hedonistic days of his youth. “A home (that) would not be a house but an environment – creating device which you carried along, like the smart bicycle that is the full time home-cum-office of wanderer Steven Roberts in the United States.” (Prakash, 1994). 

I know some day you'll have a beautiful life, I know you'll be a sun in somebody else's sky

But why ... Why... Why... Can't it be... Can't it be mine...

Any building, BioHouse (Bauhaus?) or otherwise design depends on the design program of course. It also depends on the site, the climate and the users – human and otherwise. If and when I design a house in Sydney, I would do well to remember that Down Under the sun stubbornly refuses to travel in the southern half of the compass (as it would in India), and that precious water literally goes down the drain clockwise instead of the more civilized anticlockwise (or is it the other way round? I’ll have to confirm this at home later). Different problems call for different solutions. But Architecture, to reiterate, isn’t just a problem solving exercise. If we design buildings as reactions to existing situations and apply a little make-up to it, we aren’t really moving ‘forward’ are we? More importantly, where’s the fun?

So Architecture as it exists is described by 4 describers. Generating a new architecture (ambitious youth speaking there) for the knowledge revolution in an age of increasing ecological awareness requires 4 generators. As of now I think I know what they are, but I have a long way to go before actually figuring out how to apply it in a remotely practical manner. Ah well, que sera sera.

Coming back to Steven Roberts:

Way back in 1983, I was doing what most struggling young freelancers do: taking on a succession of projects, destroying old passions by turning them into businesses, and trying to make enough money to stay afloat. My lifestyle had become suburban, and as I clattered around my boring acre in an itchy haze of midwestern pollen and lawnmower smoke I wondered what had gone wrong. "Freelancing" was an illusion; I was chained to my desk and deep in debt like everyone else. Stuck. Worse, change, evolution, and growth had begun to sound like vague counterculture concepts instead of the basic objectives of daily living. Where had all my passions gone? One afternoon I listed them: writing, adventure, computer design, ham radio, bicycling, romance, learning, networking, publishing... each of these things had at one time or another kept me up all night in a delicious frenzy of fun and giddy intellectual growth. Yet my reality had become one of performing decreasingly interesting tasks for the sole purpose of paying bills, supporting a lifestyle I didn't like in a house I didn't like in a city I didn't like. I had forgotten how to play. Could it still be possible to construct a lifestyle entirely of passions, or was losing the spark a sadly inevitable part of growing up (definitely not!)? Combining the passions in my list and abandoning all "rational thought," the obvious solution was to simply equip a recumbent bicycle with ham radio and computer gear, establish a virtual home in the nascent online networks, and travel full-time while writing and consulting for a living. Text and images on this page from www.microship.com

From these humble beginnings, Steven Roberts now owns a multi-billion corporation that sells bicycles to governments. Well, actually he’s just graduated to building a solar-powered kayak (?!) version of the Winnebako that he goes on adventures in, and I have no idea (and don’t care) what his financial situation is. The point is he enjoys what he does, and he’s doing ‘his bit’ for the planet at the same time by taking telemetric readings of pollution indicators on his voyages. Moral of the story? I don’t know. Maybe just that one man’s eccentricity is another’s insanity.





‍
THE LIVING MACHINE - ‘BIOLOGICAL, SPIRITUAL ELECTRICAL DIGITAL, SID’

What Architecture can be. These are “generators”, embodying the describers in principle yet going beyond them in many ways. Genes coded to Blur, the building an open-ended (but embodying certain Axioms) result of a Process.

(+) 4 GENERATORS: -

5. Natural and knowledge systems (it’s all) in the Genes:

• Music – aka cultural data; music, literature, cinema. And since Architecture is frozen music, might we translate lyrical syntax and musical structures into built harmony? Would you prefer a Louis Armstrong home to a Judas Priest one, Mr. X?
• Machine – as exemplified by pilot and craft, a symbiotic artifact, the building a serviced and servicing responsive machine: air intakes and exhausts, turbines, FBW, Head-Up Displays (HUDs)…
• Life – the science of biology; in particular origin and evolution, genes as codes generating physical form(s), bodily functions, inter-species correspondence, cellular and major systems…
• Building – the Theory and Practice of Architecture (naturally); the thought behind buildings and the actual processes of production.
• Tower

6. Blur(ring) the boundaries betweensome text
   • Nature and Man
   • Subject and Object
   • Outside and Inside
   • Form and Function
   • Structure and Ornament
   • Man and Machine

……………………………?

7. Axioms
   • A complete lack of style: No preconceived notions about the “correct” elements to use, constrained by stylistic dogma. Each building is a unique solution, subjectively speaking.
   • Appropriate materiality: From stone and brick masonry to aluminum cladding, steel and glass, what the building looks like is defined by what it is, and what we want it to do to its environment. Of course, if Mr. X’s intentions for the environment aren’t exactly honourable then I wash my hands off of him – assuming I haven’t been able to drum some sense into him, in which case it’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine.
   • Form, movement and space: The architectural experience enhanced by superimposing variables of sunlight, chiaroscuro, water, seasons and vegetation on the interplay of built form and surface.
   • Sustainability: An appraisal of projected and actual performance vis-à-vis embodied energy, environmental impact, and health and safety.
   • Responsiveness: A critical regionalist feedback loop, whatever that may turn out to be, and (this is recent) – skin-based receptors mediating built/ environment.
   • Efficiency is a constant for Machines.
     Technical efficiency: Functions are accommodated, personal comfort (of humans and machines) achieved with optimal expenditure of energy currency. 
     Aesthetic efficiency: It is an object people can respond to and appreciate – simplicity is timeless. 
     Eco(logical) efficiency: At the local level it is designed to respond, as the Architect and Client see fit, to “context” (that old bugbear!) – a Machine in/ of India is not a Machine in/ of New York.
     The process, however, is a different ball game. It will evolve (hopefully for the better!) with the garbage thrown overboard and the good stuff refined. God is in the Details. As of Now, Process Iteration 1. 

8. Process Iteration 1

CODE‍

Each Building starts as a logical reaction to the design parameters or “genes” coding it: the existing built and natural environment, and movement patterns through and around the site. These generate a template for the body. 
Image source: The author

BODY‍

The codes generate a distinct base that evolves and reacts to the influences of design program and user groups. These progressively refine the solution, functions organizing into self-similar topologies. Response to climate also comes into play. Next: integrate life support systems to ensure efficient functioning.
Image source: TIME Magazine – The age of discovery‍

‍LIFE SUPPORT

Structure and service systems make their presence felt. They form an organized inner complexity that works efficiently. This is similar to fractal branching networks of the human body (such as the respiratory system) that then interface as sense organs on the simply beautiful external skin. There is beauty in truth.
Image source: TIME Magazine – The age of discovery

SKIN

The complex innards extrapolate as a simple (and therefore encoded “beautiful” to the subjective observer) face, ‘composed from a fractal geometry based on rotated squares and powers of 2.’  These are ‘compactly encodable using simple feature detectors similar to those observed in mammalian brains’. Sensory organs (information receptors) react to use pattern and microclimate. The tripartite schema transmits and receives information to and from the niche.
Image source: Jürgen Schmidhuber

NICHE

Decisions made through the Built Life cycle, from conception to decomposition, have a cumulative effect. The following are measures of adaptability to its “Region”, or ecological niche.
i) Macroenvironmental impact: on the larger ecosystem
ii) Embodied energy: of materials and products (processing, transportation, construction, maintenance and operation)
iii) Microenvironmental impact: of materials and products on health
iv) Equity: sharing of knowledge and wealth across the board
v) Economic viability 
‍Image source: The author, with Ashok B. Lall

‘Now you put in the metal (…keep the soul that’s control)’

Or the part of this long-winded journal entry that actually deals with the lecture. I’m a bit worried this is ending up a bit like a textbook rather than a journal. On the other hand, it’s just a way of putting down stuff I’m learning and enjoying learning at that. So what the hey.

Note: This section has a lot of great information from www.squ1.com, the Square One - Environmental Design Website, compiled by Dr. Andrew Marsh and Caroline Raines of Square One research and the Welsh School of Architecture at Cardiff University. Highly recommended for cutting through the jargon, getting down and dirty with the basics of sustainable design and, above all, refraining from the use of trite clichés like the ones above.

But before I get into the slightly more technical portion of this journal, I’d like to describe some photographs of Indian architecture, and the people living, working and playing… interacting with that architecture. This is, after all, about ‘passive solar architecture but active people’.

These images are of the first office I worked in after graduation – Prof. Ashok B. Lall’s office in New Delhi. The office itself is in the basement of a two storey residence – a well-lit large hall that was always cool even at the height of the insane Delhi summer. The south part of the building had a lawn where my friends and I would laze around in the winter sun after lunch, much to the dismay of our bosses. The building itself is designed using different passive solar techniques: orientation along the N-S axis, an atrium inside the house with a skylight that would be covered with a quilt during the hot part of the hot season, a staircase well to the west designed as a wind tower with a trellis, and heavy building materials used painted a bright ochre. I remember we spent an unfair amount of time outside the office, though of course that could just be because we were a bunch of lazy good-for-nothings.

Culture‍

beliefs   x   practices,
values    x   customary behavior
historical experience  x  intent x climate

Above: two very different architectural vocabularies with a common genesis – keeping out the summer sun. The first is a haveli (traditional palace) in the desert state of Rajasthan, with ornate sunscreens carved from stone and overhanging chajjas (shades) protecting the inside. People sitting in the jharokhas (balconies) would be able to enjoy the notion of being simultaneously inside and outside, something the good people at AT & T couldn’t. The second is of course Le Corbusier’s design for the Assembly in Chandigarh – said to be his interpretation of traditional Indian architecture in a Modern aesthetic: the brise soleil a brutal (but beautiful) Doppelganger of the delicate jaali and the overhang of the chajjas, likewise. At least, that’s what I think.

Water and wind are also integral to traditional Indian architecture (at least they used to be – while I’m all for ‘progress’ I’m not sure people opting to live like hamsters in a multistory cage is quite what I’d call progress, with due respect to hamsters. And what’s with this human predilection to cage other animals anyway?). Below is a photograph of a royal pavilion on an artificial lake in Jaipur, and of the Hawa Mahal (literally Wind Palace) where screens channel wind into rooms within – designed for the dual function of protecting people inside from the heat and allowing the royal wives (who weren’t allowed to go outside) to interact with people on the street below.

Climate

hot – cold
dry – humid

latitude  (equator-poles)
altitude  (mountain-valley)
coastal and continental

…urban climate…

‘Particularly at night, cities are usually warmer than their rural surroundings, because of heat stored in bricks and concrete and trapped between close-packed buildings - the so-called urban heat island effect’ (www.bom.com.au).

Besides urban heat islands, cities also have problems of wind tunnelling down city streets or around tall buildings, and of high surface runoff because of the large surface area of paving. Cars are a major cause of heat and pollution emission in the cities, and of course more cars means more paved area required for vehicular movement and parking. The image below clearly shows how air temperature rises on moving towards the centre of the city (in this case Melbourne).

‘… the additional warming of the urban heat island effect can have adverse effects on health, on energy use and even on people's behaviour. During hot weather, the city's warmer nights can delay overnight recovery from heat stress. As a result, death rates in cities show a peak during heatwaves. There is evidence, mostly from the USA, that aggressive behaviour (street offences, riots) in cities increases during hot weather. Urban warming affects the city's energy use, reducing the demand for winter space-heating, but increasing the energy needed for cooling.’ 

The future’s so bright I gotta wear shades (ZZ Top)

Our lives depend a great deal on the path the sun seems to traverse in our sky. When we wake and when we sleep and what we do in between is governed by the sun, and since our behavior is so dependent on it, it follows the buildings in which we act out that behavior should also be designed accordingly. Orienting the building to the equator, calculating azimuth and altitude at different times of the year to design overhangs (for instance to block out the high angle summer sun and let in the shallow winter sunlight), and designing to avoid overshadowing (using solar windows) are just some of the things we need to keep in mind while laying out the bare bones of the building.

(Ecotect is a program for building analysis and design. You can download trialware of 25 MB from www.squ1.com. I did – it’s great.  And they didn’t even have to pay me to plug it.)

The Old City of Chandni Chowk in Delhi – an organic settlement where narrow winding streets and sudden open spaces lead to different qualities of light and show in the public and private domains. Compare it with the formal geometry of the Red Fort – both came up at the same time in the 17^th century, the latter being the palace of the Mughals  and the former the actual city.

Heating – Direct gain

“Direct gain means the collection and containment of radiant solar energy within an occupied space. Sunlight enters the space through equator-facing windows and heats its internal surfaces. It strikes floors and walls which absorb, store and re-radiate the heat. If heavy construction materials are used, their mass serves both to minimise temperature fluctuations from night to day and to store heat energy for sunless periods. Thermal mass storage can consist of a concrete floor slab, water containers or an interior masonry wall.” (www.squ1.com)

“A Trombe wall is a dark coloured masonry or concrete wall covered externally with a glass skin spaced in front to leave a small air space. Solar radiation passes through the glass and is absorbed by the mass wall. The mass is heated during the day and then releases its warmth to the interior during the evening and night hours. Ideally the glazing should have exterior insulating shutters for night-time use in order to prevent the heat gained from being returned back to the outside. Vents can also be placed in the wall to make use of convection currents to directly heat the room behind during the day.” (www.squ1.com)

Cooling - Roof pond

“A roof pond uses a store of water above the roof to mediate internal temperatures, usually in hot desert environments. At night, the insulation is removed and the water exposed, losing significant amounts of heat by radiation to the night sky. Early in the morning, the insulating panels are replaced to protect the water from the heat of the day and solar radiation. The water remains relatively cool throughout the day, cooling the ceiling of the space below. A cool ceiling is particularly effective in rooms where heat is being generated as warm air always rises to the top, to lose its heat almost immediately to the ceiling. The water is typically contained in black bags or dark colored containers to maximize radiant emissions and minimize evaporation.” (www.squ1.com)

Some as yet unbuilt designs

Urban redevelopment (Year IV, B. Arch.) – Besides addressing the more obvious architectural issues, I tried proposing forms and devices at different scales to create a comfortable microclimate in the site. For instance (above left) prevailing wind is channeled into the site through angled streets, at the entrance of which are sculptural fountains to cool the breezes. To the right is an exhibition complex, proposed as a semi-underground structure opening out into a large water body. The water body was proposed as a rainwater harvesting mechanism for the site, with the earth extracted in its construction used to cover the exhibition as a green roof. These concerns were considered at building level as well. In the obligatory office building (see below) an atrium is used like a wind tower, with air directed into it by an entrance canopy and cooled by a tall fountain inside. The cooled air is then channeled into the office spaces and outside to a pedestrian bazaar street, while the water circulates outside as well.

Thesis project – Biotechnology Centre
A major determinant of the design here was the existing rock quarry on the site, a 3m deep gash defining one edge of the site. I decided to use it as a greenhouse – part of the research facility but more informal, a place where the scientists could get in touch with nature at a more personal level.  The buildings themselves were very eclectic, reflecting the varied nature of the functions housed within – from a more fixed rhythm for the laboratories to a discordant symphony for the student functions, with exposed materials and photovoltaic panels part of the built expression. 

Honeysuckle Redevelopment, Newcastle (M. Arch UNSW)

This is a design I’ve done in the first part of my first session here at UNSW, with 6 other friends – redevelopment of a site on the Hunter River harbour of Newcastle.

We proposed breaking the linear coastline into smaller interconnected harbours to bring the water to the heart of the city, as nuclei around which activities of the city could crystallize. The “harbour” in our site would be used to create a pleasant microclimate in the CBD, break the strong sea winds, and as a heat sink for the buildings proposed around it. In addition, we proposed using it to have ships as part of the proposed museum exhibit, with the periodic changing of the exhibit as a social event to give identity to Newcastle and its people.

Text below (written by Lori Storm) is from the Team report (compiled by Carlos Rodrigo Pizzaro)‍

ESD Principles

1. Conserve and protect natural resources

• Encourage efficient buildings for energy conservation
• Explore alternative energy systems
• Promote use of renewable energy
• Minimise resource consumption
• Maximise reuse of resources
• Brown-field development

2. Maximise Precinct opportunities

• Maximise the assets of precinct
• Encourage exchange with CBD
• Celebrate harbour
• Use water to cool buildings, where possible

3. Promote alternative transport opportunities

• Reduce the need for car use, through provision and encouragement of quality transport options, including walking and cycling, public transport and water-based transport
• Maximise integration, links and continuity with existing transport infrastructure and the CBD

4. Create a healthy urban environment

• Develop healthy buildings and urban spaces for visitors, workers and residents
• Develop a healthy urban habitat for flora and native fauna

ESD Design Elements

1. Biodiversity

• Restore appropriate native vegetation.

2. Soil

• Identify and remediate any contaminated soil.
• Reduce sedimentation of adjacent harbour and river during construction.

3. Water

• Reduction of water need and demand.
• Reuse of water (stormwater and grey water).
• Cleaning and mitigation of water on site, prior to release. 
• Collection of rain and stormwater.
• Use of porus surfaces to contain storm water run-off on site.

4. Transport Energy

• Encourage alternative transport options, particularly walking and cycling by providing attractive access and storage and changing facilities.
• Alternative transport options are expected to reduce visual and physical congestion, air and noise pollution, travel costs and travel stress levels, and reinforce the concept of a people-focussed precinct.

5. Energy

• Provide opportunities for developments to take advantage of local environment.
• Orientation (north and south-orientated facades require less energy);
• Natural cross-ventilation (for specific areas to reduce air conditioning);
• New generation cooling systems (eg chilled ceilings/beams, which reduce energy demands);
• Heat dispersal systems; which use water mass to transfer and absorb heat from building heating and cooling plants.
• Use harbour for heat rejection from buildings.
• Thermal mass in residential developments (which improve temperature stability)

Bioclimatic skyscrapers, aka Tea strainer architecture

Ellipsis.com calls Ken Yeang’s buildings “tea-strainers” because he turns the traditional impermeable “polythene” surface of the modern skyscraper into a filter between the exterior and interior – ‘to maximise the beneficial effects of exterior environment on the ecology of the building interior’.

…bioclimatic strategies refer to strategies, which have positive effects on the microclimate around the building, while at the same time with the appropriate optimization of plans, sections, use patterns and orientation. Another aspect of bioclimatic strategies relates to the form and envelope of the building. This is referring to the relationship with service core positions as well as sun and wind-related devices… evaluation throughout the whole process of the building design can assist architects in making environmentally responsive decisions to advance building design to create improved environments for the occupants. (Yan Law)

The need to maximize usable floor area by reducing external wall thicknesses, horizontal and vertical support thicknesses, floor-to-floor heights, and service and vertical circulation core areas govern the traditional skyscraper design. At first glance designing for climate would seem to go against the profit making imperative of the companies that normally commission and own the skyscrapers. However, the bioclimatic building has low operational costs (up to 40% savings on life cycle cost), is ecologically sound (low energy consumption by using passive structural devices and low emission of waste heat into the city), is more “user-friendly” (look Ma I can open my window!) and is more regionalist because it fits into its geographical context.

USING RENEWABLE ENERGY

To decentralize, district or grid? That is the question. Not a very grammatical question at that but perhaps a valid one nevertheless. While renewable sources of energy as an alternative to our current petrol hungry way of life is obviously the way to go, the costs of present technology is economically unviable (or so Enron told me). And in a world where the dollar is God, that’s all, she wrote. Still: we need to consider that the technology will become more efficient, and with increased usage it will also become more inexpensive (based on what poor grasp I have about the mysteries of economics). Then all that remains to be seen is the environmental impacts, because even the cleanest technology built with the best of intentions has repercussions (why Heisenberg why?!). Maybe there isn’t just one alternative, but a judicious mix of alternatives deployed at community level across the globe.

USING LIGHT

PV coated glass

‍HEAT

Geothermal energy is energy derived from the natural heat of the earth, from reservoirs found in "geothermal systems" which are regionally localized geologic settings where the earth's naturally occurring heat flow is near enough to the earth’s surface to bring steam or hot water to the surface. Power plants using dry steam systems use the steam from the geothermal reservoir as it comes from wells, and route it directly through turbine/generator units to produce electricity. (Source: www.geotherm.inel.gov)

BIOMASS 

Biomass (organic matter) can be used to provide heat, make fuels, and generate electricity. Besides wood, plants, residue from agriculture or forestry, and the organic component of municipal and industrial wastes can also be used as an energy source. Many bioenergy resources are replenished through the cultivation of energy crops or bioenergy feedstocks. Biomass can be converted directly into liquid fuels such as ethanol (made by fermenting high-carbohydrate biomass) and biodiesel (made using vegetable oils, animal fat, algae and recycled cooking grease).  

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METHANE 

Landfill gas (LFG) is a by-product of the decomposition of municipal solid waste (MSW).
LFG: 50% methane (CH4), 50% carbon dioxide (CO2),<1% non-methane organic compounds

For every 1 million tons of MSW, 1.0 MW of electricity

HYDROGEN

An advertisement for Ford Motor Company – maybe Big Business isn’t all that bad after all.

Or maybe it’s just that people are looking for companies to have an environmentally responsible image. Either way, things seem to be changing for the better.





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‍WIND

Wind farms, like solar farms are a possibly good alternative energy source, but at the moment simply too land intensive.














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RIVERS and OCEANS

Big dams – does anything need to be said? And yet we persist in repeating our mistakes (see the Three Gorges project in China). Small check dams like some beautiful ones I saw in Bhopal seem to be the way to go in rural areas with low energy demands, but they are probably nowhere near enough to meet current urban energy demands. I don’t know – I’m just an ignorant architect. Would it matter if I designed beautiful buildings that were ecologically efficient, like I think I wrote earlier in this piece? Again I don’t know, but I sure as hell am going to try anyway. Enough said, and I’m not gpoing to write anything about nuclear energy either. I think a mushroom cloud is beautiful (wrote the psychopath) but I wouldn’t want to have front row seats at Ground Zero.

The following is from www.nrdc.org. I don’t know how much of this can be blamed on global warming and how much on natural climatic change cycles, but maybe the facts speak for themselves. No cartoons here.

Consequences of Global Warming

The latest scientific data confirm that the earth's climate is rapidly changing. Global temperatures increased by about 1 degree Fahrenheit over the course of the last century, and will likely rise even more rapidly in coming decades.

Scientists say that unless global warming emissions are reduced, average U.S. temperatures could rise another 3 to 9 degrees by the end of the century -- with far-reaching effects. Sea levels will rise, flooding coastal areas. Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense. Droughts and wildfires will occur more often. Disease-carrying mosquitoes will expand their range. And species will be pushed to extinction. As this page shows, many of these changes have already begun.

CLIMATE PATTERN CHANGES

Consequence: warmer temperatures
Average temperatures will rise, as will the frequency of heat waves.

Warning signs today

• Most of the United States has already warmed, in some areas by as much as 4 degrees Fahrenheit. In fact, no state in the lower 48 states experienced below average temperatures in 2002. The last three five-year periods are the three warmest on record.
• Since 1980, the earth has experienced 19 of its 20 hottest years on record, with 1998 the hottest and 2002 and 2003 coming in second and third.

Consequence: drought and wildfire
Warmer temperatures could also increase the probability of drought. Greater evaporation, particularly during summer and fall, could exacerbate drought conditions and increase the risk of wildfires.

Warning signs today

• In 2002, the Western United States experienced its second worst wildfire season in the last 50 years; more than 7 million acres burned. Colorado, Arizona, and Oregon had their worst seasons.
• Dry conditions produced the worst wildfires in 50 years in Florida in 1998.

Consequence: more intense rainstorms
Warmer temperatures increase the energy of the climatic system and lead to more intense rainfall.

Warning signs today

• National annual precipitation has increased between 5 and 10 percent since the early 20th century, largely the result of heavy downpours in some areas.

HEALTH EFFECTS 

Consequence: deadly heat waves and the spread of disease
More frequent and more intensive heat waves could result in more heat-related deaths. These conditions could also aggravate local air quality problems, already afflicting more than 80 million Americans. Global warming is expected to increase the potential geographic range and virulence of tropical diseases as well.

Warning signs today

• In 2003, extreme heat waves caused more than 20,000 deaths in Europe and more than 1500 deaths in India.
• More than 250 people died as a result of an intense heat wave that gripped most of the eastern two-thirds of the United States in 1999.
• Disease-carrying mosquitoes are spreading as climate shifts allow them to survive in formerly inhospitable areas. Mosquitoes that can carry dengue fever viruses were previously limited to elevations of 3,300 feet but recently appeared at 7,200 feet in the Andes Mountains of Colombia. 

WARMING WATER

Consequence: melting glaciers, early ice thaw
Rising global temperatures will speed the melting of glaciers and ice caps, and cause early ice thaw on rivers and lakes.

Warning signs today

• At the current rate of retreat, all of the glaciers in Glacier National Park will be gone by 2070.
• After existing for many millennia, the northern section of the Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica -- a section larger than the state of Rhode Island -- collapsed between January and March 2002, disintegrating at a rate that astonished scientists. Since 1995 the ice shelf's area has shrunk by 40 percent. 
• According to NASA, the polar ice cap is now melting at the alarming rate of nine percent per decade. Arctic ice thickness has decreased 40 percent since the 1960s. 
• In 82 years of record-keeping, four of the five earliest thaws on Alaska's Tanana River were in the 1990s.

Consequence: sea-level rise
Current rates of sea-level rise are expected to increase as a result both of thermal expansion of the oceans and of partial melting of mountain glaciers and the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps. Consequences include loss of coastal wetlands and barrier islands, and a greater risk of flooding in coastal communities. 

Warning signs today

• The current pace of sea-level rise is three times the historical rate and appears to be accelerating.
• Global sea level has already risen by four to eight inches in the past century. Scientists' best estimate is that sea level will rise by an additional 19 inches by 2100, and perhaps by as much as 37 inches.

ECOSYSTEM DISRUPTION

Consequence: ecosystem shifts and species die-off
The increase in global temperatures is expected to disrupt ecosystems and result in loss of species diversity, as species that cannot adapt die off. The first comprehensive assessment of the extinction risk from global warming found that more than one million species could be committed to extinction by 2050 if global warming pollution is not curtailed. Some ecosystems are likely to disappear because new warmer local climates or coastal sea level rise will not support them.

Warning signs today

• A recent study published in the prestigious journal Nature found that at least 279 species of plants and animals are already responding to global warming. Species' geographic ranges have shifted toward the poles at an average rate of 4 miles per decade and their spring events have shifted earlier by an average of 2 days per decade.

It all sounds very apocalyptic and gleefully doomsdayish doesn’t it? But when things have reached the stage where we have to anticipate deviations from the normal climate when we design, then we are at a sorry stage indeed. I don’t know who’s meant to read this journal once the session is over and done with, but if it hasn’t been consigned to some dusty corner of the library and you’re reading this, then maybe it’s time to get out of Ennui and choose a stand. Maybe I should too. 

I hear hurricanes blowing. I know the end is coming soon.
I fear rivers overflowing. I hear the voice of rage and ruin. 

CHORUS
All right! 

(Bad moon rising – Creedence Clearwater Revival)

And to end on a less depressing note………………………

Next on the Journal – Demographics etc.

References

Bhatt, A. (2001). ‘A City Machine’. www.ab-a.net
Darwin, C. (1859). ‘The Origin of Species’. www.literature.org
Dhami and Mahendru (1994). ‘A Text Book of Biology for Class XII’. Tata McGraw Hill New Delhi
Gleick, J. (1988). ‘Chaos: Making a New Science’. Penguin Books
King, S. (1986). ‘The Dark Tower’. Signet Books
Schmidhuber, J. (1998). ‘Facial Beauty and Fractal Geometry’. www.idsia.ch
Stewart, I. (1989). ‘Does God Play Dice’. Penguin Mathematics
Tillotson, G.H.R.(1989). ‘The Tradition of Indian Architecture’. Yale University Press
Yeang, K. (1987). ‘Tropical Urban Regionalism’. Concept Media