SUSTAINABILITY
The time has come when we need to realize our responsibility to the environment and our role within the building industry. Sustainability covers a broad number of issues related to buildings and each one of us have their own focus and goals for engaging with sustainability. We have worked with clients who have a goal to be entirely self sufficient, to projects that endeavor to teach visitors about sustainability, clients who need to meet Level 3 of the Code for Sustainable Homes to clients who simply want to reduce their running costs.
There is a misconception that ‘eco-friendly’ design is cost prohibitive when in reality, there are so many options that sustainable design can certainly be affordable and can even save costs. Many aspects of sustainable design actually cost nothing. For instance a house can be designed to have an orientation to the sun or away based on the climatic conditions of the region in a way that is most beneficial, which means no extra cost. Similarly, a building designed with stack ventilation can eliminate the need for air conditioners and save purchase, installation and running costs of unnecessary machinery.
Enlisted below are some of the other issues we need to address in our designs in relation to sustainability.
WASTE
According to Defra, 109 million tonnes of waste is produced in the construction industry each year. As architects, we can have the most impact on controlling waste at the earliest stages of design. By specifying products that require less packaging, are sourced locally and made of eco friendly materials we begin to design out waste. Similarly, reusing excavated soil on the site can significantly reduce landfill contributions as well as waste fees for the client.
COST FREE SUSTAINABILITY
Passive solar design
Passive solar design uses the natural movement of heat and air to maintain comfortable temperatures, operating with little or no mechanical assistance. The point is to design the building to maximize the benefits it receives from the sun using the five basic solar design principles: orientation, overhangs, insulation, windows and thermal mass.
Stack effect
Stack effect is a natural way to cool a building and avoid the use of air conditioning. Stack ventilation is temperature induced. When there is a temperature difference between two adjoining volumes of air the warmer air will have lower density and be more buoyant thus will rise above the cold air creating an upward air stream.
RENEWABLE RESOURCES
Wind and Solar
Depending on your location solar panels and wind turbines can be used to harness energy. This can be used to power your electrics and excess power can be sold back to the grid. Solar panels can be used to create electricity and to heat water. Using solar power to heat water used for under floor heating is an efficient use for solar panels in the UK and other cold countries.
Wood
A wood boiler is a logical option for a heating system that uses renewable resources. Clients with forested land that can be managed to supply the wood burner will offer extremely low-cost and efficient heat.
Water
Rain water can be harvested for use in the garden and for toilet flushing. In addition reed bed filtration can be utilized to naturally dispose of waste water and effluence. Another option for effluence is self composting toilets.
SUSTAINABLE AND GREEN MATERIALS
Using sustainable and green building materials can help reduce the environmental impacts associated with the extraction, transport, processing, fabrication, installation, reuse, recycling, and disposal of building industry source materials.
They are composed of renewable resources and are environmentally responsible because impacts are considered over the life of the product. There are many sustainable and/or green materials available and it is getting easier to identify these. We look for materials that do not contain any harmful or contaminating chemicals. This is to avoid pollution in the manufacturing stage and in the product’s legacy but also to avoid off-gassing contaminates inside buildings. Wood is sourced form sustainable sources including wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and with a chain of custody where possible. Some other commonly used sustainable materials include block work made from recycled cement, sheep’s wool for insulation and low emission solvent free adhesives.
LOCAL MATERIALS
Sourcing local materials is one way to reduce transportation pollution as well as support your local economy. Another sustainable practice we encourage is the use of local labour.
SOME TRENDS IN SUSTAINABLE DESIGNS :
NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY, SINGAPORE
This is the roof of the five-story School of Art, Design & Media at Nanyang Technological University campus, in Singapore: it was designed by CPG Consultants Pvt. Ltd. The roof insulates the building, cools the surrounding air and harvests rainwater for landscape irrigation.
GREAT GREEN ROOFS - SINGAPORE
Singapore has a very strong green building initiative which has many big Architecture firms competing to design ever greener structures. I think this informal competition is creating a design culture and civic institutions that are not afraid of experimentation.
The vitality of Singapore, a truly multi-ethnic society, plus the green competition is creating some of the world’s great buildings.
Green roofs have many advantages. First among them is they replace green space taken up by cities. Some buildings now have more square feet of green space than the site did before construction!
THE WORLD OF LOHAS
COR, the first sustainable, mixed-use condominium in Miami, Florida represents a dynamic synergy between architecture, structural engineering and ecology. Rising 400’ above the Design District, Cor extracts power from its environment utilizing the latest advancements in wind turbines, photovoltaic’s, and solar hot water generation – while integrating them into its architectural identity.
Here Chad Oppenheim discusses the project and various core concepts of sustainable architecture.
CHICAGO ARCHITECTS DESIGN FIRST GREEN CITY HQ
Since Chicago has taken great strides toward becoming a greener city, it seems a good place to find architects to design headquarters for the world’s greenest city.
Masdar, the $22 billion development in Abu Dhabi, is the world’s first ever zero-carbon, zero-waste and zero car city.
The Chicago architecture firm of Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill has been chosen to design “the world’s first positive energy, mixed-use building”, which promises to be “the first building in history to generate power for its own assembly, through development of its solar roof pier before the underlying complex.”
If all goes according to plan (which might in itself be an architectural first), the self-dependent structure will not only serve as the city’s centerpiece, it will have a whopping 1.4 million square feet floor plan and cost an estimated $300 million to build.
In addition to the many firsts involved, the building also takes some large and small honors. It will feature one of the world’s largest photovoltaic arrays while employing the largest solar thermal driven cooling and dehumidification system — and it will be the lowest energy consumer per square meter for a modern class A office building in a hot, humid climate. It will also consume about 70% less than water than other similarly sized buildings.
"Masdar Headquarters is one of the most significant developments of our time,” while setting “a new paradigm for the way buildings are designed, constructed, and inhabited."
MODERN SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE HOME AT BIRD ISLAND BY GRAFT LAB ARCHITECT
This is a top of architecture design home that looks very awesome and gorgeous in architecture and designing. Modern Sustainable Architectural Home at Bird Island by Graft Lab Architect located at Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. Eco-friendly architecture home riches by bamboo frame and silicone glass fabric, modern residence which has an interior and interior design look shiny and great. This Your browser may not support display of this image. sustainable architecture home comfortable for family living totally looking cool. Bird Island was designed as part of the YTL Green Homes Competition, which challenged eight international architects and designers to put their keenest, Greenest ideas into action.
Eco Architecture: A greenhouse to keep you and your plants warm
ECO FACTOR : GREENHOUSE HOME MADE FROM SUSTAINABLE MATERIALS.
A greenhouse is intended to provide a warm and cozy atmosphere for the plant kingdom. Designer Hiroshi Iguchi is taking the greenhouse concept farther with a greenhouse house. No, we didn’t make a typo by writing house twice, but the Camouflage House is just that. It’s a house inside a greenhouse. The house has been designed as a part of the Fifth world project, which aims to promote ecofriendly and sustainable architecture.
Made from natural materials that include wood for floors and traditional Japanese panels for compartments, this house protects not just plants and trees, but humans too from harsh weather conditions. Apart from plants, some trees too are integrated into the house, by leaving open spaces in between the ceiling to let trees thrive in the open.
The Dark Side: To let sunlight pass through the celling and walls, something that is important for plants, the walls and ceiling are made from glass. This transparent exterior could soon become a problem.
Glass that "breathes" like gills, solar cells that imitate leaves, and other biomimetic technologies
Want to cool a building? Steal a trick from the forest canopy and use leaves for shade, as Osaka University did with its Frontier Research Center (pictured above). Builders, architects, and designers seeking better ways to go green are increasingly turning to nature—the original green—for solutions that have proven track records in the real world.
Engineering inspired by nature can be “functionally indistinguishable from the elegant designs we see in the natural world,” says Janine Benyus, a leading proponent of nature-based design and founder of the Biomimicry Institute.
Benyus says the strategy has already yielded a wide range of new products that may replicate nature’s successes: ceramics with the strength and toughness of abalone shells, self-assembling computer chips that form by processes similar to the way that tooth enamel grows, adhesives that mimic the glue that mussels use to anchor themselves in place, and self-cleaning plastics based on the structure of a lotus leaf.
Some biomimicry efforts are tackling large-scale challenges such as supplying energy to an entire building. The Kyoto-based company Kyosemi has developed a power-harvesting solar cell that imitates the way that trees collect sunlight from various angles with their leaves. Called Sphelar, the product comprises little spherical cells that can be incorporated into a building’s windows. Unlike standard photovoltaic panels, Sphelar can absorb light from many directions, providing more consistent power generation as the sun moves across the sky.
