the truth about efficiency

i just attended a conference recently where robert and brenda vale presented a very interesting idea.

the hypothesis was that our so called "technological improvements" didn't really lead to drastic improvements in performance and technology. they listed many examples - electric cars was one i could think off the cuff. in the early 20th century, electric cars already existed and already had a similar travel range and efficiency as the modern electric cars that we are banding around now as being green. and if we take into account the efficiency of supply of power today to run our electrical appliances or homes, the true efficiency of the appliance / house is far lower due to the limitations due to source supply.

another astounding thing was the comparision between the performance of BEZED, one of the low energy developments in the UK. they found that on average, although BEZED has reduced consumption of energy when compared to a similar scale and size of development, this reduction can be simply achieved by a change in user behavior in a normal house.

just two bites to think about.

how to assess the sustainability of an urban area?

i recently got to work on an interesting project. the challenge was to propose a method that would allow us to assess the sustainability of an urban area. now there are rating tools like LEED UD and CASBEE for Urban which are geared towards the rating of urban areas, but the whole topic is still very hazy with a lot of conflicting ideas.

what can be a good measure of sustainability? some people strong believe that it can boil down to carbon emissions. one some magic number. there is always this problem of trying to simplify things so that it becomes understandable, and another of oversimplification. often, we are all caught between a rock and a hard place.

urban areas would require consideration of the urban massing, the water management, waste management, transport and landscape. these would be the main areas what would impact the sustainability performance of a place i guess. as to what would constitute the component indicators that we can assess the performance, that is as good your guess as mine.

i realized that one problem within the sustainability realm is that consultants propose what they know and what they are familiar with. as a result, a lot of foreign standards are grafted onto a local site. i believe the principles of the workings behind a sustainability framework can be brought across different places with different climates and resources, but i'm not so sure if that is a good idea or not. if all sustainability is local, why are the standards universal?

guess this is an area which should be an interesting venue of research.

a troubling issue

something that is troubling at the back of my mind as i surf architecture websites are the type of projects that are truly sustainable in terms of energy, materials and waste. these are invariably small projects. i believe it has to do with scale and complexity.

in a small project, there is most likely only 1 client, with very few stakeholders. in addition, the intimacy of the project allows for the architect to be able to overlook most of the areas of the design from the very big to the smallest of details. as such, it's far simpler to achieve the goal of a sustainable project.

contrast it to a huge building like an office tower and it gets so much more complicated. i'm very sure nature didn't really planned for us to go 100 stories high. it's an abomination. the only way we can do that is through technology and the input of energy. energy in terms of extra materials. and because of that, we also have to expend energy to do all the seemingly simple things that we do at ground level. this includes ventilation systems, which are the prime energy guzzlers in any high rise commercial building. so where are we heading in the sustainability game?

not very far i suspect. i posted earlier on efficiency vs effectiveness. i question the effectiveness of the high rise. are we trying to do something that is fundamentally alien to our natural world, and trying to solve a gordian knot. are we kidding ourselves that high rises have a truly sustainable future? i doubt so. but i believe in cities. in recent times, there have been movements that push for "ruralization" and the idea of the groundscraper. i don't think they will work for human civilization reaches the peak only in cities. we need a certain density to achieve that spark. ruralization is just a pretty term for urban sprawl.

so how do we resolve all the conflicting ideas? i have no idea.

underrated green design strategies

i get quite upset and skeptical when i read of projects that boast of plenty of technology packing into it and brands itself as green. even till now, i’m not quite sold on the idea that technology is the best solution to the ecological problem.
i’ve always believed in the idea that to be truly sustainable, we got to consume less, far less, and try to produce more. in that order. we shouldn’t be rushing to stick PV panels all over in the quest for sustainability without trying to fix our consumption patterns.
thus, i think certain fundamentals are very very important. namely passive design strategies. fundamentals that are often overlooked, and underrated.
read up on some of them here at the article : underrated green design strategies

tapping solar power

one cannot run away from solar power as it is the most visible form of renewable energy to appear on building facades. there are various ideas of BIPV (building integrated photovoltaics) and AIPV (architecture integrated photovoltaics). but for the common person on the street, i feel that before rushing out to buy a PV setup, it’s useful to do a review on what’s on the market.

there are 3 primary types of PV systems currently on the market, and depending on where you’d like to place your PV panels, the choice of product would differ. check out the article to see the different types of panels on the market today.

efficiency vs effectiveness: an interesting sustainability concept

we cannot continue as if it’s business as usual. already in academic circles, there have been talk that the damage that we’ve done has reached tipping point, the point where a negative feedback loop kicks in.
the major stress on sustainability efforts has been on efficiency, and rightly so. attaining efficiency is the low hanging fruit in the greening effort. so replacing outdated technology and processes to attain better returns, that’s relatively easy and we can do that immediately. but in my view, efficiency is a zero sum game. one can be very efficient at doing the WRONG thing. think of hyper efficient coal plants. super efficient cars. these would still create waste and pollution, regardless of how efficient they are, because they are producing the WRONG type of product in the first place.

thus i believe, before we talk about efficiency, we should talk about effectiveness. the question to be asked first must be “if this is good?” the concept of good is extremely problematic. good for whom? for which group of people, for people alone or all species?

very often, we are still caught in the human-centric vision where good means for the good of the human species. the opposite is the bio-centric view. this means for the good of all species. gradually, we are moving towards being more bio-centric, as we realize that we are part of the ecosystem and not outside of it. destroy the ecosystem, and we cannot survive. it’s as simple as that.

thus, i believe that a very important question that we are currently missing out on and that we should ask in any effort is this: “is this effective in conserving/restoring/protecting the health of the entire ecosystem?”
from that angle, there has to be a fundamental relook at our production methods and the way we make things. for a deeper discussion, refer to here.

the tyranny of sight

as men, we are visual creatures. it is our dominant sense. we depend on our sight more than our sense of smell, our hearing, taste or touch. without sight, we are helpless. and this has translated to a form of domination over all the other senses.

what these leads to is a primacy of visual impact over everything else in architecture. this is nowhere more evident in modernist architecture, where form, space and order is sacred. the aesthetic, the visual aesthetic is the be-all and end-all. In fact, we can also see this happening to green architecture, where it becomes a visual fad, a style to be sold, to be bought, and to be consumed and reprocessed.

what happened to all the rest of our senses. the touch of the roughness of stone, or the warmth of wood. the sounds of echoes down a hallway. the contrast between the warm fireplace and the bitter winter cold, the smell of fresh herbs in the kitchen. these information transmit to us the sense of scale and the sense of place. how awful is it that we give up all of these, just to create lifeless compositions of glass and steel.

architecture cannot be truly sustainable if it doesn’t touch the soul.

the eyes of the skin is an excellent read on the topic. see space and experience from an alternative point of view.

 

another book that makes for easy reading is the architecture of happiness. it’s lyrical but entertaining. read the review. another classic on sensory architecture: steen eiler rasmussen. together, these 3 texts suggest that there is more to architecture and experiences than just what we see.