ICIS Sustainable Architecture Days 2006
The Kyoto Agreement and Sustainability in the borderland between Architects, Engineers and Planners
Wednesday 1st February 2006
Arkitektens Hus, Cph Christianshavn
The seminar series explores the issue of sustainability as both a barrier and opportunity, through case studies, dialogue and debate. The presenters were well-known English and Danish architects and engineers, each with their specific and unique approach and attitude toward the tasks of energy reduction and sustainability in the building industry.
The aim of the seminar, moderated by Lennart Grut from Richard Rogers Partnership,
Andy Sedgwick, Arup UK
Andy provided a detailed background as to why there is new legislation on energy use and buildings, from the
His illustrated the relationship between CO2 and global warming, now accepted by the scientific community and looked at various climate change scenarios, over the next 100 years. For some countries in northern Europe, such as the
A graph of the energy/wealth ‘ladder’ showed that as a nations GDP increased, so does energy use. Post-industrialised nations do need to lower their energy use significantly. However, it’s also vital that countries such as
Energy security is also a potential geo-political issue, as countries become increasingly reliant on reserves in the
EU countries are sharing the burden of reducing carbon emissions. Figures from the European Environment Agency indicate that most countries are underachieving in terms of achieving their goals. The driving legislation in the EU is the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, which aims to reduce CO2 emissions in line with
Andy then looked at the Beddington Zero (fossil) Energy Development (BedZed) as an interesting case-study of a sustainable social housing development in Beddington, Sutton. This project had committed stakeholders (the Peabody Trust and architect Bill Dunster) who really believed in the mission of the development, which was to use only energy from renewable sources, generated onsite. It is the first large-scale, carbon-neutral community and was innovative in its approach to community building. The underlying sustainable development concepts were broader than just an energy brief, in fact they involved the development of a ‘lifestyle’ to do with the physical environment. BedZed has encountered some teething problems (e.g sourcing from not-yet-established supply chains), however it is an inspiring example of going beyond compliance towards sustainable living and community.
Download Andy's presentation about BedZed here (12,4 mb)
Read more about BedZed at: http://www.bedzed.org.uk/
Rob Marsh, SBI (Danish Building Research Institute)
Rob provided an overview of the new energy regulations that were introduced in January 2006, resulting from the EU Directive on Buildings’ Energy Performance from 2002. These regulations will be fully operational in Denmark by June 2006.
He began with a retrospective glance at energy conservation in buildings prior to the oil crisis of the early 1970s. Early concerns about energy use were about improving indoor comfort and fighting energy sources. The oil crisis spurred regulation of energy consumption, however, this meant only a tightening of already existing regulations aimed at minimising heat loss and based on the heat demand paradigm (which is subject to the laws of diminishing returns.)
The new regulations involve the assessment of more types of building energy consumption, including heating, cooling, hot water, lighting, pumps etc, energy loss from distribution and credit for renewable energy use. The key factor of the new assessment of energy consumption is the broadening to incorporate primary energy consumption including fuel consumption to production and distribution. This has implications for technology such as mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, which has been promoted since the 1970s but actually has very high electrical consumption to the system (identical to natural ventilation in the new energy regulations).
Thus traditional ‘energy’ paradigms don’t work any longer.The future may bring more low-tech solutions such as natural ventilation with preheating of the supply air with the use of a double-façade windows.
His conclusions were as follows:
- Buildings’ energy consumption has radically changed since the 1970s and now needs to be assessed in terms of primary energy consumptions
- Danish and European energy policy is now dominated by attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
- New energy regulations use a more holistic approach to assessing energy consumption, so more types of energy consumption in buildings will be assessed.
- Reducing electricity consumption takes precedence over reducing heat consumption
- More holistic assessement methods are needed and there will be further tightening of regulations in the coming years.
For architects and engineers:
- Existing ‘energy paradigms cannot be used anymore.
- There is a growing need for an integrated design approach
- Energy considerations must now be taken into account early in the concept phase.
Following his presentation, there were some questions and an interesting discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of burning as opposed to recycling and reusing waste as a resource, as well as the moral issue of ‘forcing’ energy efficiency in new markets such as China, who have a right to pursue rapid development.
Download Rob Marsh presentation here (9,4 mb).
Thomas Carstens, Arkitema, DK
Thomas illustrated a best practice example of using sustainability principles through the development of an ecological kindergarten in Copenhagen.
The project was developed by an interdisciplinary core team of eight people, including including specialists in health care, natural ventilation, buildings materials, social, recycling etc). Together they developed a year-long activity programme and environmental policy, with a detailed priority scheme for environmental considerations, which was made with consideration of the local municipality's environmental strategy. The policy contained detailed costings, environmental impacts etc as well as clear goals and means of achieving them.
The highest priority was the 'interior environment'. The goals for this included optimal temperature, acoustic issues, interior air quality and water, as well as topics such as learning and education. The idea was to create a balance between the social and economic and environmental elements in sustainability.
Thomas ran through the design and development process including consideration of a neighbouring priest, so as not to block his views. Thus the design was partially submerged or 'dug into' the ground. A 'climazone' was created using plants for air circulation, which provided floor heating and would also comply with the tightening regulations concerned with non-mechanical ventilation.
The working process was very unique and interesting, with this interdisciplinary expert team and although the initial building costs went over budget, it is likely that the economic costs over the buildings life will be 'sustainable' too.
Following Thomas' presentation, there was some discussion of the role that architects and engineers can have in developing sustainability. Some felt that it is now encumbent on major practices and individual professionals to become advocates in this area; leadership abilities are a pre-requisite to this.
Download Thomas' presentation here (2,9 mb).
Bjarke Ingels, PLOT
The day ended with an inspiring and humorous presentation from the high-energy Bjarke Ingels who ran through a series of some major development designed by Plot, with amusing anecdotes of the work process and engaging interest to keep the momentum of a development scheme.
Some notable examples of Plot's innovative approach included the project “Too Perfect – Seven New Denmarks” where it was thought that Danish design had become 'too perfect' and was merely about polishing and refining typologies that were created a long time ago now. The idea was to reinvigorate the process and ask the 'big' questions, one of which was "What if . . . Denmark was organised into 7 different economies?". The Superharbour project concept was to consolidate all Danish harbour traffic into a strategically located harbour, linking Copenhagen and Malmo and creating a gateway to the Baltic sea markets and beyond. The resulting start-shaped harbour design became uncannily similar to the Maersk logo and Bjarke joked that they may adapt the concept for the Chinese market!
Another project based around a 'big' question was "What if Denmark had an energy bill of zero?". This project was around the same time that the infamous Bjorn Lomborg was organising the Copenhagen Consensus, triggering some wider debate about pricing the environment. Plot made some interesting calculations during their concept process, for example they worked out that the high-energy slurry 'waste' from one person could actually match their energy use for one year. From these calculations, they designed a kind of double ecology system, in which there is no such thing as 'waste'.
Bjarke showed a number of mixed-use building concepts and outlined the organisational process behind it; getting and keeping developers and organisations as clients in these large schemes, engaging VIP interest and getting good PR, maintaining the momentum and what he termed "programmatic alchemy" - meaning 'getting gold' from mixed-use schemes. Of course, underpinning all this is true architectural vision.
Download Bjarke's presentation here (45 mb, slides 301 - 336 unfortunately missing) .
.. or read more about Plot's numerous projects on their excellent website: www.plot.dk.