Smart and energy efficient is the new-ish approach for many architecture and design firms these days. The problem for the last decade has been that trying to persuade clients to incorporate some of these strategies into their needs has been difficult. Why? The prohibitive costs of implementing advanced technology-based elements into building design. PV panels are the first to come to mind. And when the cost is perceived as prohibitive by the client, firms balk at pushing them.
University researchers all across the U.S. have been investigating this very problem. Some of it has been done in conjunction with architecture departments, but more often, these investigations are cross-disciplinary endeavors by engineers, physicists, and computer scientists. But before you turn the digital page (i.e. scroll down or click another tab), read on, because many of these technologies are available today, and what’s more they are cheaper for both client and service provider.
One approach? Passive technologies. They are far cheaper and are potentially much easier to implement. For example, every architect recalls the model of the egg crate from their days in school. Well, at Utah University, this concept has been realized as a form of passive shading that can accommodate both shape and size of commercial buildings. A team consisting of Professor Ryan E. Smith, graduate students, and researchers from 3form created solar shading called CRATE. It’s adjustable profile means it can conform to numerous shapes. Even better, it allows the design to accommodate both energy and lighting requirements.
Ironically,the group began with the intention of developing expensive technologies such as DIPV or Design Integrated PhotoVoltaics and thin-film technologies. But they instead created the egg-crate inspired design for solar shading because the team realized this was a more feasible approach to their numerous investigations and studies. In other words, as any good research team should do, they let the results of the research dictate their continued research, rather than insisting on developing costly, high-technology products. The crate-shading was more cost-effective and therefore more accessible to a wider array of users.
Other passive strategies are used in a prototypical house by Professor Joerg Ruegemer. His first directive? Make every design site-specific. That means no master plans, that globalizing, universalizing modernist theory that forms the backbone of every architecture training program around the world. Why? They don’t work, especially when trying to be energy efficient. Instead, one must study the site carefully and using different approaches to determine all of its unique features. Indeed, he and his team performed 35 different studies on the site. This extensive front-end research paid off literally because building his house cost only $250,000. What does that mean for architecture firms? That they must eschew sloppy, random surfing of Google and really research the sites for which they are commissioned. They must be rigorous and disciplined in their approach to how they are analyzing sites, and use those research parameters for each project. A little forethought goes a long way towards saving money, as well as creating designs that are truly unique.
Thus for example, the team came up with various passive strategies that enhanced and minimized the solar properties of the site, depending upon the season. Windows, for example, were placed precisely to enhance solar effects in the winter, while the shading design took account of the sun in hotter months to maximize cooling. No expensive PV panels needed here. As for heating and cooling, nothing as costly as sub-floor piping that recycles either cool or hot water. Instead, Professor Ruegemer and his team relied primarily on insulation and airtightness for the house.
What’s another benefit to deploying passive energy efficient technologies? Saving 30%-45% of the energy that is otherwise expended by the design and building industry: according to him, in 2009 alone, the building industry emitted almost 50% of the US’s CO2 and consumed 77% of the total electricity used in that same year. What’s more, electricity consumption accounts for almost 30% of the overall greenhouse gas emissions. But even if a firm is not interested in the concept that there are consequences to emitting greenhouse gases (i.e. if they don’t believe in their harmful effects, despite the most famous doubter having recently recanted his doubts), the idea of saving money for the client and hence keeping them interested in future projects is surely a boon.
Next week, we will learn about different approaches to equipping PV panels more cheaply and more efficiently. - Click here for Part II
Sherin Wing, Ph.D., is a social historian who writes on architecture, urbanism, racism, the economy, and epistemology (how we know what we know by researching and examining the agendas inherent in our sources of information) to name a few issues and topics. She is dedicated to exploring issues in ...
9 Comments
Sherin Wing,
you can try to sound less lecturing to architects and stop being a guiding authority on passive systems which architects know for centuries. The information you are writing is so main stream and only shows you are just discovering things known to first year architecture and design students. Just don't lecture architects about them. That makes you read like a snake oil saleswoman.
"This extensive front-end research paid off literally because building his house cost only $250,000. What does that mean for architecture firms? That they must eschew sloppy, random surfing of Google and really research the sites for which they are commissioned. They must be rigorous and disciplined in their approach to how they are analyzing sites, and use those research parameters for each project. A little forethought goes a long way towards saving money, as well as creating designs that are truly unique."
After talking so much about social justice, financial equality, unemployment, economy, I am surprised you referred 250K "just $250,000." No wonder you are a successful stock trader.
"Next week, we will learn about different approaches to equipping PV panels more cheaply and more efficiently."
Really? Which ones? As an Archinect reader, I expect more original editorial pieces.
"only $250,000"
I think the point of this article is that there are some people doing good research to expand upon what architects have been doing for thousands of years and that this is, in fact, a lesser-known and perhaps less sexy area of research into sustainable design and worthy of attention.
Ms. Wing is reporting in the spirit of sharing what these researchers have been working on because it doesn't get much attention in the shadow of research into pv or thin films or other high-tech applications.
Perhaps some feel this is not cutting-edge enough. However, the fact that this research receives grant money and corporate investment means that somebody regards it as useful. Based on contemporary advances in materials and science, how can passive starategies be tweaked to be even more effective on multiple levels?
One thing the researchers have been working to break through is this common mis-conception that passive strategies are simply easy, or that they just happen because architects have known about them for thousands of years.
The assumption that we know all about this already, in fact, often leads to sloppy applications or missed opportunities. Working with these strategies is actually quite challenging and there are architects who are not technically versed to the same degree these researchers who spend all their time doing this are. This is also why we hire consultants.
The researchers were approaching these techniques in order to make them more effective. This benefits all architects.
One of the interesting things the researchers said was that they have encountered a lot of resistance on the part of many architects who believe there is nothing to be gained by pushing the boundaries of the known and that they are more interested in the latest gadgets. This raises an interesting debate about ideology. Why do architects make the choices they do or hold the beliefs they do? This sort of resaerch can challenge ideology and assumptions by delivering results that can be more accessible. It give architects more tools to offer clients.
I for one am grateful for the exposure to people like these professors who are doing valuable work--even if it's in areas we aleady know something about.
on a related note check out this article Buildings and clothes could melt to save energy on the potential of PCMs to enable vastly improved envelope/thermal efficiencies
Phase change materials are a perfect example, Nam. Thank you for sharing this. The use of bio-gels is promising and based on the most fundamental principals of energy transfer and storage. That's quite significant that that building's energy for cooling was by 98%. All that gel adds up. I'm sure they will be monitoring performance once it opens. Even so, it's still only slated for LEED Silver? I guess they overloaded on some points and not enough on others. You'd have to talk to ZGF about that. Nice work.
Architects may have been employing passive strategies for 'thousands' of years but clearly many forgot most of these lessons since the invention of electricity as evidenced by the numerous glass boxes designed for the desert by some of worlds 'leading' practices. While the passive strategies here sound obvious and simple, most people are not using them, hence the need to remind people.
The author states: "Make every design site-specific. That means no master plans, that globalizing, universalizing modernist theory that forms the backbone of every architecture training program around the world."
'Master Plans' do not "form the backbone of every architecture training program around the world". On the contrary, that would most definitely be a small minority of programs these days. If anything, approaching architectural design as site-specific has formed the background of 'architecture training programs' far more than any 'master plan' approach (or 'prototypical' approach, i.e. what the author may in fact mean rather than master plan - which is more an urban design strategy anyway) -- at least for the past 35 years or so.
Good point. I think the intention was to resist globalizing approaches to design in ways that are decoupled from the specifics of site. I think the point was that prototyping or templating without regard to the specifics of site is a universalizing or globalizing impulse that generalizes what is inherently complex and site-related. Passive strategies are too complex for generalizing.
I appreciate Archinect putting out these examples but I think more should be done bringing forth projects that actually achieve more with less and do so on budgets that are actually restrictive. I applaud the research these projects have done but they're not really impressive.
I would question whether the CRATE example of 'passive' strategies funded by a particular company (3form) as being something more than another means of getting their product out there. I like 3form as a product but I don't see how it's application as an exterior shading system as ground breaking any more than say...developing a one-off system with curtain wall manufacturers like YKK or Kawneer. 3form isn't cheap and wrapping high-rise buildings in plastics & resins is not, practically speaking, something I would do and many City jurisdictions have fire marshall's that aren't too keen on the plastic wrapped buildings for other reasons. This isn't too say research other was to use 3-form isn't bad, but to pass it off as ground breaking passive-solar shading is a stretch.
As an architect, I've been implementing passive strategies at various scales in my projects for 15 years while at the same time reducing the actually quantity of materials that go into projects. Sometimes the results are successful, sometimes not as successful as I would like or compromised by the inherent aspects of construction projects with owners, public money and not-to-savvy contractors. Many practicing architects, like myself, do research for every project into developing systems strategies & designs that use less materials not yet more scabbed onto a building.
Most architects worth their salt DO design site specifically by responding to the immediate context, weather patterns, micro-climates, and the built & natural environments. But there are plenty of starchitects that simply design form and then let it act as object on the land and then with after-thought use such "sustainable" technologies as triple-glazed systems or lots of insulation!
As for Professor Ruegemer's $250K high efficiency house, that really isn't new or exciting. Academic proclamations every 5 years don't move the ball forward. Heck, the 2030 Challenge does more for me than the Professor's prime directive of "mak(ing) every design site specific". Really?! That's all I have to do? And here I was using wind maps & solar access diagrams for western Colorado to design an elementary school in south Louisiana.
I'd be more impressive if the professor looked at turning the huge quantities of existing building stock out there into high efficiency 'machines for living' and do it for less than a $100/sf. How about turning a 100 year old wood-framed house into a highly efficient residence without compromising the historic integrity and doing it for the less or the same as new construction? Sure it isn't as sexy, sure it doesn't bring in the donor dollars to the Architecture department like a shiny new house does but if the point of the research is to push the envelope of discourse then the research should do so.
Perhaps Archinect could start reaching out to practitioners to share the realities of practicing in this current environment (economically) and designing for the environment (built & natural) and ask about what kind of strategies they've used, research they've done and projects they've completed that in some way, move the ball forward in making architecture less energy intensive to build, maintain, operate and inhabit.
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