Archinect - News

On the impact of newer buildings on urban air pollution

2024-10-25T17:47:00-04:00

In hermetically sealed buildings, less fresh air gets in. [...] Eventually, this polluted indoor air – which is making more than a third of the planet sick – is expelled into the surrounding environment. This raises the question of how buildings pollute the air around them, what pollutants they produce, and whether this expelled air is sufficiently diluted once outdoors.

As the article mentions, the World Health Organization had previously pointed to a "lack of monitoring of air pollution levels, sources and consequences on public health" as a present danger for cities.

To fix it, authors César Martín-Gómez and Arturo H. Ariño of the Universidad de Navarra say: "A detailed understanding of how buildings contribute to pollution in cities is essential. This will give public authorities, decision-makers and managers the tools to establish strategies to, for example, minimise pollution through devices similar to the catalytic converters required on all combustion-powered vehicles. Eventually, we may even be able to recover useful components of domestic air, such as waste methane, which could be redirected to energy generation."

You can read more about the compounding effects of poor indoor air quality via our 2021 feature on urban air pollution here.

Snøhetta's high-tech Vertikal Nydalen mixed-use project opens in Oslo

2024-04-27T10:00:00-04:00

A new mixed-use project in Oslo from Snøhetta has been completed following a nine-year design and development phase that culminated in 118,400 square feet and 18 floors with restaurants, an office component, and 40 apartment units all built in.

Vertikal Nydalen is the focal point of a new town square in the Norwegian capital and features a self-sufficient climate system bolstered by PV panels, geo-wells, heat pumps, and an advanced building monitoring system that allows user feedback to inform its controls.

Image credit: Lars Petter Pettersen/Snøhetta

The project was born out of a pilot program that combined two research efforts supported by the Research Council of Norway. It focused on enhancing the building’s ventilation strategy and helping its heating/cooling systems run with little added energy at an efficiency rate of up to 2.5 times the industry’s current leading standard.

Image credit: Lars Petter Pettersen/Snøhetta

Snøhetta's Kjetil Trædal Thorsen says: "We are proud to f...

60 Minutes spotlights the importance of indoor air quality

2023-10-31T14:50:00-04:00

For the Harvard professor, founder of the university's Healthy Buildings Program, our building design and public health officials have ignored indoor air systems for too long – that is, until the COVID pandemic hit. [...] "If you look at the way we design and operate buildings –and I mean offices, schools, local coffee shop[s] – we haven't designed for health," Allen said. "We have bare minimum standards."

Professor Joe Allen, who also does consultation work for developers, recently advised on the Amazon ‘HQ2’ project in Virginia from NBBJ. He and his colleagues at Harvard’s Healthy Buildings Program center their work around six research areas (Homes, Schools, Business, Materials, Climate, and Infectious Diseases), noting that humans spend, on average, 90% of their lives indoors. The project leverages studies and empirical evidence that have roots in 19th-century public health design and is now being aided by research into the effects of ventilation on the spread of COVID-19.

"All else equal, which building are you gonna go to? You have your choice right now: This building that put in healthy building controls, or this building that's designed the way we've always designed buildings, and is prone to being a sick building?" Allen told 60 Minutes, speaking about post-pandemic market standards.

A list of tools and resources compiled for designers by the program can be found here.

...

The ancient ventilation method that’s still keeping Chinese homes cool

2023-07-17T11:46:00-04:00

When asked about why skywells have caught more attention of modern Chinese people, Wang [Zhengfeng] says that the courtyard is also designed to serve as a gathering space for families or communities, and comes with ritual meanings. "Perhaps changes in the way of life could also trigger vernacular nostalgia among people living in concrete and glass forests.” "It won't be easy to be sustainable by learning from the past without reflecting on our current behaviours."

Lightwells are of course, a common passive cooling method in modern Western designs, but in China, their popularity is partly driven by a budding “vernacular nostalgia” for traditional features and concepts. The government’s push towards greener building standards and a 2060 net zero carbon emissions target is also inspiring the renaissance in the face of skyrocketing energy consumption at a critical time. A 2018 report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted 85% of all homes in the country will have at least one air conditioning unit by 2030.

Munger Hall update: New report outlines 'safety hazards' in megadorm's design

2022-12-21T14:42:00-05:00

A new independent review produced by a 13-member panel made up of faculty and community members at the University of California, Santa Barbara has outlined a host of health and safety risks inherent in the contested Munger Hall megadorm design proposal.

The report cited the need for Covid-safe ventilation techniques, safer egress routes, and the psychological toll taken on students as factors to be considered in a “robust redesign” that would follow the changes made previously in response to a torrent of community feedback. It also decried a lack of outside input early on.

“[A] majority of Panel members believes that such information could have averted the critical concerns raised by the current design,” the report stated. “Research and analysis weighed by this Panel reveal significant health and safety risks that are predictable enough, probable enough, and consequential enough that it would be unwise for UCSB to proceed without significant modifications to the design.”

Previously...

Office buildings are deploying the power of scents to lure workers back

2022-09-15T14:29:00-04:00

There’s been a surge of demand from real estate owners for pleasant fragrances to make the air a little fresher and the workplace a little more comforting and energizing [...] “Here in New York City, for example, real estate companies are interested in scenting the building itself, as opposed to just the individual tenant spaces [...] There are lots of vacant office spaces these days. So what can the real estate companies do to attract tenants?”

So-called "scent profiles" have been documented to improve productivity, avoid a phenomenon known as olfactory fatigue, and achieve a psychological familiarity helpful to marketers when developing brand recognition. This is one of many approaches companies are attempting to use in order to lure workers back into the city's emptying central business districts.

Marriott, the nation’s second-largest hotel chain, has for two decades incorporated scents into all 30 of its Bonvoy properties, and (despite the HR headaches caused by allergy risks) there is now a growing interest among heavyweight commercial clients like SHVO and CBRE looking to improve indoor air quality in the wake of the pandemic.

Allison Lobay, global account manager of Air Aroma, shared with the Commercial Observer: "Some scents are associated with improved productivity. In the office, citrus fragrances are used to energize...

'Beauty matters': MASS Design Group featured on 60 Minutes

2022-09-07T13:13:00-04:00

Lesley Stahl: Do you think that COVID will change architecture for everybody? Michael Murphy: Everyone around the world is going through a shift in their understanding of the buildings around us. That they may make us sicker, that they could make us healthier if they were better designed.

MASS founding principal and executive director Michael Murphy discussed the curative father-son restoration project that led to his enrollment at Harvard and subsequent experience with the firm’s award-winning early Butaro District Hospital project in Rwanda, which helped cement the place of air flow as one of its three simple design mandates long before the impacts of COVID-19 were noted across the industry.

Murphy's desire to give back to his hometown of Poughkeepsie through various retrofit projects is also highlighted along with a site visit to the in-progress Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture campus, which comes well-appointed with furnishings created by Managing Director Christian Benimana's MASS.Made studio in Kigali. “Beauty matters,” Murphy told 60 Minutes host Lesley Stahl finally about the approach that led to last year's AIA Firm Award win. “Spaces...

SHoP’s Uber headquarters 'breathes' with smart accordion-style windows

2022-05-26T11:47:00-04:00

New York-based SHoP has completed work on the Uber Headquarters in San Francisco. The 423,000-square-foot project is divided into two buildings ranging between six and eleven stories, linked by two suspended walkways.

Photo © Jason O'Rear

The scheme’s star attraction is its active “breathing” façade composed of full-height windows. The computer-controlled system sees windows open and close in an accordion shape, with operable windows strategically placed at specific locations on the façade in response to wind and sun patterns. In addition to satisfying the building’s ventilation needs, the moving façade offers an ever-changing street scene throughout the day.

Photo © Jason O'Rear

Inside, the building’s perimeter is lined by a series of circulation and gathering spaces known as the Commons. The zones form a buffer area between the unconditioned atmosphere on the exterior and the controlled temperatures in the core workspaces, while “bringing the ...

MASS Design's Michael Murphy says we're failing to learn the epidemic design lessons Florence Nightingale provided 150 years ago

2021-12-29T16:39:00-05:00

At our peril, we have ignored Nightingale’s prescriptions. The history of the hospital contains clear lessons about the importance of air movement through buildings, the public health risks of poor design, and the dangers of technological reliance. Architecture professionals should look back to see what else has been forgotten or ignored in the race to merge art and technology. Whose lives might be at stake if they don’t?

Murphy is a principal at Boston-based MASS Design Group and the author of The Architecture of Health: Hospital Design and the Construction of Dignity, which accompanies the firm’s recent exhibition Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics on view at the Cooper Hewitt until February 23rd.

In it, Murphy argues that the COVID pandemic has affected a new paradigm in the ways architects and healthcare designers think about hospitals that are reliant on air, either cooled or circulated by mechanical systems, and failed in their attempts to mitigate the virus’ spread by fenestration that is now an impediment to the application of effective inpatient treatment.

Interior of MASS Design Group's Butaro Hospital in Ruhengeri, Rwanda. Photo: Iwan Baan.

“Like all crises that reveal cracks in the system, the pandemic has prompted a public reckoning with the role of buildings in shaping our health. Recent reporting is waking up to the crisis of breathability in buildings, raising questi...

The safest pandemic spaces are well ventilated

2020-08-11T16:27:00-04:00

In the months since the COVID-19 pandemic arrived across the world, much attention has been placed on how easy it is for the virus to spread in indoor spaces that lack proper ventilation.

Writing in the academic journal The Conversation, Shelly Miller, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, adds to a growing body of research highlighting the need for a greater degree of interior ventilation in order to help minimize the spread of the disease. Professor Miller writes, "The safest indoor space is one that constantly has lots of outside air replacing the stale air inside," adding, "Many buildings in the U.S., especially schools, do not meet recommended ventilation rates."

Previously on Archinect: "'Hygiene ventilation' and the case for Green Stimulus." Image courtesy of Image by Erich Westendarp from Pixabay.

Miller recommends that building operators move to increase air exchange rates within interior spaces to nine times per hour, up from the standa...

Cushing Terrell develops approach for adapting standard hospital patient rooms into negative pressure zones

2020-07-09T12:21:00-04:00

Multidisciplinary design firm Cushing Terrell has developed a solution for air circulation and ventilation in patient and operating rooms to prevent the spread of infection. The solution, developed by the firm's mechanical engineering team, enables standard hospital patient rooms to be converted from positive pressure to negative pressure.

Mode 2: Normal operations / 50% outside air.

"Negative pressure rooms are designed to contain a patient’s breathing within the room, helping to prevent the spread of airborne viruses and disease. When a patient who is suspected to have, or is diagnosed with COVID-19, the availability of rooms like these becomes critical to protecting other patients in the hospital," said Shawn Murray, Principal at Cushing Terrell who leads the mechanical engineering group.

Mode 3: Normal operations / 100% outside air.

In developing this response to existing ventilation issues, the team began with collaborating with Billings Clinic facility staff to assist them in co...

MAD reveals renderings of highly sustainable Xinhee Design Center

2016-08-10T18:00:00-04:00

Pretty much every element of MAD's design for the Xinhee Design Center factors in sustainability: water features, full-blown gardens and offices commingle on the six star-shaped floors that sprout from the central atrium, while an envelope of PTFE provides ventilation and shade.

Solar panels occupy the roof, while the footbridge in the atrium provides both air circulation and the opportunity for impromptu fashion modeling. The use of natural light throughout the building is aided in part by the facade's translucent coating, which allows light transmittance of up to 40%.

However, the concept behind the building is meant to reflect the business of the client, an international fashion group. As MAD founding principal Ma Yansong explains, “We envision it as a building with skin-and-bones. The correspondence of clothing and architecture is they both explore the relationship between the interior and the exterior.”

For more on MAD:

Hideyuki Nakayama's lighting shield design for "My Thread" film exhibition curated by Eizo Okada

2013-10-22T13:55:00-04:00

"My Thread - New Dutch Design on Films" is a film exhibition curated by Eizo Okada and designed by architect Hideyuki Nakayama, who also built Okada's Kyoto "O" House and was on the design team for Toyo Ito's Tama Art University Library. As part of one of Japan's biggest design events this past September, the 4th annual DESIGN EAST, the exhibition featured eight films that highlights eight emerging Dutch designers, their backgrounds, and their work process. Aside from Okada's films, another aspect of the exhibition was Nakayama's design of the space.

Set on the top floor of a former shipyard building with no air-conditioning or fans and with eight projection screens, the biggest challenge Okada and Nakayama faced was how to ensure ventilation so viewers can comfortably watch the films. As a solution, Nakayama designed a horizontal lighting shield called "5F".

Here are the project details from the press release, provided by Eizo Okada:

"The exhibition will be held at the top-flo...