I'm currently researching sustainable and durable architecture. Interestingly, my findings suggest that today's sustainable construction projects may be less durable than those from two centuries ago, with historical buildings having a seemingly lower environmental impact. However, my research is mostly theoretical, and I'm hoping to hear from those with hands-on experience.
I invite you to share a bit about yourself and your perspectives on the following:
Primary Influences: What are the main sources that shape your work?
Motivations: Is your focus on organic architecture due to personal preference, or is it influenced by a high demand in the field?
Challenges Faced: Can you share one or two specific challenges encountered while working on sustainable or eco-friendly projects?
Eco-Friendly Projects: In your opinion, do you recommend highly "eco-friendly" projects, or do you think they are overrated?
If you're interested in providing more detailed insights, feel free to ask me for my email for a proper interview. I understand and respect your time, and I assure you that my inquiries will be concise and focused.
Looking forward to hearing your valuable perspectives.
Sam
Non Sequitur
Feb 28, 24 9:23 am
First, this is not how you conduct academic research.
Second, by theoretical you must mean "googled for 5 mins based on a pre-determined conclusion. This is also not research.
Third, what you're actually doing is looking at historical buildings which were preserved (at great cost) due to a number of reasons and using those as examples of the common building method of centuries past. This is not a good way to approach the subject.
With that out of the way, don't ask random wankers in an online forum to do your homework for you. You need to get a handle on the definitions of the terms you want to research and built up intelligent points instead of asking others what they think.
samchitect
Feb 29, 24 9:53 am
Thank you for the feedback. My research question is rather specific, and I believe more people are familiar with the broader subject. It's an area I've been struggling to learn about, and I was hoping that the larger context would provide me with the insights I need.
Non Sequitur
Feb 29, 24 12:06 pm
why should we do the hard work for you?
curtkram
Feb 29, 24 10:13 am
people like their air conditioning.
most modern construction is lighter weight and faster/easier to construct that some of the historic buildings you might see.
a lot of historic buildings from 200 years ago aren't around anymore. they weren't that durable, which is why they aren't around anymore.
climate change is real and we should do what we can to be responsible, but "eco-friendly" usually ends up being a marketing gimmick that isn't very helpful.
samchitect
Mar 1, 24 5:04 am
Haha, yes thank you for your feedback, I totally agree with your last point. I'll dig more into your third point though.
JLC-1
Feb 29, 24 11:00 am
go look in europe or asia, even mesoamerica, I'd say buildings older than 1000 years are quite sustainable. and no architect's gibberish green wash.
JLC-1
Feb 29, 24 11:14 am
today's sustainable construction projects may be less durable than those from two centuries ago, with historical buildings having a seemingly lower environmental impact
JLC-1
Feb 29, 24 11:27 am
second part.
I wanted to complement my comment with this; Surviving historical buildings DID NOT have a lower environmental impact, quarries thousand of miles away, entire forests cut down, neighborhoods razed to make room for this and that...to look at the environmental impact only as resource depletion or carbon emission is quite narrow and misses the historical origins of the disaster we are headed to.
Chad Miller
Feb 29, 24 12:18 pm
I think a lot of people confuse durable with sustainable. As you've pointed out JLC the one doesn't necessarily equate to the other.
Volunteer
Feb 29, 24 3:49 pm
I can't think of any US historical buildings that were built from materials sourced from "thousands of miles away". Just the opposite. Many of the features of early houses were made of local wood elements that copied the stone English originals. George Washington scoring the wood siding of Mount Vernon to look like stone just being one example.
JLC-1
Feb 29, 24 4:01 pm
you know where the marble came from for the lincoln memorial? The following copy/paste paragrapgh is from the architect of the capitol
"
Nearly a dozen states have provided marble to help build the Capitol Building; it is used in floors, baseboards, stairs, railings, door frames, wall panels, mantels, columns and cornices. Marble from Massachusetts forms the exteriors of the mid-19th century House and Senate extensions, and Georgia marble clads the East Front connecting corridors. Many of the statues in the U.S. Capitol are also carved from the fine, white marble quarried near Carrara, Italy, which has been favored by sculptors for centuries."
Chad Miller
Feb 29, 24 4:02 pm
Smaller structures you'd be correct. Larger structures, kind of. It depends on when they were built.
I can think of quite a few historic buildings in the US that imported wood, paint, tile, and masonry from various European countries. I'm working on one now in fact.
Now thinks like large stone or timber, that was typically sourced from the US or Canada.
In the case of timber it wasn't uncommon for the southern states to import from Canada (aka thousands of miles).
samchitect
Mar 1, 24 5:29 am
Take a look at early african huts and even Pueblo houses. I think this is what Frank Lloyd Wright meant when talking about organic architecture in the later stages of his life (with his philosophy of respecting nature and being inspired by it). Here's an interesting quote i found by FLW :
"No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together, each happier for the other.”
I find that today, sustainability is super technical but could be brought back to the basics of design rather than technological innovation. When you think of it, an ideally sustainable house would be a hobbit hut next to a watermill.
Chad Miller
Mar 1, 24 9:48 am
I think the quote from Frank was speaking more to massing and placement than sustainability. The total embodied energy combined with the lifecycle costs of a building are good measures of it's sustainability.
midlander
Mar 5, 24 7:56 pm
i grew up in northern new england, which was infamously stripped bare of trees by the end of the nineteenth century for construction and firewood. the traditional buildings relied on local materials for construction and heating; neither were likely sustainable. not to deny that modern embodied energy is much higher, just pointing out that the past wasn't necessarily sustainable either - indeed it led to the present.
mission_critical
Feb 29, 24 9:02 pm
Real Kiel Moe’s architectural essays regarding the laws of thermodynamics. I think this is more to your line of questioning. It covers “energy usage” and understanding efficiency vs efficacy in terms of buildings, maintenance, construction input and durability.
samchitect
Mar 1, 24 4:24 am
I definitely will! Although I've conducted prior research on Keil Moe, I have yet to come across any written texts by him; my findings were limited to reviews and comments. I appreciate your help and the specific example you provided! Thank you.
Donna Sink
Mar 1, 24 10:33 am
This sounds interesting, mission_critical, thanks for the share. The architect's task is to look at the wholistic impact of buildings, not just in terms of sustainability but also in social impact.
mission_critical
Mar 13, 24 9:24 pm
The book I liked the most was Convergence. Here’s a quick takeaway from the major topics. "Convergence: An Architectural Agenda for Energy" by Kiel Moe explores the intersection of architecture and energy through the lens of thermodynamics, durability, and efficacy:
1. **Thermodynamics:** Moe delves into the principles of thermodynamics to understand how energy flows within buildings and ecosystems. He emphasizes the importance of designing buildings that work in harmony with natural processes, optimizing energy exchanges to minimize waste and maximize efficiency.
2. **Durability:** Moe highlights the significance of durability in sustainable architecture, emphasizing the long-term performance and resilience of buildings. He advocates for the use of durable materials and passive design strategies to create structures that can withstand environmental stresses and minimize maintenance requirements over time.
3. **Efficacy:** Moe emphasizes the importance of efficacy in architectural design, focusing on the effective utilization of resources and energy. He promotes an integrated approach to design that considers both energy efficiency and architectural efficacy, aiming to create buildings that are not only environmentally responsible but also functional and aesthetically pleasing.
He also advocates for using more energy when it comes to architecture because when considered over the life span of the building, its impact will actually be less. Basically building cheap bland and ugly (while energy efficient) will get demolished because and will intrinsically have higher energy costs than building something beautiful and durable (higher upfront energy costs) because it’ll be kept around longer because it’s important to the people around it. This was 10 years ago I read this book but basically current architecture is bad because it’s basically sealed by chemicals that won’t last more than 30 years. (Buildings are just big refrigerators) so instead build out of durable materials that can last hundreds of years. Also take advantage of passive strategies because they basically last forever and have 0 use cost once installed (solar gain, heat rising to rooms that need warmth, etc)
Wood Guy
Mar 1, 24 11:44 am
"Sustainable" is a meaningless term without further description.
Today's high performance buildings (a slightly less meaningless term) are at higher risk of failure than conventional buildings, mainly because there is less heat energy available to dry the building assemblies, and partly because many of the techniques and materials don't have the long history that conventional materials have.
That doesn't mean that high performance projects can't last longer than their conventional peers; in fact, a properly designed and built high-performance project will last longer than a conventional building, and the methods are easy enough to learn if you look for them. But it's a conservative industry and things are slow to change.
Everyday Architect
Mar 1, 24 5:51 pm
I'm so tired of people making statements like "today's sustainable construction projects may be less durable than those from two centuries ago."
samchitect
Mar 2, 24 4:52 am
I realize my previous message might have been unclear. People automatically think of American 'traditional' architecture. However, my focus is more on regions like Asia, where there were undoubtedly more 'eco-friendly' traditional housing practices 200/300 years ago, or in Europe, where during the Roman empire, constructions could last for centuries with minimal maintenance.
Chad Miller
Mar 6, 24 10:21 am
It didn't last for centuries with minimal maintenance though. There was regular, sometimes intensive maintenance.
midlander
Mar 5, 24 7:49 pm
Maybe a better paradigm is to recognize that societies and economies function (somewhat) less sustainably than those in the distant past. The modern usage of historic buildings isn't particularly sustainable either - old buildings are still air conditioned, heated and illuminated and serviced with water and sewer systems, and the occupants probably drive to work and their children (not more than 2-3) take a bus to school and everyone eats partially or fully prepared foods grown on industrialized estates most likely hundreds or thousands of miles away and irrigated by canals diverting water from halfway across a continent.
sustainable buildings can often be a showpiece that only obscure the essential problems. we could operate modern buildings as sustainability as historical ones were when built; they would be uncomfortable, inconvenient and often unsafe, as was the norm throughout history. our standards for living have changed, and neither historic nor contemporary buildings are up to the task of supporting sustainable life at those standards.
this is a big question, and not something i feel is well addressed by piecemeal evaluations of sustainability looking at architecture or any aspect of economic production in isolation. we live off an economic system that relies on enormous exogenous energy input. the effective solutions are going to require some combination of reducing energy requirements for the economy as a whole and improving the sustainability of the energy inputs. improving energy efficiency within all buildings is a useful but insufficient part of that. historic buildings are not generally energy efficient as used under modern living standards.
BulgarBlogger
Mar 11, 24 7:26 pm
Why don't you explore the pessimism about sustainable architecture?
Do you really think that sprinkling some greenery on a rendering, only to sell the client, then having the client Value Engineer it out, or do just enough for the plants NOT to die; or better yet, have it pass inspection and then not maintain the greenery, is really going to do ANYTHING to stop climate change?
This whole idea that architecture can impact climate change is a mirage, a pipe dream, if the people making the decisions (usually the ones with the bags of cash) are willing to make some serious changes. And I'm sorry, this isn't a switch you can just flip.
Bottom line, its not that I'm not FOR taking care of the environment. I, like many others I presume, are pessimistic because we feel helpless about making the impact we need to cause to turn things around.
Wood Guy
Mar 11, 24 7:41 pm
There's greenwashing, and there's sustainable architecture. You're commenting on the first.
Volunteer
Mar 15, 24 9:29 am
Well, the rains and snows of last winter totally erased draught in California. This winter has also seen heavy snowfall boding well for this year as well. Lake Meade is steadily rising even though the average release downstream from Hoover Dam is 92,000 gallons PER SECOND. Then there is the pearl-clutching over the amount of CO2 released in building. There is a bridge in Rome, the Pons Fabricius, that has been in service since it was built and it was built 60 years before Christ was born. Does anyone really need to be concerned about the amount of CO2 this bridge created during construction? Moral of the story is maybe to build it right to last the first time? Just a thought.
Hi everyone,
I'm currently researching sustainable and durable architecture. Interestingly, my findings suggest that today's sustainable construction projects may be less durable than those from two centuries ago, with historical buildings having a seemingly lower environmental impact. However, my research is mostly theoretical, and I'm hoping to hear from those with hands-on experience.
I invite you to share a bit about yourself and your perspectives on the following:
Primary Influences: What are the main sources that shape your work?
Motivations: Is your focus on organic architecture due to personal preference, or is it influenced by a high demand in the field?
Challenges Faced: Can you share one or two specific challenges encountered while working on sustainable or eco-friendly projects?
Eco-Friendly Projects: In your opinion, do you recommend highly "eco-friendly" projects, or do you think they are overrated?
If you're interested in providing more detailed insights, feel free to ask me for my email for a proper interview. I understand and respect your time, and I assure you that my inquiries will be concise and focused.
Looking forward to hearing your valuable perspectives.
Sam
First, this is not how you conduct academic research.
Second, by theoretical you must mean "googled for 5 mins based on a pre-determined conclusion. This is also not research.
Third, what you're actually doing is looking at historical buildings which were preserved (at great cost) due to a number of reasons and using those as examples of the common building method of centuries past. This is not a good way to approach the subject.
With that out of the way, don't ask random wankers in an online forum to do your homework for you. You need to get a handle on the definitions of the terms you want to research and built up intelligent points instead of asking others what they think.
Thank you for the feedback. My research question is rather specific, and I believe more people are familiar with the broader subject. It's an area I've been struggling to learn about, and I was hoping that the larger context would provide me with the insights I need.
why should we do the hard work for you?
people like their air conditioning.
most modern construction is lighter weight and faster/easier to construct that some of the historic buildings you might see.
a lot of historic buildings from 200 years ago aren't around anymore. they weren't that durable, which is why they aren't around anymore.
climate change is real and we should do what we can to be responsible, but "eco-friendly" usually ends up being a marketing gimmick that isn't very helpful.
Haha, yes thank you for your feedback, I totally agree with your last point. I'll dig more into your third point though.
go look in europe or asia, even mesoamerica, I'd say buildings older than 1000 years are quite sustainable. and no architect's gibberish green wash.
today's sustainable construction projects may be less durable than those from two centuries ago, with historical buildings having a seemingly lower environmental impact
second part.
I wanted to complement my comment with this; Surviving historical buildings DID NOT have a lower environmental impact, quarries thousand of miles away, entire forests cut down, neighborhoods razed to make room for this and that...to look at the environmental impact only as resource depletion or carbon emission is quite narrow and misses the historical origins of the disaster we are headed to.
I think a lot of people confuse durable with sustainable. As you've pointed out JLC the one doesn't necessarily equate to the other.
I can't think of any US historical buildings that were built from materials sourced from "thousands of miles away". Just the opposite. Many of the features of early houses were made of local wood elements that copied the stone English originals. George Washington scoring the wood siding of Mount Vernon to look like stone just being one example.
you know where the marble came from for the lincoln memorial? The following copy/paste paragrapgh is from the architect of the capitol
" Nearly a dozen states have provided marble to help build the Capitol Building; it is used in floors, baseboards, stairs, railings, door frames, wall panels, mantels, columns and cornices. Marble from Massachusetts forms the exteriors of the mid-19th century House and Senate extensions, and Georgia marble clads the East Front connecting corridors. Many of the statues in the U.S. Capitol are also carved from the fine, white marble quarried near Carrara, Italy, which has been favored by sculptors for centuries."
Smaller structures you'd be correct. Larger structures, kind of. It depends on when they were built.
I can think of quite a few historic buildings in the US that imported wood, paint, tile, and masonry from various European countries. I'm working on one now in fact.
Now thinks like large stone or timber, that was typically sourced from the US or Canada.
In the case of timber it wasn't uncommon for the southern states to import from Canada (aka thousands of miles).
Take a look at early african huts and even Pueblo houses. I think this is what Frank Lloyd Wright meant when talking about organic architecture in the later stages of his life (with his philosophy of respecting nature and being inspired by it). Here's an interesting quote i found by FLW :
"No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together, each happier for the other.”
I find that today, sustainability is super technical but could be brought back to the basics of design rather than technological innovation. When you think of it, an ideally sustainable house would be a hobbit hut next to a watermill.
I think the quote from Frank was speaking more to massing and placement than sustainability. The total embodied energy combined with the lifecycle costs of a building are good measures of it's sustainability.
i grew up in northern new england, which was infamously stripped bare of trees by the end of the nineteenth century for construction and firewood. the traditional buildings relied on local materials for construction and heating; neither were likely sustainable. not to deny that modern embodied energy is much higher, just pointing out that the past wasn't necessarily sustainable either - indeed it led to the present.
Real Kiel Moe’s architectural essays regarding the laws of thermodynamics. I think this is more to your line of questioning. It covers “energy usage” and understanding efficiency vs efficacy in terms of buildings, maintenance, construction input and durability.
I definitely will! Although I've conducted prior research on Keil Moe, I have yet to come across any written texts by him; my findings were limited to reviews and comments. I appreciate your help and the specific example you provided! Thank you.
This sounds interesting, mission_critical, thanks for the share. The architect's task is to look at the wholistic impact of buildings, not just in terms of sustainability but also in social impact.
The book I liked the most was Convergence. Here’s a quick takeaway from the major topics. "Convergence: An Architectural Agenda for Energy" by Kiel Moe explores the intersection of architecture and energy through the lens of thermodynamics, durability, and efficacy:
1. **Thermodynamics:** Moe delves into the principles of thermodynamics to understand how energy flows within buildings and ecosystems. He emphasizes the importance of designing buildings that work in harmony with natural processes, optimizing energy exchanges to minimize waste and maximize efficiency.
2. **Durability:** Moe highlights the significance of durability in sustainable architecture, emphasizing the long-term performance and resilience of buildings. He advocates for the use of durable materials and passive design strategies to create structures that can withstand environmental stresses and minimize maintenance requirements over time.
3. **Efficacy:** Moe emphasizes the importance of efficacy in architectural design, focusing on the effective utilization of resources and energy. He promotes an integrated approach to design that considers both energy efficiency and architectural efficacy, aiming to create buildings that are not only environmentally responsible but also functional and aesthetically pleasing.
He also advocates for using more energy when it comes to architecture because when considered over the life span of the building, its impact will actually be less. Basically building cheap bland and ugly (while energy efficient) will get demolished because and will intrinsically have higher energy costs than building something beautiful and durable (higher upfront energy costs) because it’ll be kept around longer because it’s important to the people around it. This was 10 years ago I read this book but basically current architecture is bad because it’s basically sealed by chemicals that won’t last more than 30 years. (Buildings are just big refrigerators) so instead build out of durable materials that can last hundreds of years. Also take advantage of passive strategies because they basically last forever and have 0 use cost once installed (solar gain, heat rising to rooms that need warmth, etc)
"Sustainable" is a meaningless term without further description.
Today's high performance buildings (a slightly less meaningless term) are at higher risk of failure than conventional buildings, mainly because there is less heat energy available to dry the building assemblies, and partly because many of the techniques and materials don't have the long history that conventional materials have.
That doesn't mean that high performance projects can't last longer than their conventional peers; in fact, a properly designed and built high-performance project will last longer than a conventional building, and the methods are easy enough to learn if you look for them. But it's a conservative industry and things are slow to change.
I'm so tired of people making statements like "today's sustainable construction projects may be less durable than those from two centuries ago."
I realize my previous message might have been unclear. People automatically think of American 'traditional' architecture. However, my focus is more on regions like Asia, where there were undoubtedly more 'eco-friendly' traditional housing practices 200/300 years ago, or in Europe, where during the Roman empire, constructions could last for centuries with minimal maintenance.
It didn't last for centuries with minimal maintenance though. There was regular, sometimes intensive maintenance.
Maybe a better paradigm is to recognize that societies and economies function (somewhat) less sustainably than those in the distant past. The modern usage of historic buildings isn't particularly sustainable either - old buildings are still air conditioned, heated and illuminated and serviced with water and sewer systems, and the occupants probably drive to work and their children (not more than 2-3) take a bus to school and everyone eats partially or fully prepared foods grown on industrialized estates most likely hundreds or thousands of miles away and irrigated by canals diverting water from halfway across a continent.
sustainable buildings can often be a showpiece that only obscure the essential problems. we could operate modern buildings as sustainability as historical ones were when built; they would be uncomfortable, inconvenient and often unsafe, as was the norm throughout history. our standards for living have changed, and neither historic nor contemporary buildings are up to the task of supporting sustainable life at those standards.
this is a big question, and not something i feel is well addressed by piecemeal evaluations of sustainability looking at architecture or any aspect of economic production in isolation. we live off an economic system that relies on enormous exogenous energy input. the effective solutions are going to require some combination of reducing energy requirements for the economy as a whole and improving the sustainability of the energy inputs. improving energy efficiency within all buildings is a useful but insufficient part of that. historic buildings are not generally energy efficient as used under modern living standards.
Why don't you explore the pessimism about sustainable architecture?
Read this latest article from CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/07...
Do you really think that sprinkling some greenery on a rendering, only to sell the client, then having the client Value Engineer it out, or do just enough for the plants NOT to die; or better yet, have it pass inspection and then not maintain the greenery, is really going to do ANYTHING to stop climate change?
This whole idea that architecture can impact climate change is a mirage, a pipe dream, if the people making the decisions (usually the ones with the bags of cash) are willing to make some serious changes. And I'm sorry, this isn't a switch you can just flip.
Bottom line, its not that I'm not FOR taking care of the environment. I, like many others I presume, are pessimistic because we feel helpless about making the impact we need to cause to turn things around.
There's greenwashing, and there's sustainable architecture. You're commenting on the first.
Well, the rains and snows of last winter totally erased draught in California. This winter has also seen heavy snowfall boding well for this year as well. Lake Meade is steadily rising even though the average release downstream from Hoover Dam is 92,000 gallons PER SECOND. Then there is the pearl-clutching over the amount of CO2 released in building. There is a bridge in Rome, the Pons Fabricius, that has been in service since it was built and it was built 60 years before Christ was born. Does anyone really need to be concerned about the amount of CO2 this bridge created during construction? Moral of the story is maybe to build it right to last the first time? Just a thought.