Re-Imagining Design and Embedding Sustainability

Sustainable design is something that all architects do now; right?  It’s on every practices website, included in all their presentations and has been totally integrated into the way all buildings are designed.  Even the RIBA is now belatedly “on message”, promoting the idea that buildings should be designed to be sustainable.

 

Mies van der Rohe glass skyscraper
 concept designed in 1919

 So, how come the buildings that we are constructing now have not changed significantly since the birth of modernism almost one hundred years ago?  Mies van der Rohe published his revolutionary concept for a glass clad skyscraper back in 1921 and you could argue that we have been repeating this typology, with only minor amendments, ever since.  Is the Shard not just a less efficient more compromised variant of this underlying philosophical position?

What has changed is the rhetoric that accompanies each of these increasingly contorted iconic projects; all of which claim to be exemplars of sustainable development.  Clearly, it is not only architects who are guilty of not walking the talk when it comes to sustainability; developers, funding institutions, governments and local authorities are all rebranding their particular form of “business as usual” in a new recycled paper wrapper!

Renzo Piano all glass

 Shard nearing completion 2013

 It is my strongly held belief that this incremental improvement approach is no longer sufficient and what is required is a fundamental reappraisal of why, what and how we build.  In short, I believe that we are about to enter a period of rapid and revolutionary change that will result in re-imagining design and the development of an entirely new Sustainable Architecture, shaped by an understanding of the challenges that we face and therefore directly relevant to the concerns of our age.

To achieve the necessary paradigm shift we must challenge some deeply ingrained behaviours and beliefs and fundamentally re-evaluate the reasons why we build at all. This process must start by placing social sustainability and needs of building users at the heart of the design process.  It is no surprise that the best examples of sustainable design are conceived when the building’s users are known before design commences.  Also the greatest value that a building design can create is not in energy savings but in helping to improve the productivity of the people who work in them.  To achieve this added value it is essential that buildings are designed from the inside and the needs of the user out.  This philosophical approach creates massive opportunities for creativity and innovation, once the dead hand of style is rejected, in favour of a new sustainable building aesthetic where each design decision is directly informed by its social, economic and environmental issues.

Our CAFOD project, that I will be presenting at the UKGBC’s Re-Imagining Design course on the 27^th February, is a good example of this approach.  The key aspect of the project’s evolution was that we did not win the commission with an image of a completed building, but instead explained how we would assist them, as a non-expert client, to develop a bespoke; user centred sustainable solution, shaped to fit their immediate needs and facilitate organisational change.

Black Bio Climatic office

 tower concept 2005

This approach is in stark contrast to the vast majority of speculative commercial buildings, which are conceived primarily as investment assets and whose appearance and architectural style are determined at inception.  This procurement process, I would argue, results in the current fashion for more and more contorted building forms, as design teams strive to make the most remarkable, arresting images, rather than the most sustainable designs, to secure commissions.

If we are to make the UK’s building stock more sustainable I believe it is essential that funding institutions only agree to invest our pension contributions into demonstrably sustainable buildings.  This will change overnight what gets commissioned, since developers want to be able to sell their completed developments so that they can reinvest profits into the next development opportunity.  It will also result in less risk and more predictable returns for the funds, since sustainable buildings will either command a “green premium” because they are more desirable or at worst will not experience a “brown discount” due to their increased occupation costs.

In re-imagining design I believe that we need to place social sustainability at the heart of the design process, with the explicit intention of delivering buildings that create value by demonstrably improving the performance of the people who occupy them. This philosophical shift will finally close the cost benefit gap that makes investing in higher performance difficult to justify.  Over time the quality and value of the UK’s building stock will increase, creating value and safe guarding the investments that ultimately fund our retirement.  A paradigm shift of this magnitude will create a New Sustainable Architecture that is relevant and valuable.  As Mies van der Rohe put so succinctly;

“Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space”

Surely the will of our epoch calls for urgent, radical change; re-imagining design to deliver buildings that create enduring value for the people who use them, the organisations that own them and the society that they are part of.

Don’t delay, the future starts today!

Renzo and His Piano

Razia and Renzo at RIBA

The evening at the RIBA began well last night as Angela Brady the President making a slip of the tongue and introducing him as “Renzo and his Piano”!  What followed was the first in a series of interviews conducted by Razia Iqbal to be broadcast on the BBC World Service under the title of Dream Builders.  The extended interview format was split into sections with questions from the audience after each section.  This led to a rather fragmented event lasting almost two hours, which never really got to the heart of what makes Renzo Piano tick.

The first section and recurrent theme of the evening was The Shard, with a short film exploring the building and interview with the buildings developer client Irvine Sellar. He told us that when first approached to design a tower, Piano was reticent about undertaking the commission as he thinks that they are usually “phallic and undemocratic”!

The interview that followed set the tone for the evening, with Razia asking a series of not too taxing questions and then allowing Renzo to provide long, poetic, but rather thin answers.  We learned that he thinks natural light is good, lightness a virtue, machines are sexy and transparency essential.  A lot was made of The Shard being a “vertical village” incorporating retail, office, restaurants, hotel and residential uses, along with a public viewing gallery and topped with London’s highest meditation space, which can also cater for up to forty well heeled private function guests.

Piano described the scheme with lyrical prose, as being highly democratic, making a significant contribution to the urban environment and how the words “civic” and “civilised” are virtually the same in Italian.  I am not sure how democratic luxury shops, restaurants and hotels really are, but swanky flats and offices definitely are not!  Sure, it is great to get elevated views over a city from a public viewing gallery, but this can often be experienced by the punter as a long, segregated queue in uninviting left over spaces that are kept out of sight of the beautiful people who the building is really designed for.

Typicl office plan with north point

Sustainability was briefly touched on, with the justification of the all glass façade being that it is triple glazed, with interstitial blinds that automatically close when the sun hits the various splinters that form the envelope.  Piano talked about lightness of the construction but this was really about the visual lightness of the façade than the actual weight and related embodied energy of the structure, made with an enormous amount of concrete.  He claimed that The Shard is the most sustainable tower in the world but did not back up this audacious claim with any evidence.  I was left with the impression that, as with so much in architecture at present, you must tick the sustainability box, but there is no need to let it interfere with how the building is designed.

Following on from The Shard the discussions became more philosophical, with Renzo talking about the size of his organisation and the way they approach their work.  Interestingly he does not see big as beautiful and has imposed a limit of one hundred people so that he can oversee, but not control the output of his office. 

Images of his breathtaking studio, situated on a cliff overlooking the sea outside Genoa appeared on the big screen, along with pictures showing the great man at the helm of his luxury yacht Kirribilli, creating a picture of someone with a very pleasant, if rather suburban lifestyle. 

Richard Rogers was in the audience and it occurred to me that in both his work and the way he organises his practice he is much more engaged with the urban realm.  Rogers work in cities has built upon the ideas behind The Pompidou Centre or as Piano and Rogers refer to it Beaubourg, while Piano’s later works are more aloof, read as objects rather than integrated pieces of the city. When asked if they were to collaborate on another project in the future, what they would like to do, Piano suggested a tower, which Rogers discounted, instead suggesting a Piazza.

After the event I was left thinking that The Shard was a bit of a missed opportunity.  In theory the mix of uses, the context of the site and its adjacency to a major transport hub and the size of the budget should have delivered something remarkable, but this opportunity is I believe frustrated by the tyranny of the image and iconography of the shard as an idea.



Menil Collection

I am left with many questions.  Why are all of the different uses treated with the same elevational response?  What richness would have been created if the programme had been made apparent on the exterior?  How could solar aspect and orientation have informed the design of each of the surfaces?  Is a narrow tapering form really the most appropriate shape to try to fit such a wide range of different user groups and activities within?



Jean Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre

I have always had a great respect for the work of The Renzo Piano Workshop and their approach, creating intelligent, beautifully crafted, simple elegant modern architecture.  Their Menil Collection and Jean Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre are highlights, shaped to respond to and manipulate the external environment to condition and regulate the interior, adopting bio-climatic design principles that directly govern the appearance of the completed buildings.  It would have been great if this approach had been taken in London, then we really would have had a relevant, provocative addition to our city.