I have long been of the opinion that we are on the threshold of a period of rapid and revolutionary change, which remains imminent, but also stubbornly illusive! It is now over a hundred years since the birth of modernism, yet we continue to design most modern buildings in a style that has remained fundamentally unchanged over this period.
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| A thermally inefficient fully glazed office facade |
The fully glazed faรงade remains the default answer for office and commercial buildings and is increasingly common in residential, hotels, schools and in fact anything that needs to be perceived by its target market as “premium” or “luxury”. I have even had conversations with one very “blue chip” developer who insists that all their luxury housing is designed in a glass walled modern style.
It is almost as if the 1970’s energy crisis never happened; or that the climate change deniers have actually been proven to have been right all along! We recently passed the significant threshold of 400 parts per million level for atmospheric CO2 yet still nothing changes. There is now a detailed body of knowledge regarding envelope performance along with the potential for passive heating, cooling lighting and ventilation, yet the tyranny of the initial dumb image persists.
To accompany this lack of any real and concerted action there seems to have been an exponential growth in the rhetoric supporting sustainable development, with professional, repeat clients all arguing that this is the future while continuing to procure buildings from the past. Now, while I accept that buildings take a long while to come to fruition, there is no evidence that I can detect, of any real or concerted change.
So what will be that catalyst that will trigger the sustainable architecture revolution? The first shoots may well be the proliferation of groups that promote alternative metrics to measure building projects and promote sustainable development. BREEAM and LEED are the most obvious of these but there is now a long and growing list including:
Recently, the Feeling Good Foundation was established, within the Building Centre Trust, to research and promote how the built environment can be designed specifically to enhance the wellbeing of occupants. One of the Foundations key objectives is to establish what constitutes value and what metrics should be used to measure wellbeing in the built environment. I believe that this area represents the missing link and that once we are able to accurately assess the additional value that sustainable buildings create through improved occupant performance then we will finally be able to make a robust business case which shows a return on the investment required to deliver sustainable buildings through improved occupant productivity.
There are three areas that I believe are key to achieving the paradigm shift that is required if we are to ensure sustainable development becomes the norm.
People
The design process for all projects must place the wants needs and desires of building users at the heart of the process. This will be a particular challenge for speculative developments where specific user groups are not known and is likely to drive innovation and the development of new building arrangements with more flexible and diverse spaces and environments.
Procurement
One of the most intractable barriers to sustainable development is the manner in which we buy buildings. It is essential that we move away from lowest cost tendering to procurement systems that incentivise improved performance. While there have been some isolated instances where this has been tested, most notably in the Building Schools for the Future programme the construction supply chain must be engaged to deliver better performing buildings and should be rewarded when this is achieved. This would significantly change the nature of the process, placing more emphasis on design and encourage ongoing relationships between the construction industry and occupiers post completion.
Performance
It is essential that we understand how our existing building stock is performing so that investment can be targeted appropriately. I would advocate that we should demand that all buildings must display their energy performance on a read out adjacent to the front door and that this data should be used to identify the best performing 25% of each building type with a green light, the middle 50% with an amber light and the worst 25% with a red light. Imagine a street of houses where the good the bad and the ugly are made public; I am convinced that this really would make significant change happen extremely quickly!
There are two other factors that are required to create the necessary confidence for individuals and institutions to invest. The Government needs to sets a clear policy framework to encourage sustainable development and then must show perseverance and not keep tinkering with it. Unfortunately I suspect that this may be the biggest barrier of them all!
