Sustainable
Design & Architecture
- “Creating a beautiful experience for the human senses is an essential priority when designing architecture,
leaving a positive environmental trace behind should become the second one.” -
- Sergio Jaramillo A. -
CURRENT GLOBAL SITUATION
“Human-induced climate change is causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and is affecting the lives of billions of people around the world. To avoid mounting loss of life, an accelerated action is required to adapt to climate change, at the same time as making rapid, deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
Globally, residential and commercial buildings consume over half of all electricity. As they continue to draw on coal, oil, and natural gas for heating and cooling, they emit significant quantities of greenhouse gas emissions. Growing energy demand for heating and cooling, with rising air-conditioner ownership, as well as increased electricity consumption for lighting, appliances, and connected devices, has contributed to a rise in energy-related carbon-dioxide emissions from buildings in recent years.”
CURRENT GLOBAL ARCHITECTURE SITUATION
“The buildings and construction sector accounted for 36% of final energy use and 39% of energy and process-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2018, 11% of which resulted from manufacturing building materials and products such as steel, cement and glass.”
2019 | Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction | United Nations
“Conventional Type Buildings” all around the world are commonly conceived from a perspective of function, budget and architectural language. In many cases these type of buildings or projects are designed and constructed on site as a single element, frequently not contemplating the surrounding environment in terms of climate conditions.
Some of them are built to supply essential needs for society, some aim to generate spaces which improve quality of life, some of them aim to create beautiful constructions and some of them are done just to make profit.
This ongoing architectural approach tends to build projects that are disconnected from their site surroundings. For the next 30 to 50 years they will consume a significant amount of energy, gas and water from the grid, in order to provide indoor spaces with ideal comfort conditions all year round.
In other words, most of these type of projects will become part of the problem that is currently inducing global warming on the planet for the next decades to come.
“The time for climate action is now.
Architects play a crucial role in mitigating and adapting to climate change through sustainable and resilient design. Energy efficiency and renewable energy, materials transparency, the protection of water resources, and other sustainability strategies support mitigation by conserving resources and reducing carbon emissions.”
2022 | Public Policies and Position Statements | American Institute of Architects
RE THINKING ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN AS POWERFUL SUSTAINABLE SOLUTION
“We are proposing buildings that like trees, are net energy exporters, produce more energy than they consume,
accrue and store solar energy, and purify their own waste, water and release it slowly in a purer form.”
Luckly more and more firms have become aware that there is a direct relationship between global warming actual phenomenon and the way we as humans live and design most of architecture buildings. Thanks to a shift of perspective in architects, design teams, engineers and companies, have started creating projects that can have a positive impact on how buildings consume 40% of energy and other natural resources, that generate less gas-house effect emissions on a global scale.
It all starts there, re thinking how any project is being approached on its initial stages and first being aware of the climatic conditions controlling the site surroundings, then comes the design part.
CURRENT STAGE OF PROJECT
Understanding the stage or point of entry to a new project / client should be considered the initial step to a sustainable approach. This will determine the field of action available to implement passive design principles into the architectural and technical designs. This part is the key because it will allow total or partial natural cooling, natural heating, natural illumination among other climate advantages to happen without consuming oil, gas or electricity. The more passive mechanisms and strategies can be applied, the more efficient the final building will be and the bigger impact in sustainability it can achieve.
If the project is at an initial stage, many strategies can be implemented in the core design. If it is already design, changes can still be made depending on the complexity and feasibility. Once the project has been built, the range of action to implement passive strategies becomes very small. Active design strategies can enhance building performance.
Stage 1
Ideas - Clients needs and aspirations
Conceptual design - ideas made sketches by architect
Initial design - first architectural drawings
Stage 2
Architectural package set - architectural design, structural design, HVAC design MEP design
Stage 3
Construction in progress
Stage 4
Finished or existing buildings
NEEDS OF PROJECT / CLIENT
Depends on each different client, project and use. Whats important is if the client is willing to become a sustainable development building as one of the principal objectives.
A SUSTAINABLE DESIGN APPROACH
A sustainable development approach to designing any type of building, can consist on first understanding the climate conditions of the premises of where it is going to be built, before starting the conceptual and architectural process. This step is the key to achieve the highest standards of natural sustainability and economic feasibility, because it will allow a holistic interaction between the site and the building.
This approach will provide useful information on architectural guidelines and specific options for engineers and the design team to create an efficient construction that responds and interacts in harmony with it’s involving environment.
PASSIVE DESIGN STRATEGIES
Passive design strategies are mechanism that can create a proper and efficient response between the building and the surrounding environment. If the architect understands the climatic conditions of the place and makes them work in favor of the building, it can allow the performance of that construction reduce or require less natural resources to perform in terms of energy use, potable water use, heating or cooling among others.
The importance of involving a sustainable designer at initial stages opens a wider range of opportunities for the building to behave more efficiently in a natural and organic way, which means it will require less or non electricity or gas to perform. Meaning the more the projects requires natural resources, the more it contributes to leaving a positive trace behind.
ACTIVE DESIGN STRATEGIES AND SYSTEMS
Active design strategies and systems should be secondary when you think about sustainable development for a building. Usually these system are design to provide public services like electricity, heat, cooling so that the life cycle og the construccion can be able to consume the least amount possible of resources, thus emitting way less than the case study average conventional type building standards. Here are some common examples:
Automised cross ventilation devices that can control interior temperature using sensors and mechanical intakes or outtakes of inside air temperature.
Special insulation materials that can buffer the delta of temperatures between inside and outside spaces in a building.
High tech HVAC systems with heat recovery configuration to avoid warm air to exit the building.
High tech glassing and frames that defer the heat losses through windows and doors.
ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SYSTEMS
Conventional type architecture is design in its core to be supported with public services and natural resources to operate through out its life cycle. Which comes down to being grid based constructions that depend permanently on the grid. This is the current dynamics of how we design and plan our cities. Alternative source solutions are available and very affordable costs, which breaks that molde of permanent and exclusive consumption of the grid in order to operate as a building. Instead of a huge infrastructure to provide thousands of buildings, applying more in situ based solutions can benefit the main grid and the final owner of the property.
Solare PV panels energy systems.
Solar water heating paneles systems.
Solar heating panels system.