Assessing the environmental performance of buildings: trends,lessons and tensions

ABSTRACT

Since the 1970s, intense discussions have occurred within the research and practitioner communities on how to assess and influence the environmental performance of buildings. Many different methods, criteria and tools were developed to raise awareness, enable goal formulation, support design and decision-making processes, and evaluate a building’s environmental performance. This development can be retraced through the example of the works of Raymond J. Cole, who made an important contribution to this scientific debate. The integration of environmental performance into a sustainability assessment, the ongoing development of life cycle assessment (LCA) methods, and clients’, financiers’ and assessors’ different demands for environmental performance assessment, raise additional questions and highlight the conflicting goals. Six topics are examined in relation to current developments: the further development of the classic ‘three pillars’ sustainability model; the suitability of assessment criteria and indicators; the handling of technological progress; the discounting of environmental impacts; the environmental assessment of existing buildings; and the further development of legal requirements. ‘Time’ is a key factor relating to LCA, weighing current versus future emissions, ecological value and recycling potential of existing buildings or ‘options’ for different ways to use the building in future. Recommended actions are provided for key stakeholders.     

Manorial Economy and French Seventeenth-Century-designed Landscapes: The Formal Type by Savot (1624) and at Sceaux (1670–1690)

In UK policy, concerns about climate change, energy security and system renewal, combine to create an imperative for transitions in landscapes of energy production. Some of the energy developments that will be central in these transitions are imbued with historical associations of, for example, ‘risk and threat’, which have been asserted to potentially lead to the stigmatisation of place and people in place. This paper explores stigmatisation through an analysis of data from interviews across two case sites in close proximity to existing and proposed energy developments. We show how our participants engage with or resist the notion that they are dwelling in ‘landscapes of threat’ and argue that stigma is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that is differentially encountered and experienced even within similar areas. In concluding, we argue that whilst people may experience stigmatising effects, this does not necessarily lead to them feeling stigmatised.     

Mapping Stakeholders’ Relating Pathways in Collaborative Planning Processes; A Longitudinal Case Study of an Urban Regeneration Partnership

ABSTRACT

This article reports on a longitudinal case study of stakeholders’ relating dynamics in the collaborative planning process concerning the urban regeneration of Katendrecht, an area located in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Findings challenge the focus – typical for collaborative planning literature – on an ‘ideal’ relational setting, characterized by consensus and joint-ness, as a necessary precursor for collaborative success. Analysis reveals the relevance of a ‘hybrid’ relational setting and the potential functionality of relational settings, which emphasize organizational autonomy. Also, analysis shows that relations change through the accumulation of different events, i.e. scaffolding, rather than by single, specific events. Finally, findings point out how in particular group composition/dynamics events impact on stakeholder relations.     

Construction,application and validation of selection evaluation model (SEM) for intelligent HVAC control system

Design teams are confronted with the quandary of choosing apposite building control systems to suit the needs of particular intelligent building projects, due to the availability of innumerable ‘intelligent’ building products and a dearth of inclusive evaluation tools. This paper is organised to develop a model for facilitating the selection evaluation for intelligent HVAC control systems for commercial intelligent buildings. To achieve these objectives, systematic research activities have been conducted to first develop, test and refine the general conceptual model using consecutive surveys; then, to convert the developed conceptual framework into a practical model; and, finally, to evaluate the effectiveness of the model by means of expert validation. The results of the surveys are that ‘total energy use’ is perceived as the top selection criterion, followed by the ‘system reliability and stability’, ‘operating and maintenance costs’, and ‘control of indoor humidity and temperature’. This research not only presents a systematic and structured approach to evaluate candidate intelligent HVAC control system against the critical selection criteria (CSC), but it also suggests a benchmark for the selection of one control system candidate against another.     

Actually existing neoliberalism in Glasgow: the case of Buchanan Galleries

A number of scholars have drawn attention to neoliberalism to describe and theorize the ongoing deconstruction and reconstruction of urban space. While this has widened the interest in neoliberalism, such discussions have also deepened its problematic through a number of conceptual variations – including neoliberal, neoliberalized and neoliberalization. This paper will focus on one such variation in actually existing neoliberalism to emphasize the contentious and volatile nature of retailing in the in the west of Scotland. As part of Glasgow's retail-led regeneration, the concepts of ‘path dependency’ and ‘creative destruction’ are used to give a focus to the Buchanan Galleries case study. It is shown that neoliberalism's demand for more space has served to further intensify intra-regional competition between Glasgow and its surrounding hinterland. In conclusion, I then offer some critical reflections for future research.     

Introducing the qualitative performance gap: stories about a sustainable building

ABSTRACT

In the design and operations industries, the performance gap is a common discrepancy found between predicted building energy performance and actual energy performance. The performance gap is considered to have negative impacts for the brand of ‘green’ buildings, designers and operators. A socially based analogue is proposed here: the qualitative performance gap, defined as the perceived gap between what inhabitants expect and their actual experience of the building environment. This concept is explored at a regenerative Living Lab: the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) in Vancouver, Canada. ‘Official’ and ‘lived’ stories about the building were interpreted from sources of building information and interviews. Expectations about and forgiveness of building performance were gained from pre- and post-occupancy evaluations and interviews. The solution to the qualitative performance gap is not to eliminate it, but, in line with the concept of interactive adaptivity, to use the gap to generate new stories and new consequences for human wellbeing. The qualitative performance gap is thus conceived as positively generative, of new stories of place and identity. This work recommends crafting an ‘official story’ of social aspirations, and a communication feedback loop amongst designers, operators and building inhabitants, transparently sharing successes and failures.     

Affordances of outdoor settings for children in preschool: revisiting heft’s functional taxonomy

Heft’s functional taxonomy for children’s outdoor environment based on the concept of affordances was applied and investigated in a Danish preschool context. Affordances here refer to the meaningful action possibilities of the environment. Two groups of children (3–6 years) enrolled in preschool were observed during times for ‘free play’ in their usual outdoor settings: traditional playground and forest (12 visits, respectively). Modified classes of outdoor features are suggested along with new practical class names: open ground, sloping terrain, shielded places, rigid fixtures, moving fixtures, loose objects, loose material, water, creatures and fire. Each class is specified by distinctive and attractive key activities found by observation. Examining each class indicated that important characteristics apart from availability were variation, sizes and change. The concept of affordances emphasises the ongoing user–environment–activity relationship important for planning with children in mind, but clarification is needed when using the term.     

Origins and probabilities of MEP and structural design clashes within a federated BIM model

‘Design clashes’ encountered during the development of a large multi-storey educational building, awarded under a Joint Contracts Tribunal (JCT) Design and Build contract, are reported upon. The building was developed in Birmingham, UK and the contract value was circa £36 million (UK Sterling, 2015). Members of the project management team (PMT) produced designs that were subsequently integrated by the main contractor into a federated building information modelling (BIM) model; at this stage 404 error clashes were evident between the positions of the mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) designer's and structural designer's building compartments. The contractor deemed that these particular clashes were ‘mission critical’ as previous experience suggested that project costs could spiral uncontrollably if left unabated. Participatory action research was employed to acquire a deeper understanding and knowledge of the clash incidents. Clash data accrued (in mm) was subsequently quantitatively modelled using the probability density function (PDF) and the cumulative distribution function (CDF). Two models produced were the Log Logistic Three Parameter (3P) (using all data including outliers) and Generalized Gamma distribution (excluding outliers). Both models satisfied Anderson-Darling and Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness of fit tests at α 0.01 and 0.02 levels of significance. Model parameters could be used to forecast similar clashes occurring on future projects and will prove invaluable to PMT members when accurately estimating the time and resource needed to integrate BIM designs. The predictive modelling revealed that 92.98% of clashes reside within the 30–299 mm range while the most probable occurrence of a clash overlap resides in a discrete category of 100–199 mm. Further qualitative investigation is also conducted to understand why these clashes occurred and propagate ideas about how such may be mitigated. The research concludes on two important points, namely: i) BIM is not a panacea to design related construction project rework and that innovative 21st century digital technologies are hampered by 20th century management practices; and ii) improvements in clash and error mitigation reside in a better understanding of tolerances specified to alleviate the erroneous task of resolving unnecessary clashes. Future research is proposed that seeks to: automate the clash detection management, analysis and resolution process; conduct further investigative analysis of the organizational and human resource management influences impacting upon design clash propagation; and devise and validate new procedural methods to mitigate clash occurrence using a real-life project.     

Critique: building appraisals Álvaro Siza's Bonjour Tristesse: a symphony for a big city

The directors of the Internationale Bauausstellung Berlin (IBA-Berlin) famously created a Janus face for urban renewal through the 1980s, as an attempt to cope with Berlin's struggle for identity during the Cold War. IBA-Berlin's intellectual framework was divided between Kleihues's critical reconstruction of the past (IBA-Neubau), and Hämer's careful urban renewal (IBA-Altbau). While the IBA-Neubau generated famous buildings designed by architects such as Aldo Rossi, Oswald Mathias Ungers, John Hejduk and Peter Eisenmann, the production of the IBA-Altbau section was somewhat more discreet, yet with conspicuous buildings designed by Hinrich and Inken Baller, and by Álvaro Siza.

In this article I will focus on Álvaro Siza's Bonjour Tristesse, designed and built in the early 1980s under the auspices of the IBA-Altbau section. Situated in Berlin's Kreuzberg district, this building simultaneously incorporates and transgresses the urban renewal principles of both Kleihues and Hämer. It challenges existing conventions and typologies, and caters for the urban experience of the migrants arriving in the big city, activating the creative potential of the ‘as found’ as a strategy to enhance collective memory and promote political engagement through conflictive consensus. This article examines the design decision-making process of the Bonjour Tristesse, and the coeval reception of the project. It demonstrates the extent to which Siza's critical account of a confrontation with reality contributed to the development of a project in tune with the ambivalence of modernity, a building that is at the same time strange and familiar, detached and situated, sterile and contaminated.     

Literal and notional force fields in architecture

The Philips Pavilion, design by Le Corbusier's office for the 1958 World's Fair, brought the architectural plan, the optical effects of movement and the ideology of progress into a more intense discursive relationship than virtually any project since his Purist houses of the 1920s. While the Pavilion has long been recognised as a seminal work, scholars have tended to overlook the aesthetic intentions of its chief designer, the composer Iannis Xenakis, often simplistically characterising the building as an architectural ‘translation’ of music. This paper closely examines several of Xenakis's wireframe axonometric sketches along with new diagrammatic renderings to analyse the formal disconnect between the Pavilion's plan and the experience of walking around and through it. The professional friction between its two designers yielded a new variation on the promenade architecturale; its principal tension is not between multiple formal readings but rather between the smooth exterior, whose complex form offers a continuous variation of contours, and the ‘narrative’ experience of the interior, with its multimedia account of human history.     

Finding Time

What has our sense of the acceleration of time got to bear on our experience of cities? How might it be consciously countered by architects ‘finding time’ through ‘thoughtful design and measured observation’. ‘A self-declared ‘cultural polymath’, Tim Makower is the founder of Makower Architects. A partner at Allies and Morrison for many years, he has significant experience in leading large-scale projects, ranging from the King's Cross Masterplan in London to the Old Doha Regeneration Framework, which he draws on here and in his book Touching the City: Thoughts on Urban Scale (Wiley, 2014).     

‘Unintended Cities’ and Inoperative Violence. Housing Resistance in Yangon

ABSTRACT

Urban development and city expansion in Yangon, Myanmar happened through the forced resettlement of people from the city toward the periphery. Forced resettlement has become the main mode of urban production since the British colonisation, and is sustained by laws, orders and policies. Building on Benjamin’s and Agamben’s essays on violence, we claim that it is possible to interrupt the endless cycle of law and violence by locating violence outside the debate around ‘means and ends’. Stemming from the authors’ experience and repeated encounters with practices of social mobilisation of women in Yangon over the last five years, we have traced the potential for deactivating the ‘signature’ of violence in the everyday practices of resistance of urban dwellers in the township of HlaingTharYar in Yangon. Through the incremental occupation, trespassing and building up of peripheral ‘vacant’ land, organised women’s groups are challenging the spatial order established by post/colonial regimes.     

Energy-related standards and UK speculative office development

Non-domestic buildings have great potential for energy-related emission reductions in response to climate change. However, high-specification office buildings in the UK demonstrate that regulation, assessment and certification (‘standards’) have not incentivized the development of lower-energy office buildings as expected. Making use of the concepts of ‘qualculation’ and ‘calculative agency’, qualitative case studies of 10 speculatively developed office buildings in London, UK, provide new insight into why this is the case. Interview data (n?=?57) are used to illustrate how ‘market standards’ substitute for user needs, and ratchet up the provision of building services to maximize marketability competitively. The examples of energy modelling and the market’s (mis)use of British Council for Offices guidelines are used to explain how such standards perversely bolster energy-demanding levels of specification and building services, and militate against lower-energy design, in the sector researched. The potentials for alternative, performance-based standards and new industry norms of quality are discussed. It is concluded that at least the London speculative office market by its very constitution and operation, including the reliance on standards, continues to create increasingly energy-demanding buildings.     

Sociocultural factors of the late Ming and early Qing Chinese garden landscape,based on philosophies seen in Yuanye,Zhangwuzhi, and Xianqingouji

This study explores garden landscape design philosophies during the Ming–Qing transitional period in China as presented in three different garden design books: Zhangwuzhi (长物志), Yuanye (园冶), and Xianqingouji (闲情偶寄). During this period, the Confucian hierarchical social system fractured as the merchant class began to encroach on high society. In reaction to this change, Zhangwuzhi proposed the ‘elegant’ garden design ideology to maintain the cultural hegemony of the gentry. Reflecting the rising social status of merchants, Yuanye applied this ideology to the gardens of the merchant class. In early Qing, as commoners’ ownership of gardens increased, Xianqingouji optimised the ‘elegant’ ideology, and introduced it as a practical design for ordinary citizens’ gardens. In sum, all three books applied the ‘elegant’ ideology to garden landscapes of different classes in response to the social changes of the time.     

Defining the environmental performance of neighbourhoods in high-density cities

ABSTRACT

The regenerative design framework aims to ‘engage a broader range of possibilities by moving beyond the immediate building and site boundaries’. It implies that the environmental performance of buildings requires a revised definition so that it considers not only the building itself, but also its contribution beyond its own boundary, i.e. neighbourhoods. In high-density cities, outdoor spaces are culturally considered as the extension of one’s living spaces. The environmental performance of neighbourhoods is particularly important to the health and wellbeing of urban inhabitants. This paper aims to define the environmental performance of neighbourhoods in high-density urban context based on the experience acquired in previous studies in Hong Kong over the last 15 years. These studies cover a wide range of environmental issues including urban climate, outdoor thermal comfort, and daylighting design in high-density cities. Subsequent development of the assessment tools for environmental performance of neighbourhoods in Hong Kong is also presented. The framework of stakeholder engagement, as an integral part of the neighbourhood assessment tool, is discussed. This paper highlights the distinctive features of the environmental performance of neighbourhoods in high-density urban context and how it influences the professional practices in Hong Kong.     

Drawing research

To understand research as new to architectural design is to ignore the history of the architect. Research—as the drawing forth of ideas—has been fundamental to the practice of the architect since the Italian Renaissance. The term ‘design’ comes from the Italian disegno, meaning drawing, suggesting both the drawing of a line on paper and the drawing forth of an idea. Disegno enabled architecture, painting and sculpture—the three visual arts—to be recognised as liberal arts concerned with ideas, a position they had very rarely been accorded previously. Alongside the traditional practice of building, architects acquired two new means to practise architecture—drawing and writing—as important as building. Since the Italian Renaissance, independently or together, drawing, writing and building have all been examples of architectural research and means to develop architectural design and the architectural discipline.     

Mastering the urbanization process. The urban questions of engineer August Mennes in the Antwerp agglomeration

Processes of urban expansion at the turn of the twentieth century have generally been described in terms of ‘regional planning’. However, in the Belgian context, and in Antwerp more specifically, the concept of the ‘agglomeration’ was put to the fore rather than the ‘region’, and ‘urbanization’ was a more common practice than ‘planning’. This paper shows how a ‘programme of urbanization’ centred on pertinent ‘urban questions’ shaped the contours of the Antwerp Agglomeration. In adopting this perspective of ‘programmatic urbanization’, the paper seeks to place the development of Antwerp extra muros within a different lineage, outside of the quest for comprehensive planning. Recomposing an eclectic catalogue of five pertinent ‘urban questions’, this paper investigates how and to which extent the Study Committee for the development of the Antwerp Agglomeration and its prominent engineer August Mennes, tried to master the urbanization process as it unfolded. Urbanization, then, is framed as a collective practice that generates positive agglomeration effects and surplus values that could not have been produced by individual actors. As such, the paper expands the understanding of urbanization from a random process of capital accumulation to a project that includes the building of social and cultural capital.