Design for One Earth

Beauty- cannot be discounted

Beauty, as one the twelve values for Design For One Earth is defined as “an intrinsic part of nature and humanity. It is a basic human need and not a luxury or elitist concept. Promote beauty in the built environment and provide for a connection to nature and natural beauty.”

There is no arguing that the focus world over has made a significant shift towards Sustainability in the built environment. At this point it becomes all the more imperative that softer values such as Beauty be intrinsic to the dialogue of Sustainability.

Our Design for One Earth Roundtable during RNL’s 2009 Green Week focused on Beauty. The goal of the roundtable was to explore the meaning and purpose of beauty; its manifestation in the built environment; why and how is it an important part of sustainability. Each of the participants was asked to pick from six famous quotes on Beauty and bring an object or an image that best represents beauty within the framework of the quote.  While we kept going back to the idea that “Beauty is subjective” and  essentially lies in the eyes of the beholder, a few key observations were made:

-         It doesn’t matter how one interprets it – beauty is still core to each individual’s goals. If this premise were to be applied to a project it would be as simple as stating: Every stakeholder in a building project may have a different interpretation of what beauty means to them – but each wants the building to be beautiful.

-         Beauty transcends beyond the visual – and is often expressed as a feeling,  an emotion that is spurred – again translating this to the built environment it could be interpreted as a dramatic space that generates a strong emotion or a daylight built space that connects one seamlessly to the outdoors, generating a feeling of beauty.

It is imperative that as we are rapidly progressing into the systems thinking approach to design that we bring along with us all the values associated with aesthetics and beauty as strongly as of energy and resources. A few days ago, prior to the launch of Design for One Earth,  I was asked the question, “Beauty and sustainability – how are they related?” To me, the question really is, “how can they be separated?”

Sustainability and Beauty are both an integral part of design and problem solving. We may look to nature to create a beautiful sustainable solution or strive to create a solution that brings us closer to nature!

A Happy Planet

How does happiness play a role in design? Of the twelve values in RNL’s Design for One Earth framework – happiness tends to get a lot attention. People value happiness. Yet, happiness is hard to measure, hard to define and hard to predict. None the less, happiness is an important pursuit in design and we should work to advance our understanding and application of it. 

Design for One Earth asks us to consider things from both a local and global perspective. Globally there has been considerable research on happiness including the World Database on Happiness, which claims to be a “continuous register of scientific research on subjective appreciation of life”, and the Happy Planet Index, which is “an index of human well-being and environmental impact.”

NPR foreign correspondent, Eric Weiner, recently wrote a book on his travels to a wide variety of places in search of happiness. He starts with the World Database on Happiness and discovers a world where happiness is connected to place. His book, “The Geography of Bliss” is a recommended read on this topic.

I like the idea behind the Happy Planet Index which ranks nations based on a simple formula (Life Satisfaction (0-10) TIMES Life Expectancy (in years) DIVIDED BY Ecological footprint per capita (in global hectares)). This index actually bundles happiness and health and then adjusts for environmental impact. So you can’t be too happy if you are consuming resources as if we have five earths. Based on the Happy Planet Report, the world is not a very happy place.

The Happy Planet Index lets you take the system to an individual scale by completing a personal online assessment.  I couldn’t help but give it a try. It would help if I lived in the UK, because the survey assumes this. So after I get my income converted to Euros and my weight to Kilograms I get the results of my report. I score a 74.8. The good news is that I am higher than the world average of 46 and certainly much higher than the average American at 22.8. The bad news is that the survey says I should aspire to be at least an 83 “which represents a good life that doesn’t cost the earth”. The survey appears to make some pretty broad assumptions and strives to be user-friendly even if the results are less accurate. Yet the survey does hit home how personal lifestyle choices impacts sustainability, health and happiness – and that there is always room for improvement. I would encourage everyone to try the survey yourself.

So from a lifestyle perspective, sustainability is about happiness – and captured in the Design for One Earth question, “Can we live abundantly within the limits of One Earth?” Sustainable design for the built environment makes an impact - enabling lifestyles that promote health, well-being and happiness, while lowering our footprint.

How will Energy Drive Building in the Future?

We have seen the future of buildings in an energy driven world. Perhaps more accurately we have seen pieces of potential futures. One possible future is DOE/NREL’s new Research Support Facilities (RSF) project for the NREL campus. This project by the design-build of Haselden and RNL’s is designed to be a prototype for the future of zero energy buildings. Everyone involved on the NREL RSF has learned a great deal from this project and we have been asked by the Department of Energy to share these lessons. One of the Department of Energy’s goals is to make zero energy commercial buildings market viable by 2025.

 

The NREL RSF project shows a zero energy building future where buildings are optimized for multiple climate responsive passive strategies, and then complemented by very efficient mechanical and electrical systems – extending even into the design of the data center and the IT system for the building. This low energy building approach lends itself well to on-site renewable energy applications, which can then be sized as small as possible to offset the energy needs of the building. This approach can yield projects with significantly better energy and carbon reduction results than typical ENERGY STAR, LEED or 2030 Challenge benchmarks. In fact, this approach may even get us to the end game of the 2030 Challenge today.

The NREL RSF project has a very simple and direct form that is driven by energy. It is not very different from common building forms pre-dating air conditioning. The NREL RSF is a letter shaped building – in this case an “H”. This gives the building two long thin wings or “fingers” with the proper solar orientation and a connecting spine. The building was designed in section first to ensure proper daylighting, natural ventilation, thermal mass, transpired solar collection, and photovoltaic energy generation.

In addition to architecture, RNL has a strong urban design and master planning practice. We deal with the same energy and form issues at this scale. A unique emerging benefit of this is the ability to test new architectural and urban design ideas within a master plan. While our master planning approach addresses important sustainability issues such as land use, orientation, solar access, energy and water infrastructure, transportation, microclimates, pedestrian comfort and wind patterns – it doesn’t always have the scope to design the actual architecture. However, populating the urban plan with architecture helps it come to life. The architecture in these test beds is speculation – not unlike the speculative architecture and urban designs of sci-fi film sets. This provides an opportunity to speculate on new forms of energy driven architecture which leads to continued innovation. The speculative architecture on one of RNL’s recent sustainable city master plans in the UAE takes this idea of the “letter” or “finger” building into a more three dimensional, sculptural approach. The building becomes a vessel or body with more surfaces interacting passively with the environment.

 

There are many emerging design tools that will allow us to design more fluidly around energy. As BIM models become more energy model friendly we have quicker feedback on design decisions early in the process. New design tools are allowing us to automate the manipulation of form in direct response to energy. Tim Meador of RNL has been experimenting with this idea using Rhino 3-D modeling software with a Grasshopper algorithm plug-in using data from an Ecotect model. Surfaces can be scripted to respond to environmental data such as solar radiance which then can automate the free form depth of louver blades for shading or adjust the size of apertures for solar control.

The design of energy systems inside and outside our buildings will also be significantly different in the very near future. Starting on the inside, the occupants of a building have a significant impact on energy use. RNL is finding that in low energy buildings the plug and server loads account for more than half of all the energy use. This is a tremendous opportunity for improvements in occupant behavior, occupant energy feedback and green information technologies. If you have ridden in a Prius you understand the power of feedback on behavior. As you see your instantaneous MPG on the dashboard display you instinctively (or sometimes very purposively) make changes to your driving to move that MPG number up. The same technology is available in buildings.

Outside lies the electrical grid. We have all heard that it is antiquated and needs to be rebuilt, but apparently the grid is also dumb. Enter the smart grid. The idea is to run a communication signal on top of the electrical current on the same power line. With a smart grid the energy producer will have direct two-way communication with the energy consumers. This strategy reduces peak demands by managing energy use at the consumer level (demand side reduction). This opens up a world of possibilities including smart appliances, building energy interfaces, automation controls, better management of distributed renewable energy sources, better energy management for consumers, and better grid and equipment management for the utility. Xcel Energy is leading the way on smart grid technology and Boulder, Colorado is living the smart grid future now as one of the nation’s first smart grid cities.

How will all of these and other energy trends evolve to drive buildings in the future? One of my favorite truisms comes from a computer scientist named Alan Kay who said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”. We have the power to invent a clean low-energy sustainable future.

 

To see the visual slide show on this topic go to: http://www.slideshare.net/tomhootman/how-will-energy-drive-building-in-the-future