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GEO PHILOSOPHY
It is easy to see how much hand human activities do to the world. We can look at almost every product as bought at the price of environmental or human damage. Out of this attitude rising to (albeit limited) popular consciousness around 1970 grew the ‘restricted damage’ approach to building Zero-energy, ecological autonomous houses and self-sufficient farming became a select fashion. Two decades later it is easier to take a wider overview and see that architecture, like any other art form, can bring spiritual benefits humanity and to the earth, which outweighs the material damage that it causes. The world would be a poorer place without Chartres Cathedral, but it took a lot of stone quarrying. we can build wholly biodegradable buildings from earth, straw and small branches, but all buildings, which satisfy the performance criteria we expect in the developed world, cause ecological damage to some extent. Their materials are almost entirely mined from our surroundings —even modern forestry is mining. Many cause pollution or use considerable energy in their manufacture. In use, buildings consume a lot of energy, the production of which has ecological consequences.
We can observe poisoned groundwater, radioactivity in food, dying forests and seas and collapsing ecology in whole regions. This isn’t just what other people do. It is product and by-product of the way we build and live. This sort of pollution hardly existed before the industrial revolution and much of the forest of it has only been invented in the last few decades. It isn’t the only way to live and to build, but it is the normal way these days. To make changes, therefore, that are acceptable to the people who will pay for them and that perform acceptably is not easy. But if we are aiming to build Vastu architecture, which has a health-giving influence, we need responsible foundations.
There are several major aspects of our surroundings - even building which affects the environment, including toxins entering the biosphere as the result of industrial produces five million tons a year. If you have ever been to a chemical waste dump you will know the chill dead horror, the dying cry of the earth.
Energy, in one form or another, always has an environmental price. Even hydroelectric power, though less dangerous to the world as a whole than nuclear power, has a high local price in ecological disruption. Greenhouse effect global warming, now irreversible, is a consequence of profligate energy consumption. Much more energy is used in running buildings than in constructing them and manufacturing their materials. Running buildings consumes some 50% of energy, a proportion little changed over two decades as rising expectations of comfort have paralleled improvements in thermal insulation.
In addition to dispersed effects consequent on their industrial support base, buildings themselves their materials, location, services and design-have local effects. They affect the health of people as well as places.
These simple issues have complex implications, not least because if considered uni-dimensionally they are often in conflict with each other: excessive concern for energy-saving in the last two decades has been a major cause of ‘sick’ buildings, those which cause health problems to their occupants. Draught proofing has led to buildings being less well ventilated than ever before in human history-yet we need fresh air to live! Almost all industrially produced thermal insulations have significantly harmful characteristics: sharp mineral fibres, dusts, and gaseous emissions, even radioactivity. ‘Non industrial’ products exist, but the supply of cork, coco-fibre insulation or, if you don’t insulate, firewood cannot be drastically increased without damage to trees. Locally traditional materials can cause health problems such as rheumatism, and bronchitis associated with dampness and mould spores.
Conservation of energy on the other hand is simpler to deal , Only a few decades ago, thermal insulation was pratically unheard of Now the regulations have reached a lard that I no longer feel necessary to double!
It makes energy sense to take account of local climate. In my area the problems are mostly those of wind cooling. Ground-hugging buildings do well here. Heating buildings means heating space, so the smaller and more compact the heated volume the less energy needed -a point, I have not always been able to convince energy conscious clients on! To minimize energy use as well as other effects on the surroundings, like relative scale and shadow size, the first step is to think small. Compact spatial arrangement does not necessarily mean cramped environment. As I will discuss later, other qualities can have a greater effect than dimensions.
From the energy point of view alone, different climates require different building forms. Hot climates need shaded, airy spaces, such as verandas or courtyards. Different humidity, temperature and night/day variations have led to different traditional materials and natural cooling layouts which give rise to vernacular forms ranging from large ventilated roof spaces (which can double as crop-dying lofts) to high thermal capacity mud-brick buildings.
Traditional building forms are not to copy; copies are so dead. We need however to be sure that we have carefully thought about what previous generations took for granted before we depart too radically from them. If not, these buildings will depend large energy inputs for heating or cooling -and energy has an even higher ecological price than it does a monetary one.
We can laugh at British colonial administrative buildings standardized in design with corrugated iron roofs and fireplaces even in the tropics (I am told that the fireplace was cool enough to stand in, elsewhere was like an oven). On the other hand we take granted that office blocks are mechanically cooled and ventilated. Yet whenever buildings require energy inputs to provide a physical environment that could have been achieved by design means, we must recognize that building design is responsible for completely needless pollution.
It is now well established that it is cheaper to conserve than to produce energy. Many people think first in terms of alternative energy gadgetry. I think of these last. Nonetheless some alternative energy is simple to produce. The economics depend on your accountancy assumptions: solar hot water can be proved to be a money-saver and never to pay for itself. My question to clients, therefore, is, “do you think it a right thing to have or are you only looking to save money?”
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