The language of sustainability:At present, green buildings are defined as ones that do less danmage than normal practice (i.e., LEED rewards energy consumption up to 60% less than baseline, but not more). This is not good enough, and we urgently need to move to true sustainability, and beyond. To us, Sustainable means no negative impacts – a system that can continue forever. Green means something better: systems that do more good than harm. We have chosen the word Productive to represent our aspirations, because it means positive impact, like Green, but includes also human and economic productivity. The scope of the problem:The way we build and use our buildings affects everything we do. Originally, buildings were little more than shelter for habitation. Today almost all types of human activity takes place inside: work, cultural activities, sports and recreation, and even agriculture. Americans spend close to 90% of their time in buildings, and almost all the time we spend “outside” is in designed, semi-conditioned spaces that surround and connect our buildings. (Indoor Air Quality,Variability In Time Spent In Selected Locations ) The built environment affects the natural environment almost as much as it affects the human one. Buildings and infrastructure are responsible for the majority of energy use and carbon and other emissions, use a great deal of water, and generate large amounts of waste. Given the interconnectedness of all these issues, we need to be aware of, and look for inspiration in, every factor that relates to a project, including history, economics, biology, agriculture, natural context, cultural context, safety, health, and others. The scale of the problem:We try to solve these problems on the smallest scale, where they are the most challenging, and then develop variations and scale up (or down) as appropriate.
How sustainable can a building be? Is the best solution on a national, regional, municipal, or neighborhood scale? Andhow do we define “best”: on economic, technical,or other criteria? For example, energy self-sufficiency can often be achieved on a single building, but usually is most easily done on a net basis if the building is connected to the power grid. Larger systems will usually cost less per watt generated, and they may be located in places with more sunshine, but lower costs and higher output may be offset by transmission losses. Transmission lines may be politically difficult to build. And there are a series of other issues that are rarely considered: what about the political, military, social and cultural implications of centralized infrastructure? The fact is that there is no clear answer to many of these questions. At K+C, our expertise is limited, and we have only partial control over the projects we work on directly. So a general principal for us is to solve as many problems as we can, as elegantly and economically possible, within the bounds of our work. If individual buildings can be completely sustainable, and viable in technical, aesthetic, and economic terms, then other, larger scale solutions are likely to be no more difficult technically, and may (or may not) be more economical. |
