1.
Statement of intentions
What is Nature? The project of sustainable development is not a natural one. Pristine untouched nature is a cultural ideal, and increasingly so an ideal detached from reality. We humans move more earth than any natural process. We distribute water, mineral, soil, plants and animals in accordance to our perceived needs and actual whims. Anthropological influence has reigned over this planet for about ten thousand years, and sustainable development is here to make sure that that influence can continue. Civilization is at risk, but civilization is the problem. The key positive feedback in the current earth system is us (Brand 2009). So is this sustainability thing a good thing? Sure it is. As filmmaker Werner Herzog puts it there is a harmony in nature… It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder (Burden of Dreams 1982). What scares the idiosyncratic filmmaker is the lack of culture in nature. One can say that nature is what has no intention. No natural process wants anything from you, nor does it want to sell or convince you of anything: it just is. Yet there is a struggle today to deliver what nature wants. It is as if civilization has entered an old film noir thriller. The protagonist starts investigating a situation supposedly as an external agent, but eventually starts realizing that he or she is herself the culprit of the drama, and the guilt and sorrow makes her want to undo the crimes she unknowingly have made. So what ought to be done? Because of human influence, the planet is changing rapidly. It is not facing annihilation – we have yet to be able to change its course through the universe, hurling this big ball towards the sun. However, it is rapidly changing beyond safe operating space (Rockström 2015), where different physical systems on the planet could spiral out of control, resulting in difficult living conditions and mass deaths from starvation and/or war. This is a crisis and the notion of sustainability has risen to address it. That notion is opportunistic, and uses the crisis to get some other values along with it. Horrible crisis – great opportunity, right? Technically environmental issues could be solved with totalitarian states, dictating the flow of resources and energy through force. But we don’t want that. The notion therefore neatly bundles ecology with a value package of humanism. One can look at it from two vantage points, either from the ecological perspective, where human rights and equity is needed to share and divide resources, or from a human rights perspective where eco systems and resources are needed to maintain the welfare of societies. The result is the same. Profoundly needed for this to work is an intergenerational responsibility. That is to say, we have a responsibility towards future generations, not just towards people of our generation. This is old stuff, locally speaking, but the scale in time (humanity) and space (the planet) is unprecedented. Decoupling or degrowth? Politically, sustainability is a difficult message to get across. The end goal of intergenerational welfare is too long term for today’s political climate. There always seems to be something more urgent do be dealt with now, and here, be it refugees, terrorism, the economy or something else. The result has been that a lot of focus on Erik Hedborg 2016 AMU019
sustainability has been directed towards win-win situations – where change can be made and nothing or nobody gets worse off (Brülde 2016). This is illustrated with the idea of decoupling. Decoupling is where economy and emissions can prove the old statisticians mantra, that correlation does not imply causation. One hopes for new technologies that will continue to produce the same amount of goods and energy, but with no impact on the environment. It is this nice little story about a train with two carts, where suddenly one cart is simply decoupled from the other, heading off into another trajectory, and all the passengers are happy along the way. The only problem is the decoupling part. Oil is ecstasy. It is a performance enhancing drug, liquid sunlight, which we have been on for the last hundred years. That it will not be so simple to stop using, cold turkey. We are locked in by technologies, customs and legislation. The alternative to decoupling is degrowth. Here we punish ourselves for our bad past behavior, get off the speed, and throw out the dealers. Revolution! Bloody? Maybe. Without making too bold of a prediction about the future, many more crises will come, and popular opinion will vary accordingly. It is usually said that 40% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are related to buildings. It is a strange type of truism. In a sense, all emissions and pollution come from built environment. That is where we do our thing. The Neolithic revolution created the city. The industrial revolution created the urban. A massive mix of built and natural environment stretching from pole to pole have come to dominate the planet. We are as gods, and might as well get good at it (Brand 2009). The role of the designer Architecture is both an artistic and scientific endeavor, and it is inherently cross-disciplinary. If the architect is reduced to a drawing tool with the occasional job as consultant estheticist – then the future looks kind of bleak. However, in many other roles, we can make a difference. We are the sparring partner of the engineer, with different tools and thought systems. The architect’s job is to find synergies where they exist, searching for them elusive win-win moments. It is also about making the necessary trade-offs, arguing for the strength and values of good design. Ecology as a condition for building also implies a new look on efficiency. A process can be efficient in different ways – it can be in use of energy, materials or labor. In high wage countries today, efficiency in labor has become the dominant perspective. Things needs to be designed, projected and built fast, and with minimal of hours put in. However, this cannot last. Money should be spent on labor when it saves energy and materials. It is time to rediscover to landscapes of high maintenance, craftsmanship and respect for material. One of the first ecologists, Buckminister Fuller, wanted to improve the world by design. How much does your building weigh, he kept asking architects he met, whom of course had no clue what so ever. He built lightweight and energy efficient (unfortunately buildings that alienated people and cars that were built as death traps). When energy and resources eventually become expensive again, we should be prepared for that. Efficiency is about building small. It’s about using materials that can decompose. Natural and technical cycles are made closed systems. Waste equals food (McDonough & Braungart 2002). Since the renaissance and it’s obsession with the city and its perfect geometrical form, there seem to be a movement towards centrality in the built environment. Cities are developed more like octopi than spider webs, with the monetary capital rushing towards the center. Chris Alexander talks about the phenomena with a bit more rigor in his famous essay A City is not a Tree (Alexander 1965). Why does this pattern emerge? Geoffrey West would say that it is inevitable mathematical principles, and he talks about it in his research about scaling laws and the urban (West et al. 2006). But cities are also planned, by its inhabitants, by the politicians. So here’s a value argument: in a socially sustainable world, every place should be livable, and cities isotropic by nature. If for no other reason, it is an insurance for the future, where energy might be scarce, and transportation a luxury. Structure laid down now will survive long past its technical lifecycle, so we have a responsibility to play it safe. The flip side of centrality is the economies of scale, and with it efficiency. Therefore neither too small nor too big is the answer. Building for the long now implies not long term planning but more long term thinking. It is not as much about being able to predict but to be prepared for the future. There is some of this thinking in the notion of resilience, the ability of a system to recover from shocks. The notion begs several questions though: resilience of what? Against what? For whom? Mankind’s obsession with control spans many different scales. On the building level, we pride ourselves with the fact that thermostats can keep an indoor temperature at a perfect 20 degrees and that the house is air tight and hygienic. The irony here is that climate control makes us fat and the sterile hygienic Erik Hedborg 2016 AMU019
environment gives us allergies. It is as if houses are self-constructed auto immune diseases, where the mechanisms we build to protect ourselves start turning on us and cause us harm. The designer is never without context. We are always working on top of infrastructure, here defined in the broadest of sense. This includes the obvious: roads, technical systems, tracks and sewers. But it also includes our current fleet of cars, our building stock and our industrial machines. It also includes soft infrastructure such as institutions: governmental, juridical, taxation and accounting, universities and so on. This perspective, that everything we build is pooled into infrastructure, implies new thinking for the designer. One is that of maintenance – both of natural and built infrastructure. It is also to find continuity between the old and the new. And to be radical about it, in the state of the urban, every project is a transformation, be there a building before or not. In a sense, modernist failure in continuity is what has driven the general public skepticism towards architecture today. In a world where continuity is natural, preservation is only done at the museum. And the mindset that new buildings destroy beautiful and functional cities, is part of what drives urban sprawl and nimbyism1. So what are the esthetics of ecology? It is up to us to find out. But it seems clear that the answer does not lie in the abstract environments of the modernist and post-modernist projects. It is not in the flat industrial platforms rolled out along our highways and harbors. These abstract esthetics of planes and slabs are in some ways monumental and even beautiful – but they are not the esthetics of a sustainable society. The intergenerational perspective on architecture invites us to think about how to build for maintenance and disassembly. It is about asking what really is modern (fashion) and what actually is modern (contemporary). Also one asks what is primitive, and what is sophisticated. In many ways, we can learn from the simple buildings of the past. They are often built with general spaces, details that would function even though they were not precision engineered, and with materials that would look bad before they act bad (Brand 1995). Many of the most popular places to live in a city today is built around the beginning of the last century. Sure, the demand today on what a building should perform are hugely different from back then. Palladio did not have to construct any toilets in the Villa Rotunda, but today architects are faced with demands on accessibility, dozens of technical systems and regulations. Sustainable design can be done in many different ways. It can be hard-boiled, with lots of technology and active bling. It can also be soft-boiled, with simple technology and passive structure. The former adapting to current lifestyles, the latter having lifestyles react. This dichotomy is hopefully better seen as a spectrum. One where we can boil the egg for anything between four and ten minutes. And proponents of each ought to accept the other as viable options. We need to throw everything we’ve got at this problem – there is no place nor time for snobs. There is also a dire problem of ideological polarization. Where emotional, spiritual, intuitive values are starkly opposed to rational, scientific and analytical. This dichotomy has become less apparent since the 70ies and the first green wave, but the opposition still remains. It is important to always reflect on and question our own truths, and we need to be fanatical in our opposition of fanaticism.
References Alexander, C. (1965) A City is Not a Tree. Architectural Forum, Vol 122, No 1, April 1965, pp 58-62
Rockström, J. (2015) Bounding the Planetary Future: Why We Need a Great Transition. Great Transition Initiative
Brand, S (1995) How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built. [E-bok] Penguin Books
McDonough, W, Braungart, M. (2002) Cradle to cradle: remaking the way we make things. USA: North Point Press
Brand, S (2009) Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto [E-bok] Penguin Books
Burden of Dreams (1982) [Video] USA: Flower Films
Brülde (2016) Sustainable development, sustainability, happiness, and global justice [Lecture] CTH: 16-09-06
West, G. et al. (2006) Scaling laws in urban supply networks [Journal Entry] in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications Volume 363, Issue 1, 15 April 2006, Pages 96–103
Top picture: Rice fields by Edward Burtinsky Erik Hedborg 2016 AMU019
Erik Hedborg 2016 AMU019
2.
Case study – Seaweed house
This house built by the Realdania foundation (designed by Vandkunsten architects) is a prototype for the revival of an old roofing material. Seaweed has been used in vernacular architecture in the northern parts of Denmark for a long time, as a type of roof thatching. Here, the material is used for more functions. It is in the façade, roofing, insulation, and a part of interior soft panels. The result is a carbon negative holiday house that is modern and traditional, minimal and sophisticated, old-school and innovative. The building is located on the island of Laesö, 30 nautical miles south west of Gothenburg. It’s a relatively new island, surfacing just 11000 years ago as the last ice age ended. It suffered ecological crisis during the 14th century when salt production was at its highest and all the trees on the island was burnt to supply the industry. This required the king of Denmark to banish all salt production and order new forest plantation, since the island was starting to erode. Today the island has about 2000 inhabitants and could be considered a rural island with farming, tourism and fishing as major sources of income. There is also a small amount of forest production. The building The building has a wooden prefabricated structure. Panels were built off site and filled with seaweed. A total of 86 panels were then assembled on site, presumably with the use of a mobile crane. After waterproofing membrane, nets of seaweed were mounted on larch wood lathing. Indoors, the wooden panels are exposed on the lower level, and in the ceiling is clad with linen bags packed with seaweed. It is a diffusion-open construction, where the insulation and wood is expected to absorb and expel water vapor without reaching a point of saturation inside the wall. This vastly decreases the amount of plastic in the building. The windows and doors are made with passive-house standards, which is a major factor for the overall low energy expense. A nearby shed holds an efficient air-to-water heat pump which heats the house. The overall good insulation combined with a mechanical ventilation and heat recycling brings the energy use down to 43kWh/m2/year, and that is while maintaining a 10 degree inside temperature during unoccupied hours in the winter (Widera 2014). The seaweed house is a holiday cottage with space for eight people, under rather simple living conditions. There is one big terrace towards the south, with an outdoors shower and kitchen. The furriness and softness of the outand inside of the buildings make for a nice and kind appearance. The soft ceiling will affect the interior acoustics and might relieve stress. The overall design is very well executed, a type of minimalism without sterility. Erik Hedborg 2016 AMU019
The seaweed is harvested from the beaches by tractors. It is then placed on a field to dry. After that it is packed manually into the panels and nets/bags, no mechanized compression is done. The seaweed is naturally pest and insect deterrent because of its salt content. It is reported to be fireproof, and when dried functions as insulation. When dry it does not smell. It has been tested as roofing material for hundreds of years, but it is a prototype in building into walls. A life cycle assessment were carried out, and studied the building over a 50 year life time. Depending on which energy source is used for the appliances and heat pump, the building can be carbon negative. That is to say, the amount of CO2 bound by the materials (wood+seaweed) is larger in the house than the procurement and use of the building (Kauschen, 2013) Sustainability critique The way the seaweed is harvested right now is pretty much a limited supply based on what naturally comes ashore every year. Ecological impact of removing all this weed should also be considered from a marine biology point of view. The natural salt content that protects the weed might be flushed out after repeated soakings/dryings. There is a known problem of birds building nests in the roofs. If one looks at the house from an urbanism point of view, one could point out that its desolate setting and luxury program is not sustainable. That it needs to be connected to other houses and share infrastructure. The site could actually accommodate more houses as well. This however raises questions about the rural landscape and the calm retreat. Potential improvements How about trying to compress the material to increase its uses? Can it be load bearing in the same way straw bales can be? Can production be scaled up? Grow them in ponds? Find use for wetlands, which are otherwise nonproductive biotopes in the landscape? Final words Working with new, locally sourced material is clearly one way to advance the field of sustainable building. Here it is actually the reinvention of an old material into a new use. This is preferable since it has already shown its failings and strengths throughout the years. Still, as with all building materials, one must always carry a healthy dose of skepticism, and question properties that seem too good to be true. The Seaweed house shows how sustainable building can be beautiful, tactile and simple. Moreover, how it can relate to its surroundings by the use of building technique and esthetics. Questions remain on the application of the material, and the sourcing, but there is also a huge potential for more development.
References
Short facts
Kauschen, J.S., (2013) Livscyklusvurdering af projektet “Det Moderne Tanghus på Læsø” København: Vandkunsten
Site area
5251 m2
Built area
86m2
Gross floor area
119m2
Lowenstein, O. (2014) Ferienhaus auf Laesö. DETAIL Green, vol. 2014:1, pp. 38-45.
Terraces
127m2
Construction costs
280000 euro
Widera, B. (2014) Possible Application of Seaweed as Building Material in the Modern Seaweed House on Læsø. 30th INTERNATIONAL PLEA CONFERENCE 16-18 December 2014, CEPT University, Ahmedaba.
U-values (W/m2K)
facades 0,14, roof 0,11, floor 0,09, windows & doors: 0,08, skylights 0,9
Energy requirements
Erik Hedborg 2016 AMU019
43 kWh/m2/year