LOOK INSIDE: Renovating Carbon

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Copyright © 2022 College of Design and Engineering National University of Singapore www.cde.nus.edu.sg

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Contributors: Erik L’Heureux (Ed.), Giovanni Cossu (Ed.), Nader Tehrani, Eric Höweler, Heng Chye Kiang, Ho Puay-peng, Lakshmi Menon, Wolfgang Kessling, Nirmal Kishnani, Chris Knapp, Joshua Comaroff, Lam Khee Poh

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Renovating Carbon

1 Spatializing Schools of Thought Nader Tehrani

2 From Lifestyle to Life Cycle: And Other Readings of Carbon Form in Architecture Er

3 Beyond Sustainability

3.1 Two Different Approaches to Sustainability in SDE’s Campus Rejuvenation

Heng Chye Kiang

3.2 Spatializing Sustainability: Housing a School of Architecture Ho Puay-peng

3.3 Carbon Dichotomies La

4 Carbon Transformations at the Equator Er

5

5.1 Evaluating the Hidden Carbon in SDE 1 & 3 Wol

5.2 A Problem of Problems: Systems Thinking at the Drawing Board Nir

6 Carbon Futures

6.1 Towards a Post-Anthropocene, Postmodern Architecture Chris Knapp

6. 2 Manifesto for the Architecture School Building in a Time of Crisis, 2021 –Joshua Comaroff

Erik L’Heureux

Giovanni Cossu

— Amitav Ghosh,

The Great Derangement

The climate crisis has prompted deep introspection in the processes of development, urbanization, and architecture, particularly regarding their complicity and dependency on fossil fuels. Architecture and the building sector contribute to almost 40% of global CO2 emissions. Building operations constitute 28%, while the remaining 12% are attributed to material usage. 1 Concrete, steel, and aluminum are responsible for almost half of global industrial CO2 emissions. Yet, as the climate catastrophe no longer remains an exclusive scientific concern, it urgently lies intertwined in the world’s political, economic, and spatial cultures. This entanglement requires us to probe the link between architecture and climate, fundamentally based on the reciprocity of energy, built form, and architecture. Decarbonization, the process of phasing out fossil fuel use from architecture, is not only a performative question but also holds implications for culture, design practices, and modes of living. Reducing operational carbon (the carbon released to produce energy consumed for building operations) and embodied carbon (the carbon produced from construction processes and materials) is at the heart of this process, requiring significant and complex cultural change that impacts expectations of comfort and how buildings are inhabited. Educational institutions, especially schools of architecture, design, and the built environment, have an important task at hand in propelling this cultural shift through their communities. In order to move forward, this movement needs to be consciously integrated into pedagogies and present in learning environments to a perceptible degree.

Carbon Pasts and Futures

In the eighteenth century, with the advent of the Industrial Age, people began to fuel machinery with energy derived from the combustion of fossilized carbon such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas. Industrialization and its subsequent “fossilized carbon capitalism” allowed societies to reorganize themselves around the availability of seemingly limitless energy that signaled the start of a new phase in human history: the carbon economy. 2 The emergent energy-intensive ways of life led to an energy culture that reinforces the myth of a

dense energy supply. 3 When applied to the processes of urbanization, the term “carbon form” refers to architectural typologies and taxonomies of urban forms that are linked to the consumption of fossil fuels by transportation, construction, and food production networks. 4 With global building projected to double in the next two decades, the challenge of reducing the carbon expenditure and imagining a carbonless future is a design and cultural opportunity — one linking technology, building systems, and the formal and aesthetic foundations of how architecture is conceptualized. 5 The crisis of imagination can begin to be tackled by imagining futures not yet inhabited and delivering those futures now. Imagination is a fundamental design act deeply embedded in architectural culture. But it also requires political will, capital, and change in the entire building ecosystem to bring such visions to fruition.

Adaptive reuse — the process of extending the lifespan of existing buildings and reusing materials to capitalize on already expended carbon and other resources to create new environments —  is a critical step in this direction. It is an architectural approach not to build more but rather to use already existing carbon forms intelligently and with restraint. That this method grew in prominence, coinciding with the global oil crisis in the 1970s, speaks to its ingenuity as an architectural response to the scarcity of natural resources. In today’s climate crisis, adaptive reuse “perpetuates a continuum of growth and change,” assuming greater responsibility for the carbon embedded in architecture. 6

In Singapore, urban regulations and developmental pressures have constructed an ecosystem of short building lifespans. Tearing down and building anew constitute up to 40% of embodied carbon emissions. New buildings have been designed as cultural symbols for a forward-looking future, especially in urbanizing Asia.7 Adaptive reuse, in this context, has been limited to historical buildings or largely viewed as financially unfeasible. But this developmental process is starting to be interrogated, and in many ways, adaptive reuse will be Asia’s future.

The National University of Singapore (NUS) is a large, publicly funded, research-intensive university. Its campus is straddled with aging buildings constructed in the early 1970s. As the University has grown in population and size, its development ambitions have shifted to spotlight targets of carbon neutrality in a comprehensive ten-year plan of campus redevelopment. 8 This University development ethos has also received a strong impetus with the recently launched Singapore Green Plan 2030, a critical, goal-driven approach

“T he climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of imagination”

to sustainable development in Singapore that fast-tracks environmental, social, and governmental (ESG) measures that align with the United Nation’s 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. 9

Within the NUS Campus, the College of Design and Engineering (CDE) is crafting architecture and sustainability leadership in Singapore by intertwining design education and research, advocating for sustainable design practices, innovating green policy, and transforming the campus with new and renovated buildings to serve as positive examples of sustainable, modern architecture in the tropics. This approach includes SDE 4

(completed January 2019), the first purpose-built net-zero-energy building in Singapore; the low-carbon, net-zero adaptive reuse of SDE 1 & 3 will be completed in 2022, with a proposed zero-carbon new building and an adaptive reuse of SDE 2 currently in the planning stages. These projects will provide more than 45,000 square meters of new and renovated studios, workshops, research centers, office spaces, and various public and social spaces. Most importantly, they are designed as pedagogical tools to influence a new generation of architects, engineers, landscape architects, and designers who will be

Fig 0.3 Book features a constellation of conversations around the SDE 1 & 3 renovation. Diagram by Ong Chan Hao.

committed to the critical transformation of the built environment and their surrounding culture. Together, these projects extend the school’s history while leading design innovation into an era of rapid advancement in sustainability, architecture, and building technology.

The conversations presented in this book expand on themes from the renovation of SDE 1 & 3. The renovation’s design utilizes the existing carbon form from the original 1976 structural frame to position itself as a tool to educate its students and the wider community around sustainability and carbon footprints. In the design process, in-house design architects, sustainability professionals, landscape architects, industrial designers, and energy engineers worked collectively to manifest Research by Design (R×D) efforts within the buildings’ renovations.10 The ethos of the school and its leadership asserted that every building is an opportunity for design research, oriented toward crafting sustainable architecture calibrated to the equatorial climate and the urban and natural systems within which it is situated. The texts within this book probe the themes of adaptive reuse, design agency, architectural ambitions, and decarbonization around the architecture of SDE 1 & 3. The conversations frames concerns around form, space, and order, as well as construction processes, material choices, building systems, and climate comfort as critical components impacting the campus, Singapore, and the larger ecosystem. The writing explores the SDE 1 & 3 renovation within the broader scope of how design functions within codependent networks, precinct-level systems, and sociopolitical relationships, widening the architectural imagination of adaptive reuse and low-carbon design that is tailored to the hot and wet climate of the equator.

It is this collective effort that constructs, shapes, and influences culture. Winston Churchill argued that the shape of the House of Commons Chamber was the essence of the British Parliament, asserting that “We shape our buildings, and afterwards, our buildings shape us.” The buildings of SDE 1 & 3, along with the drawings, visualizations, studios, conversations, and institutional histories captured in this book, will serve as the basis for future design education: they will shape generations of architects from Singapore and beyond and set the pedagogical basis for those students who will live and breathe within its frame. Adaptive reuse will soon become the future of developing Asia, and even more so, the future of our warming world, and SDE 1 & 3 is just one part of this story as we confront the climate catastrophe with design imagination.

References

[1] World Green Building Council, “Bringing Embodied Carbon Upfront: Coordinated Action for the Building and Construction Sector to Tackle Embodied Carbon,” Sept. 2019 https://www.worldgbc.org/sites/ default/files/WorldGBC_Bringing_Embodied_ Carbon_Upfront.pdf.

[2] Audrea Lim, “The Ideology of Fossil Fuels,” Dissent 65, no. 2 (2018): 133 – 142.

[3] Mimi Sheller, “The Origins of Global Carbon Form,” in Log 47: Overcoming Carbon Form, ed. Cynthia Davidson and Elisa Iturbe (New York: Anyone Corporation, 2019), 57 – 68.

[4] Elisa Iturbe, “Architecture and the Death of Carbon Modernity,” in Log 47: Overcoming Carbon Form, ed. Cynthia Davidson and Elisa Iturbe (New York: Anyone Corporation, 2019), 11 – 24.

[5] UN Environment and International Energy Agency, “Towards a Zero-Emission, Efficient, and Resilient Buildings and Construction Sector: Global Status Report 2017,” 2017, accessed Nov. 23, 2021, https://www.worldgbc.org/sites/default/ files/UNEP%20188_GABC_en%20%28web%29.pdf.

[6] Liliane Wong, Adaptive Reuse: Extending the Lives of Buildings (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2016), 30.

[7] Mint Kang, “Tackling Embodied Carbon Is the Next Step of the Green Building Journey,” Eco-Business, Jan. 7, 2020, https://www.eco-business.com/news/tacklingembodied-carbon-is-the-next-step-of-thegreen-building-journey/.

[8] “Creating a Greener and More Sustainable Campus,” National University of Singapore News, Mar. 25, 2021, https://news.nus.edu. sg/creating-a-greener-and more-sustainablecampus/.

[9] Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment, “Singapore Green Plan 2030: Our Global Commitment,” Feb. 10, 2021, accessed Nov. 30, 2021, https://www. greenplan.gov.sg/

[10] Research by Design (RxD) is a mode of research that exploits design tools and methods in built projects to create applicable knowledge.

Terminology

The School of Design and Environment (SDE) was incorporated as part of the College of Design and Engineering in 2022. The references to SDE in this book reflect the School of Design and Environment designation from 2000 – 2022 and frame the time-frame when the majority of the design and construction of SDE 1 & 3 was completed. We have retained the SDE and School of Design and Environment nomenclature for consistency and historical accuracy.

Chapter 1

Spatializing Schools of Thought

Nader Tehrani

The relationship between schools of thought and the spaces of learning within which they occur —  their architecture — has a telling history, because it conjures up a theoretical predicament at the heart of an architectural debate that has persisted over the ages: that is, how form and content come into dialogue, whether in alignment, disjunction, or a difficult fit. Do pedagogies somehow emerge from the buildings within which they are housed, and can buildings set the stage for certain pedagogies?

Forms of buildings come to represent different things as meanings transform over time. A reference to the “White House” came to signify something completely different a few years ago, based on the extreme practices, philosophy, and actions of the administration of that time — an easy example, given the radical disparity as compared to the current presidency. And yet, the White House as a piece of architecture may not have significantly changed at all: not in its form, spaces, or materials. 1

Of course, as architects, we like to think that what we design matters, and so nothing can be more disconcerting than the idea that what we do is arbitrary, imprecise, or uncontrollable, given the depth of specification we bring to its discipline. Notwithstanding, it is this disjunction between theories of production and the reception of works that, in great part, drives the schism between the world of ideas and objects. When Magritte wrote “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” we know it was not controversial as a proclamation; however, in the context of the image that floated above it, it became a scandalous meme of the very predicament we constantly confront as architects. 2 Of course, the linguistic analogy only goes so far. Architecture interacts with the human subject in a myriad of ways: through the senses, their cognition, and the advent of experience, among other things. As such, as architects, we like to think that what we design is not merely a reflection of the

status quo, but in fact has the agency to impact and transform the world we live in, without which any attempt at giving theoretical body to what we do would be impotent. 3

What is interesting, then, is how the architecture of certain institutions becomes synonymous with a certain ethos despite the changes in administration and thinking. To this end, the underlying structures of organization, program, and materiality often produce conditions that make certain associations persist over time, such that an institutional memory arises that does not merely depend on the human protagonists driving the pedagogies within. The tension that is produced between the persistence of architectural form on the one hand, and the temporal discontinuity of the intellectual cultures that are housed within these forms on the other hand, is at the heart of this argument, and may be irreconcilable.

Fig 1.1 Ceci n’est pas une pipe (The Betrayal of Images) by Rene Magritte (1928–1929).

Courtesy: University of Alabama (distributed under fair use license)

The NADAAA Triad

It is against this backdrop that NADAAA set out to design the Hinman Building at Georgia Tech, the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne, and the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto, three projects that we won at approximately the same time (circa 2008), when the economy was in the midst of a global fall. As architects, we naturally understood a great deal about design institutions in general, but more importantly, we came to understand the different cultures of these three schools and how their respective missions would create fundamentally different schools of thought. Thus, while the projects share a common program, they also maintain vastly different institutional perspectives. Our analytical task for each school was possibly the most important; if not to better understand the culture of each audience, then to compensate for the fact that the economic crisis dealt a near-fatal blow to all three projects. In other words, the common denominator that they all shared was a sense of critical choices: how to evaluate the indispensable and ensure that our architectural agendas were somehow couched in relation to the forces of integrated alibis. 14

The Hinman Building, Georgia Tech: Tectonic Inversion as a High-Bay Act

The Hinman Building is situated in the center of the Georgia Tech campus, next to the main library. The mission of the program was to expand the School of Architecture into a fourth building, slated for the masters and PhD programs. Concurrently, the entire center of campus was occupied by a parking lot, effectively giving primacy to vehicles over pedestrians. In tandem with the adaptive reuse of the Hinman Building, there was an initiative to transform the adjoining spaces into a series of quads for the central campus.

The Hinman Building was originally built in the 1930s by Paul M. Heffernan and designed for

engineering research; its front entry was marked boldly with the sign “RESEARCH.” Its most salient quality was a high-bay space that served as the space of construction and experimentation in the twentieth century. In the early parts of the commission, the pressures of space planning had the administration packing the high-bay with three stories of studio space, but after a sober recognition of the economic crisis, the program was revised to reduce student numbers and, in turn, to preserve the spatial splendor of the high-bay volume. Accordingly, in a nod to preservation, our proposal opened the high-bay space up to the main entry through various apertures that had been blocked for several decades, making it publicly accessible and open to view. Second, as a large open hall, it is celebrated as a potential

Fig 1.8 The high-bay splendor of the adaptive reuse of the Hinman Building by NADAAA.

Photo by Jonathan Hillyer.

public interior, and its flexibility allows it to serve as a platform for varied functions. Equally importantly, the space serves as a threshold to connect the main quad to a back “working court,” where large-scale constructions can be fabricated outdoors. This required an approach that maintains the openness of the ground level, leaving it unencumbered by structures, static programs, and immobile elements. For this reason, we interpreted the building’s characteristics in unorthodox ways, but always in a manner that enabled its reinvention and repurposing: in effect, we reinterpreted the roof as foundation and suspended all new interventions from the roof down so that they did not touch the ground. We repurposed the gantry crane to suspend a studio space to link the second and third level of the building by way of a programmed structure. We suspended a new spiral stair in the south wing to activate what had been the least accessible part of the building. We suspended a series of “guillotine” walls to connect the high-bay space with service spaces — galleries, crit spaces, and fab-labs — on the sides. Finally, we suspended the lighting on adjustable rods so it can be elevated for large-scale constructions and events that require uninterrupted height. By not touching the ground, the furnishings can be rolled around in varied configurations, and the space can serve a myriad of functions.

Beyond the design studio space within the high bay, the ancillary spaces to the north and south are reserved for an expanding series of research-based masters and PhD programs. Thus, students in computation, building technologies, material sciences, and sustainability may interact with students in the studio program in a more

unmediated way, taking advantage of their spatial tangency to share intellectual agendas.

The flexibility of the high-bay space serves a heterogeneous agenda of events and rituals —  some daily, others weekly, while others fall on a semester or annual basis — of drawing, collaborating, the construction of mock-ups, pop-up events, movies, Beaux-Arts balls, and graduations, as well as other less scripted events. They offer possibilities to drive the pedagogical agendas of the school as well as the emergence of a bottom-up studio culture.

Given that the majority of the project is an adaptive reuse, much of our work has gone into the assignment of characteristic features to respect the historic attributes of the building: for example, the high bay, the roof truss, and its gantry crane. This required the careful discernment of historic preservation tactics. The building’s construction system (a hybrid of concrete, brick, steel, and wood) is unique, but also an exemplary experiment of its time. Given the heterogeneity of the existing palette, we restricted the use of materials within our own interventions, effectively grafting onto the existing elements to take on new functions, adaptability, and purpose. The tectonics of the existing building, in combination with the new interventions (if seen individually as exercises on their respective media), each take on a discursive role about the nature of preservation, renovation, and intervention — the three lenses through which we explored the project.

Returning to the main predicament, in what way does this project respond to the culture of the institution, and correspondingly, how does it imagine producing new cultural explorations?

Fig 1.9 Reinterpreting the roof as a foundation. Courtesy: NADAAA.

forces that saw the Foundation Building as a building of the nineteenth century and those who saw its more powerful voice emerging after the renovation of the 1970s under the direction of John Hejduk. Many narratives — and many ironies — underlie this discussion. For one, we are reminded that the initial project undertaken by Hejduk targeted code and life-safety issues within the Foundation Building but never deemed to rise to the occasion of a full renovation, nor reconceptualization of the structure, particularly on its southern end. However, the eventual transformations impacted the base of the building, where the structure engages the city, its urbanity, and the public realm: that Hejduk dared to challenge the historical structure is a testament to the idea that the fluid relationship between preservation, renovation, and adaptive reuse is much more dynamic than purists may want to admit. And in this light, buildings are thought of as living entities, with change being a central part of their lifetimes. If that were not poignant enough, the adoption of Le Corbusier’s free plan as a model for the restructuring of the south end is also equally significant. The idea of the free plan reveals that since the structure is no longer stubbornly tied to loadbearing walls, then spatial demarcations (whether walls, panels, or movable partitions) can liberally move around columns. This is precisely what enables the types of figuration on display in the second and seventh floor lobbies, both classic tropes for the Corbusian handbook. What is interesting is that embedded in Le Corbusier’s free plan is an ethic of dynamism, which in itself is a thesis that incapacitates the idea of stagnancy in the context of preservation: more directly, it allows for non-loadbearing walls to be moved as a rule and as a response to the programmatic needs of a building.

Naturally, the practical, theoretical, and emotional facets of this narrative are all being played out as I bring my deanship to a close; we shall see where the dust settles, but suffice it to say that as schools transform, so too administrations learn, change, and reveal new priorities over time. We have yet to see what awaits Cooper Union, but it will certainly extend beyond my oversight.

As the administration considers the transformations of the Foundation Building, we might also ask ourselves: what would Hejduk do if confronted with new programmatic opportunities and newfound constraints? Would he allow himself to undo his own renovation, and if so, adopting what design ethos? Would he still be shackled by the ethics of the free plan, or would he introduce other ingredients to offset the self-imposed heritage of restrictions he adopted from the modern movement?

To this end, my role has been controversial from both ends of the perspective: not completely

embraced by those whose fidelity to the Hejduk renovation remains stubbornly steadfast, and equally not accepted by the very administration of which I am a part. Indeed, there is a legitimate narrative that would suggest that the limits of a dean’s responsibilities are drawn within the borders of their school and its curriculum; but then there is another narrative that sees the real estate of the institution, its oversight of the facilities, its deferred maintenance, the preservation, renovation, and transformation of its spaces, and its programming as part of a dean’s commitment and responsibility to the institution. In this version, a dean is not only an advisor but one who reveals pedagogical opportunities in the governance itself. More importantly, a dean’s role as steward of an institution requires them to place their own design instincts on the back burner, if only to underscore the importance of serving as a good host (rather than author) for design. More than anything, these discussions have served as opportunities to create spaces of inclusion, bringing faculty, students, and scholars together to debate the relative agency of architecture in the transformation of intellectual cultures.

To this end, my engagement with the administration has revolved around a few key sites of opportunity for the campus and the School of Architecture specifically, all of which entail critical changes to its cultural potentials. At the base of 41 Cooper Square and the Foundation Building, we find the questions of how the buildings meet the street, how they are programmed, and to what degree they invite a broader public into Cooper Union. On the fourth floor, we have the question of how the historic workshop may enter the twenty-first century by expanding its infrastructure to include equipment that allows the intellectual environment of interdisciplinary “making” thrive; and on the third floor, in the School of Architecture, the question remains how the sacred space of the studio may provide an equitable space of research to each student in a fashion that reinforces collaborations.

Beyond the ethics that drive preservation and change, the Foundation Building is already confronted with a range of pressing urbanistic, programmatic, and user-based challenges. As a public building dedicated to civic discourse and debate, the infrastructure of the base of the building is significantly limited given the hundreds of the people it serves for the Great Hall events. Establishing a stronger urban rapport with Cooper Square, Astor Place, and Third and Fourth Avenues is a distinct opportunity, and it would require an open mind to craft strategies that transform a relatively insular building into something that serves a larger community. 18

The current base of the Foundation Building is occupied by one of the most important of the public programs of the institution, its library. And yet, despite the transformational role that the Internet, online archives, and social media have had on access to information and data, Cooper Union has lagged behind when it comes to posing basic questions about the nature of research in the twenty-first century. Only very recently, Cooper Union launched a study in collaboration with Mary Burnham to analyze the base of the building and its potentials. How do we research differently in this day and age, and to what degree does the physical space of the library participate in that process? What programs may the library invite or tolerate? How will it share information? How will it become more public? And how can it cultivate a more inclusive presence in the neighborhood, if these guidelines are of relevance? To what degree can it absorb the city, as much as it gives back? These and many other questions are at stake.

The culture of digitization has also impacted another significant infrastructural program within the Foundation Building: the workshop. With the evolution of computation, digital manufacturing, and the computer-numerically-controlled (CNC) machinery that is germane to our time, the space of the traditional workshop stands to undertake fundamental transformations with the newly opened AACE Lab; this will also enable critical transformations in our pedagogies.

Finally, after many decades of neglect, the renovation of the studio space situated in the heart and soul of the architecture program has allowed for workspaces where students can develop an academic environment that they wish to foster. The challenges of this studio space define the very core of certain contradictions within the institution: the sacred nature of the studio space is also linked to an alleged philosophy of team-teaching that is supposed to bring competing and complementary points of view into conversation in space. Yet, no one to date has exposed that team-teaching is actually the result of the lack of dedicated real estate in the studio environment for the School of Architecture, resulting in the inability to give students and faculty ample space for individuated reviews and smaller-scale dialogue. For this reason, much of the School’s pedagogies revolve around large-scale studio crits in the lobby, often with thirty students at any given time, and little time for individual, focused attention.

Due to the program’s size, which is constrained by a delicate balance between its available real estate and the individual need for work space, the education of an architect at Cooper Union is more expensive than at most other schools. On top

of the space needed for conventional drawings and model-making, the need for computing has added to the urgency of intelligently conceptualizing the studio of the future — especially given the Cooper Union doctrine of maintaining an agnostic view of media types and holding the digital, analogue, and physical in a delicate balance. If the instrumentality of certain media are the critical means through which certain ideas are accessed, then there are also certain ideas that withstand the influx of new media; centuries of architectural discipline have proven both claims. Thus, as we prepare for a space of production, we also know that what we are actually preparing is a place to rethink the discipline from within media.

Fig 1.14 Developing a space for architectural production while rethinking the discipline from within its media.

Courtesy: The Irwin S.Chanin School of Architecture Archive, The Cooper Union.

Fig

Exterior view of SDE 1 on a cloudy day

Fig 22 (top) View of SDE 1 jungle courtyard

Fig 23 (bottom) Section of SDE 1 across the jungle courtyard Note:

Fig 24 (top) View of courtyard verandah

Fig 25 (bottom) View of the jungle from verandah

Fig 4 Southwest view of SDE 3 fit-out renovations

Fig 5 South view of the Faculty of Architecture building with Faculty of Engineering buildings in the background

Fig 6 North view of the SDE 3 block of the Faculty of Architecture building

Fig 1 West (entry) view of the SDE 3 fit-out renovations

Fig 2 West view of the Faculty of Architecture building prior to construction of frontal block of SDE 1

Fig 3 Southeast view of the access road to SDE 2 with the Faculty of Architecture building atop the hillock

All photos courtesy of Centre for Advanced Studies in Architecture, School of Design and Environment. Dates are approximate as the historical record is not clear.

Fig 7 Students access the grand staircase from parking level

Fig 8 SDE 2 building with deep false ceiling

Fig 9 Excavation for the construction of frontal block of SDE 1

Fig 10 Northwest view of the SDE 1 & 3 blocks from Clementi Road

Fig 11 Construction of the vehicle drop-off entry canopy during the SDE 1 & 3 renovations

Fig 12 Southwest view of the renovated School of Design and Environment

Facts and Figures

Location: Singapore

Climate: Tropical, humid

Size: 4 – 5 levels

Gross Floor Area: 23,680 m2

Si te Area: 13,600 m 2

Program: Ex hibition galleries

Review spaces

5 design studios

5 workshops

7 lecture theaters

4 l aboratories

4 departments

13 seminar rooms

2 research centers

60 s taff offices

Social spaces

SDE 1 & SDE 3 Resource Use:

On-site energy sourcing with rooftop photovoltaic panels.

Estimated annual energy demand:

Estimated annual energy production:

On-site energy sourcing (rooftop photovoltaic panels):

Energy intensity:

SDE 1 Post-occupancy Assessment:

Energy use intensity (EUI):

Value corrected for normal occupancy, assessment for a period 11 months of occupancy.

Rooftop photovoltaic capacity:

Production is estimated to meet all energy consumption, making SDE 1 a net-zero-energy building with projected PV energy production 10

15% higher than its consumption.

Predicted photovoltaic energy production:

Predicted net-positive-energy performance to offset the embodied carbon emitted during construction.

Embodied energy:

With its low embodied carbon footprint (in comparison to new constructions with embodied energy of 500 – 80 0 CO2-eq/m²) and predicted net positive performance, SDE 1 is on track to be net-zero over its carbon lifecycle (embodied and operational).

SDE 1 Thermal Comfort:

Combination of natural ventilation, mechanical ventilation, air-conditioning, and a new hybrid cooling system supplying tempered air that is augmented by ceiling fans.

Passive:

Project Credits

School of Design and Environment National University of Singapore

Lam Khee Poh SDE Dean

Erik G. L’Heureux Vice Dean

(Special Projects) (2018 – 2022)

Heng Chye Kiang Former SDE Dean (2007 – 2017)

Nirmal Kishnani Former Vice Dean (Special Projects) (2013 – 2017)

Giovanni Cossu As sociate Director (Dean’s Office)

Bertrand Lasternas As sociate Director (Dean’s Office)

Erik G. L’Heureux, FAIA

CPG Consultants Pte Ltd Architects

E2000 Pte Ltd

Civil and Structural Engineers

WSP Consultancy Pte Ltd

Mechanical and Electrical Engineers

Transsolar Energietechnik GmbH

Climate Consultant (Concept Design)

IEN Consultants

Energy Consultant

(Schematic Design and Design Development)

CCW Associate Pte Ltd

Acoustics Consultant

SDE Special Projects, Yun Hye Hwang, with DP Green Landscape Designers

Concept, Design, and Detail (2015 – 2022) with support by:

Amanda Mo

Anirudh Chandar

Astrid Mayadinta

Azizul Izwan B. Roslan

Epiphanie Barli Lie

Harsh Vardhan

Iven Peh

Joel Tay

Krista Yeong

Lakshmi Menon

Lee Lip Jiang

Ng Sze Wee

Ong Chan Hao

Reuben Lim

Stephanie Kui Hui Guat

Zeno Lee

Zuliandi Azli

Zulkarnain M. Zin

SDE Special Projects Interiors

Lian Soon Construction Pte Ltd Contractors

Quants Associates

Quantity Surveyors

National University of Singapore Developer

Office of Estate Development, University Campus Infrastructure

Project Manager

Special Thanks:

Florence Ling

David Cheong

Wong Yunn Chii

Authors Erik G. L’Heureux, FAIA

Erik G. L’Heureux , FAIA, is a vice dean, the director of the Master of Architecture Programme, and a Dean’s Chair Associate Professor at the School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore, where he teaches the next generation of architects to be committed to the complexities and potentials of architecture located along the equator. Before arriving on the equator, he practiced architecture in New York City while teaching at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union. His creative practice combines passive performance, pattern, and simplicity as a response toward the equatorial hot, wet climate and dense urban context manifesting through numerous buildings, including the design of SDE 1 & 3. The Wheelwright Prize from Harvard University has recognized his creative efforts, as well as several AIA New York and NY State Design Awards, SARA NY, National Design Awards, and INDE Design Awards. In addition to his design practice, his writing includes Deep Veils (ORO Editions, 2014); he was coeditor for Drawing Climate  (Birkhäuser 2021), this publication, and numerous articles.

Giovanni Cossu

Giovanni Cossu is a sustainable development professional and associate director at the National University of Singapore. With experience in real estate and sustainability services, he is part of the senior management group at the School of Design and Environment where he oversees and manages a portfolio of campus redevelopment projects and corporate sustainability initiatives. This includes the design and construction of the first purposebuilt net-zero-energy building in Singapore as well as the adaptive reuse of existing facilities aiming for net-zero carbon and net-zero water targets. He supports corporate sustainability development through industry partnerships and international collaborations resulting in programs such as the WELL Health and Safety Rating and the NUS WELL Portfolio. His work creates new opportunities of learning and real-world engagement for a wide community of students and industry professionals in Singapore and beyond.

Nader Tehrani is an Iranian-American designer and educator. In 2011, Tehrani and Katherine Faulkner co-founded NADAAA, a practice dedicated to the advancement of design innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and an intensive dialogue with the construction industry; later, Arthur Chang joined as a third partner. Tehrani is currently the dean of the Cooper Union’s Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture. Previously he was a professor of architecture at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, where he served as head of the department from 2010 to 2014. In 1986, he founded Office dA with Rodolphe el-Khoury, and Mónica Ponce de León joined the firm in 1991.

Eric Höweler, AIA, LEED AP, is an architect, designer, and educator. Höweler is a co-founding principal and partner of Höweler + Yoon Architecture LLP, a research-driven studio of more than twenty designers. HYA has a reputation for work that is both technologically and formally innovative and deeply informed by human experience and a sensitivity to tectonics. He is currently an associate professor in architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he teaches design studios and directs the Master of Architecture Thesis Program. Höweler’s design work and research focuses on building technology integration and material systems. He is the coauthor of Expanded Practice (Princeton Architectural Press, 2009) and Verify In Field: Projects and Conversations Höweler + Yoon  (Park Books, forthcoming 2021).

Heng Chye Kiang is the Provost’s Chair Professor and immediate past dean of the School of Design and Environment at the National University of Singapore. Professor Heng teaches architecture, urban design, and planning, and has lectured at major universities in Europe and Asia. He has been appointed as a visiting professor to several universities in China, Korea, and Japan; currently, he is an honorary professor at CUHK. His research covers sustainable urban design, planning, and the history of Chinese cities. His books include Singapore Chronicles: Urban Planning (2018), 50 Years of Urban Planning in Singapore (2016), Re-Framing Urban Space (2015), On Asian Streets and Public Space (2010), A Digital Reconstruction of Tang Chang’an (2006), and Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats (1999).

Contributors

Ho Puay-peng holds the UNESCO Chair on Architectural Heritage Conservation and Management in Asia and is currently the head of the Department of Architecture at the School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore. Following nearly thirty years of experience in academia, Professor Ho’s main research interests are in architectural history and conservation practices, and how this knowledge can be translated into teaching and practice. Prior to joining the NUS in 2017, he was a professor of architecture and served as the director of the School of Architecture and the university dean of students at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has served as a conservation consultant, architect, and adviser to some 100 conservation projects in Hong Kong and Singapore since 2003, including PMQ, Haw Par Villa, Comix Homebase, Oil Street Art Space, Court of Final Appeal, and the new campus for the Chicago University Booth School. He is currently a member of the Senior Advisory Board of the Global Heritage Fund and a patron of the International Dunhuang Project of the British Library.

Lakshmi Menon is an Indian architect and former research associate at the School of Design and Environment. She is a registered architect with the Council of Architecture (India) and an IGBC accredited professional, having practiced as a junior architect in south India on projects ranging from small-scale residences to medium-scale industrial projects. She graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Master of Science degree in Integrated Sustainable Design (2017), expanding her interests in the technical and humanistic aspects of sustainability. She was the content writer of the JTCfunded publication Weaving Webs (2018) on hybrid buildings and the coauthor of academic papers and research proposals on equatorial architecture, urban greening, and systems thinking in Asian cities. She was a former columnist for FuturArc Magazine, writing on energy, sustainability, and urban policy.

Wolfgang Kessling is one of the directors of Transsolar Energietechnik GmbH, Munich, an international climate-engineering firm that approaches sustainability through innovative climate and energy concepts for buildings. Founded in 1992, the practice focuses on enhancing human comfort with minimum resource use. Kessling’s experience with ventilation systems and energy-efficient buildings have led him to develop innovative solutions with architects and design teams in diverse climates around the world; over the years, his team has developed projects to improve outdoor comfort in urban settings. He has managed high-profile international projects of different scales and complexities, realizing sustainable designs celebrated for their architectural qualities as well as adaptive comfort projects focusing on practical and context-sensitive solutions. Kessling has been instrumental in spearheading the energy concepts of such prominent projects as the Cooled Conservatories at Gardens by the Bay, Singapore; the Zero Energy Office Building in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and the Human Resources Headquarters at Novartis Basel, Switzerland.

Nirmal Kishnani is a sustainability strategist, advising on projects and policies in Asia and scrutinizing the space between frontline theories and drawing-board pragmatism. As an author, educator, and advocate, he champions regenerative design tailored to the Asian context. His books Greening Asia: Emerging Principles for Sustainable Architecture (2012) and Ecopuncture: Transforming Architecture and Urbanism in Asia (2019) argue for upstream imagination over downstream mitigation and seek to reframe the role of the architect. As vice dean (2014 – 2017) at the School of Design and Environment, he steered the design process of the new net-zeroenergy building. An educator since 2007, his innovative studio-based teaching integrated systems thinking with cross-disciplinary learning.

Chris Knapp is the head of the Abedian School of Architecture, Faculty of Society & Design, at Bond University. Prior to this, he was a lecturer in architecture at the University of Michigan. Knapp has worked in professional practice since 1999 in offices in the United States and Australia, and presently he is the director of the design and fabrication practice Studio Workshop. Knapp’s research focuses on digital and computational design, computer-aided fabrication, construction systems, methodology, and craft. He has supervised and coordinated design theses, sits on several scientific committees, and has authored numerous publications including book chapters, journal articles, and peer-reviewed conference papers. His practice-based research has been exhibited in Kyoto, Los Angeles, Singapore, Wellington, Hobart, and several other Australian capital cities. He has served as treasurer of the Association of Architecture Schools of Australasia since 2014, and is an affiliate of the Australian Institute of Architects. Professor Knapp holds qualifications from Princeton University and the University of Michigan, and a PhD from RMIT’s School of Architecture and Urban Design.

Contributors

Joshua Comaroff was born in Manchester, UK, and raised in Chicago. He studied literature and creative writing at Amherst College before joining the Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture programs at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where he worked as part of Rem Koolhaas’s Harvard Project on the City. In 2009, he completed a PhD in cultural geography at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), writing about haunted landscapes and urban memory in Singapore. He has published writings about architecture, urbanism, and politics, with an Asian focus in Public Culture , Cultural Geographies , the Journal of Architectural Education , the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, CITY, and elsewhere. He is a regular contributor to Harvard Design Magazine . Together with his partner, Ong KerShing, Comaroff oversees Lekker Architects, a multidisciplinary design practice in Singapore. He works across a broad creative spectrum, with a special emphasis on design for the arts, for children, and for seniors. He is the recipient of Singapore’s President’s Design Award and Harvard’s Wheelwright Travelling Fellowship. Together with Ong, he is the author of Horror in Architecture

Lam Khee Poh is an educator, researcher, architect, and consultant who specializes in life cycle building information modeling and computational design support systems for total building performance analysis and building diagnostics. He is an emeritus professor of architecture at Carnegie Mellon University and is the currently appointed Provost’s Chair Professor of Architecture and Building and dean of the School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore. He is a licensed architect in the UK as well as an elected fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA) for his significant contributions to architecture, the profession, and the community. He has completed many major funded research projects in Singapore and the US, and his findings are widely published. He is a member of the editorial boards of Building Simulation  (Springer and Tsinghua University Press), and Buildings (MDPI AG, Switzerland). He is a member of the Singapore Future Economy Council Urban Systems Cluster Sub Committee, a director of the Centre for Liveable Cities Ltd., Singapore, and currently serves as an advisory board member of the City Developments Limited Singapore Sustainability Academy as well as a management board member of the Institute of Real Estate and Urban Studies at NUS.