Santa Coloma de Gramenet Cemetery

European cities have been contending with a growing problem of space to bury their loved ones. Many new ideas are challenging ways to densify burials but also to use the burial grounds as multi-functional spaces -- spaces not just for the dead, but also the living. Traditionally, cemeteries were designed as "gardens of paradise", beautiful public places in their own right, but today that relationship is tenuous in many cases, and many cemeteries have turned to neglect. The Santa Coloma de Gramenet cemetery outside of Barcelona has introduced a contentious green solution towards a multi-functional use of a cemetery as a solar energy collection field.



This is a very unpoetic design of a traditionally thoughtful public space. It's becoming emblematic of our time where we are rushing to install solar panels onto every possible place at the expense of proper integration. In principle, I appreciate the partially conscious attitude of finding new areas of untapped energy, but at the same time see how our times are so dominated by practicality and insensitivity. In the future, when clean energy has achieved a certain milestone, there will probably be a cleanup wave to make solar panels better integrated. For now, it's a quick and dirty solution to harvesting clean energy.

Governor General "Art Matters Forum"

[Image from the Governor General's website]

Yesterday, the Pit was transformed to host the Governor General Michelle Jean and panelists David Hughes, president and CEO of Habitat for Humanity Canada, Jean-Claude Marsan, architect and urban planner (U of Montréal), and Sheryl Boyle, assistant professor from Azrieli School of Architecture (Carleton), for a discussion of sustainability: "How do we sustain buildings? How do buildings sustain us?". I encourage you to read the framework for last night's discussion on the Rideau Hall blog. You can also watch the entire podcast of the event from the website.

Thoughts on Sustainability and Green Things

A distinction: "Green" and "Sustainable". "Green" is a techno-scientific view of architecture popularized for the purpose of a new form of consumption. It is a recent term that emerged out of the affordable production of efficient building systems (e.g. wind turbines, solar panels, LED lights etc). These are objects or components that increase a building's efficiency and output and reduce one's carbon footprint. "Green" has little consideration to historical or human dimensions, compared to the notion of sustainability which is inclusive of so many more factors. A building can be green, but not sustainable.

[Image courtesy of Recyclingsupermarket.com]

Sustainability is an ancient concept. More than energy efficiency, it is a concept of well-being. Sustainability requires human and ecological well-being in tandem as one organism.

A sustainable building is one that goes beyond its energy-efficient trinkets to the holistic perspective of integrating its inhabitants into a happy community which is the basis of a prosperous society. A sustainable building is one that meets energy efficiency by default and surpasses this requirement by contributing to an economic, socio-cultural, and environmentally friendly micro-city that is integrated into a larger network. A sustainable community includes jobs that support a mixed income residency, promotes local culture, uses efficient public transportation, pedestrian friendly streets, promotes local industry, accessible education and historical sensitivity. A sustainable architecture is one that fits into this complex network of relationships that at the very heart of things contributes to building a community that will be happy and respective of its built and ecological environment. A building that is not respected or cared for --green or not-- is energy wasted.

A sustainable building will outlast one generation, have the flexibility to be modified, and reused in other buildings as spoils. Consider the analogy: "If your father's axe blade is broken and you replace it, but then the handle breaks and that is also replaced, is it the same axe?" The history and meaning of the axe is retained even if the physical pieces have expired and been replaced. I believe it is the same axe if this sustainable condition exists. A non-sustainable use of the axe (or building) would be to discard and simply buy a new one, erasing the history of the object in favour of a new consumer product. Rather than being a fixed thing, a sustainable architecture is continually adjusting to meet the social and economic needs of its residents while preserving the environment's ability to support it.

It is increasingly common to see high-profile buildings (e.g. all of the towers listed on one of my previous posts) decked out with all the eco-bells and whistles such as wind-turbines, solar panels etc which are highly photographic and sexy in magazines, but in reality tends to do all the damage of gentrification or modernist tabula rasa, meaning destroying sustainable micro-communities in favour of irrespective development.

Architectural offices that claim they do sustainable design will have a hard time producing a single image of a sustainable building. "Green" architects on the other hand will have a portfolio full of wind turbines and glossy green products.

Though it seems to be the solution to our environmental crisis, "Green Architecture" can be as superficial as buildings painted green and are not sustainable from a social perspective. Sustainable architecture is the essential goal.

::Green Skyscraper of Mumbai
::Halifax One of Canada's Most Sustainable Cities

NORDHAVNEN, COPENHAGEN: THE SUSTAINABLE CITY OF THE FUTURE

A fellow graduate student and I are attempting this design competition as an elective for this term. There is a lot of opportunity to learn about sustainable communities, urban planning, transportation, economics, social development, and issues like globalization, urbanization, and gentrification.

Open international ideas competition
Competition period: 27 May to 26 September 2008
Final date for submission of questions: 4 August 2008
Questions and answers will be uploaded to this website
There is no deadline for registration.

CPH City and Port Development has launched an open international ideas competition for the Northern Harbour in Copenhagen, a new urban development area with room for 40,000 residents and 40,000 staff in buildings with a total floor area of three to four million square metres.

The vision for this unique site, which features waterfronts on three sides, is to create a dynamic, lively and sustainable city district with diverse, effervescent life and room for a broad mix of residents and enterprises.

The competition is open to everyone, but is in particular aimed at urban planners, architects, landscape architects and traffic planners, who are very welcome to collaborate with experts in special fields, eg sustainability.

Total prize money amounts to DKK 3 million. The jury can select between one and five winners of the competition. If more than one winner is selected, the winners will be invited to negotiations with CPH City and Port Development about adjustments/improvements to their entries so that the assessment panel can select the final winner. If CPH City and Port Development decides to continue work on the basis of the winning entry, such work will be carried out in collaboration with the winning entrant.

::AA - Nordhavn

Top Ten [Green] Skyscrapers

Have a look at some new projects under construction or on the drawing board for [green] towers. Uber-Eco-Towers: The Top Ten Green Skyscrapers

Sustainable Tower

There's a great emphasis in our studio to design a sustainable skyscraper. Our prof is extremely emphatic in mastering sustainable energy systems (i.e. photovoltaics, wind turbines, passive heating and cooling). A skyscraper should not require air conditioning, being so easily accessible to wind as ventilation. Bearing in mind that architecture is responsible for 48% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, it seems appropriate to learn how to cool a building without chemicals and electricity. At the same time, there is an overwhelming amount of knowledge to be learned in the energy control of a 60-storey building. The image below is just a tiny fraction of some of the things to consider. I'm not sure how far we'll go into details for this project, but we do at least have to architecturally integrate wind turbines and solar panels into the building.

[Image from 'The Architecture of Everything' blog]

Some of the basic issues to consider as benefits to the sustainable skyscraper include:

+Utilizing a minimal footprint to multiply floorspace. This is in many ways a counter-balance to suburban sprawl through densification

+Reducing transportation costs by servicing a high-density building with a major public transportation artery

+Desiging 'vertical landscaping' to add to a city's green space.

+Harvest clean energy to create energy-autonomous buildings

+Design a 'vertical city' not just a high-rise development of compartmentalized spaces. Finding a hardware store and a fresh fruit market shouldn't be unusual in creating life in the sky.

As basic points, there are huge implications in the design process to tackle each of these possible solutions to improving a tower's efficiency.

Here's a video of Jacques Ferrier's 'Hypergreen' HQE building. This columnless tower is interesting in that the structure is entirely external, but also designed with varied opacity to control lighting and heat gain. This means that the south-facing structure will have tighter members to minimize harsh, direct sunlight, whereas the north side of the building is much more spread out to offer ideal office environments.


Another video on Sustainable Skyscrapers.