| Sustainable Architecture |
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| lan L. McHarg, Enertia Building Systems | |||
| Monday, 12 March 2007 | |||
  Buildings, not cars, are the major damagers of the Earth. Pollution from the heating and cooling of buildings exceeds that from cars, even in America. We are surrounded by technical innovations - in our cars, our communications, and our computers. Yet our largest lifetime purchase, our house, is built essentially the same as it was eighty years ago. Fortunately, this is about to change - the result of the emerging new practice of Sustainable Architecture. The basic goal of Environmental Architecture is simple: attractive, comfortable, affordable shelter that does no harm to the Earth in its manufacture, or its use. In practice this means: 1. Maximum use of renewable building materials. Obviously this is wood - already accepted, even cherished, for its beauty, workability, energy-efficiency, and now renewability. It should be used as close as possible to its natural state, but not untouched, as modern science can alter wood so that it will not rot, burn, or become food for insects. Wood is solar energy transformed by photosynthesis into building material. 2. Minimum use of non-renewable, energy-intensive building materials like steel, brick, vinyl, aluminium and insulation. 3. Catch the energy falling on the house, and latch on to the Geothermal Reserve in the Earth just beneath it. Use the excess heat from cooking, washing, and human activity in Winter, and design to get rid of it in Summer. Go with Nature instead of fighting, or isolating from it. 4. Design and build for long useful service life. This makes housing affordable, as the cost is spread over many generations. In Europe the typical design life of a home is 300 years. 5. The house must be sturdy, disaster resistant. 6. No life-threatening or building threatening dependencies on electricity. 7. The house must be Futureproof, with access channels all around the structure to easily upgrade and add future technology. Making it convenient to run new cables, pipes and wires. 8. Capable of being "stand-alone" without connection to the gas mains, or electric utility grid. Even if street power is used at first, all homes must be designed this way. Solar electricity will be used eventually, within the design life of any quality structure built today. 9. If parts of the house can be made in a factory with quality-control and economy-of-scale, do it. If it can be offered in DIY Kit form, it will be more affordable, and more will be built. 10. The Environmental house must be more comfortable and less costly than the conventional house to make a significant dent in the housing market. Each 20% reduction in the cost doubles the number of families who can build it. It is incredible what a difference even one environmental house makes, preventing 250,000kg of pollution over thirty years. As few as 30,000 environmental homes can displace a Nuclear Plant. The goal, of course, is that every home be an Environmental home, reducing pollution to pre-industrial levels. Actually, this is more attainable than you might think, and won't take long, because the average conventional home isn't built to last and will soon need to be replaced!
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