Housecoffins (the sustainable architecture of death)

Every so often I come across another proposal for sustainability in architecture which claims to minimize energy usage, and focused in that narrow way, has lost the larger understanding of the requirements of living architecture, reducing both the architecture and the potential of life inside it to a deathlike state.

The goal is avaricious. Every resource that one puts into the building should remain there indefinitely. There is no sense of the vibrant give and take that is an absolute component of Life, and anything that resembles or supports the living.

Usually, these proposals rely on overbuilding in order to "save" that last little bit of energy that travels out of the building. this focuses only on the energy used to operate the building and not the total life-cycle cost of the building. The structure seen as such would need to be immortal, not subject to degradation and change in order to be truly economical. Structures, and the materials that comprise them are never immortal. Stopping the flow of energy may have seemed useful in the primitive 1970s, but, in the 21st century, most of us have had the opportunity to talk about and experience the sense of life as an interdependent energy flow, and it is ignorant to propose that our buildings do not need to live as we do in order to support us in a healthy way. The concept that the beautiful and vibrant complexity of architecture is manifested best in its ultimate simplicity is lost on those who can only focus on self-sufficiency in their constructions.

I would propose a different kind of sustainability in architecture. The first quality of such an architecture would be conscious flexibility to build an intentional, long-lasting world fabric which would support many generations of a healthy culture. I have written about this in other postings here. I want to focus this posting on the other quality of a living architecture.

The second quality would be multi-dimensional simplicity in construction. This would combine the use planning of buildings with the natural flow of the resources of life. A building which would be planned this way would function in the flexible way I have described, and would be organized and constructed to permit natural breathing of fresh air, the easy flow of heat to provide comfort, and a healthy delivery and disposal of water which would be protected by the innermost core of the building from hostile elements. This is not news if you read this in its most mundane sense. All buildings need to do this. The news is in the simple, healthy integration of these needs into the functional design.

Air: If the planning of the building provides for fresh and healthy air through a natural breathing through the building envelope, there is no added energy needed to keep the air quality in the building at an acceptable level. The volatile materials within us and in the surfaces and objects around us can be exhausted in a routine way without relying on systems which need energy input or features which require special service. Our buildings could work as our bodies do. With care, our constructions can lose only the amount of heat to the outside world that would be acceptable to the use (Think of clothing on people of different metabolisms).

Heat: Thinking of the building with regard to heat management rather than as a quantity of trapped heat would yield easier comfort. Heat radiated from the mass of the objects around one is partly independent of air temperature in feeling comfort in one's environment. If a heating and cooling system were to be thought of as a circulation system rather than a simple heating and cooling delivery system, one could simply move the heat one has to place where it is needed, add some when needed, and remove some when that is needed. Heat is produced in most of life's activities, and accounting for it in a circulation system would economize on the new heat which would be thought to be required. Additionally, sharing heat with the earth mass around us would provide an even source of the solar and earth heat sources that come to us naturally.

Water: Independent of the comfort which one wants to provide within a structure (traditionally using energy), many buildings need energy to protect the services which are installed within them. A minimal heat source to keep pipes from freezing in Winter is one such case. Planning services to be protected by the mass of earth and building could make services within buildings relying on the shelter afforded by the earth and the building for its protection. Water from the environment could be taken into the building for useful purpose, and water used in the building could be sent out of the building for further useful purpose and useful reintegration into the world.

All of the mechanisms stated in this proposal have been talked about and used extensively. It is not these that is my focus. My interest is in thinking and talking about building planning in a multidimensional way in order to attain simplicity in creating a built environment with the richness of the natural world. That simplicity, buildings without apparent systems, which live and breathe, are a real solution to the problem of creating mainainable and healthy places to be.