Can architects provide green solutions to cool buildings?

Air conditioning is making the environment even more hot due to its contribution to global warming. The use of air conditioning is increasing pollution in the environment by releasing poisonous gases into the environment. These gases include the chlorofluorocarbons and hydro-chlorofluorocarbons. Apart from how the use of air conditioners are threatening environment, they also consume a lot of electric energy.

"The US expends more energy on air conditioning, for example, than the whole of Africa does on everything. Then again, it expends even more energy on hot water, which doesn’t get the same rap. The question then is not whether to condition climate, but how. As long ago as the 1940s the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy demonstrated, with his village of New Gourna near Luxor, how traditional techniques of orientation, ventilation, screening and shading could be revived." - The Guardian

Can Architects provide green solutions to cool buildings? Yes. In fact, an architect by harnessing the local climate, its vegetation, as well as intelligently manipulating a building's orientation, can naturally create a cooler indoor climate. 

The demand for buildings and higher density living, specially in Asian cities, continues to increase, it will be crucial to ensure this growth does not drive energy and water consumption higher. And, here architects can play their role. 

Much of the world’s architecture, prior to the 20th century, responded to the regional climate and could be considered bioclimatic. “If you look at older buildings, you see that people were very good at adapting to climate to get the maximum performance, but we kind-of got lazy once air conditioning and electric light came along at the turn of the last century,” says Patrick Leonard, the director of Paladino and Company, a green building consultant based in Seattle.

Architects around the world look to the past to introduce bioclimate strategies in designing greener buildings!

Could This Mushroom Building Be The Future Of Green Architecture?

The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1’s Young Architects Program, since last 15 years, challenges young architects to design innovative projects that bring new possibilities to our understanding of sustainable architecture. This year's winning project is a cylindrical tower which isn't quite manufactured but grown! The tower is 'grown' using entirely organic material made from cornstalks and the root-like structures of mushrooms, called mycelium. Designed by David Benjamin of New York architects The Living, is, simply put, a mushroom tower. And this mushroom tower could change the future of environmental design.

"In this project, we're using a living organism as a factory. So the living organism of mycelium, or hyphae, which is basically a mushroom root, basically makes our bricks for us," explained designer Benjamin. These mushroom roots, created by Ecovative in 2007, up till now have mostly been used as a packaging material. 

To create the brick substitute, the mixture of cornstalk and mushroom root is left to harden for several days into a sturdy solid through an entirely natural cycle requiring nearly no waste, nearly no energy and nearly no carbon emissions. Essentially, the architects channel the "biological algorithm" of mushroom roots to grow a building from the ground up. The entire growing process takes around five days.

Read more about this here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/02/moma-hy-fi-_n_5549107.html

Emotional Benefits of Sustainable Architecture

All of us are connected to the architecture in some way and can experience it in our homes, workplaces, surroundings or when we see monuments and even modern buildings. Architecture can even inspire us more so if it is 'Green'! Sustainable Architecture can have emotional benefits too. 

You feel connected to the nature

Sustainable Architecture means deeply integrating green technologies like wind and solar power, natural climate controls and space-age materials in to the building processes. The final product is a unit that connects and benefit from nature. Everyone deserves good space derived from good ideas - and if the idea is green, then naturally you feel more connected to the nature. Sustainable and modern architecture, actually, seek to strike a balance between modern comforts and our connection to nature.

You become responsible to the environment

Worldwide, buildings consume nearly 40% of the world's energy, 25% of its wood, and 15% of its water! By adopting green building strategies, you can maximize both economic and environmental performance. Therefore, directly or indirectly, you not only fulfill your duty towards the environment but also make smarter choice when you decide to go green.

You feel connected to the community

Sustainable architecture is also about the connectivity of community. Smart green design and construction requires people to recognize the power of community. And, ultimately the community and the people within it gets benefited the most, hence, there is a sense of connectivity among people - within and with the community.

There is a feeling of health and well-being

When you connect with the nature and the people and when there is positivity in the environment around, then it is not surprising that there will be feelings of good health and well-being. Clean lines, open spaces, warm materials, natural environments and modern forms are all independently healthy and positive. Moreover, superior indoor air quality and control over thermal comfort naturally makes living healthy!

Efficient HVAC system enhances the sustainability

Sustainable architecture is environmentally conscious design technique that attempts to reduce the total environmental impacts not only during the production of building components and construction process, but also during the life cycle of the building (heating, electricity use, carpet cleaning etc.) The objective of green design, is to ensure that our actions and decisions today do not inhibit the opportunities of future generations.

One of the important element of Sustainable Building Design is indoor environmental quality that includes air quality, illumination, thermal conditions, and acoustics. It must be noted that the integrated design of the indoor environment must be part of the integrated design of the entire structure.

A well insulated building, for instance, ensures an efficient heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) system. The efficient building requires less heat generating or dissipating power, but may require more ventilation capacity to expel polluted indoor air.

Green Architecture For India

Almost non-existent in modern Indian cities till few years back, sustainable architecture is now gaining some attention. However, it may not be wrong to state that ambiguity on what exactly constitutes sustainable architecture do exists as well.

In India, ancient reservoir of knowledge can help reduce energy consumption in buildings today. To some extent "Vaastu Shastra" do advocate and guide us on how to create green buildings. Climate-responsive architectural design is age old tradition in India and courtyards, clusters, wind towers, roof terraces and jaalis (stone lattices) were built for effective climate control. The need is to combine modern technology with traditional methods. It may also be said that for an ideal green building all one has to do is to look and get ideas from nature. As in his hugely  successful book Design with Nature, published in 1969, Ian McHarg says that: “If one accepts the simple proposition that Nature is the arena of life and that a modicum of knowledge of her process is indispensable for survival and rather more for existence, health and delight, it is amazing that how many apparently difficult problems present a ready solution.”

While designing with nature at a building level, one should recognise sun paths, breezes, shade trees and rock formations so that people can inhabit comfortably. Natural features like trees, animal tracks, habitats and natural drainage systems must also be protected. Building a collection pond for rainwater is another ancient method to reduce consumption of supplied water. Rainwater flows are retained and water runs into a pond at the lower end of the site. 

It must also be understood that the social, political, economical and cultural context of India would also have to be addressed while designing environmentally sustainable architecture so that solutions are sensitive to its particularities.

"Using conservative design methods, a potentially staggering impact on the power-water consumption of the country could result if effective ways are found to support change in products and processes across the built environment. Imagine if buildings could be designed to be used through the day without electrical lights, or to run air-conditioning needs on pre-cooled recycled water or to use all natural and paid resources conservatively and then say multiply this model to the entire city to gauge the impact," points Aashish V. Karode (B.Arch.; M.U.D. (Berkeley) Principal, Planning and Design Services, Design Atelier, New Delhi)

CII - Godrej Green Business Centre, Hyderabad is the first platinum rated green building in the world outside the USA. It is the first platinum rated green building of the world under LEED version 2.0.

Green Architecture - Environmentally Conscious Design Technique

Green Architecture, also known as Sustainable Architecture, is a growing trend throughout the world. This environmentally-conscious design technique is largely driven by certain goals and principles. The basic goals are:

- To reduce the impacts on the Earth from constructing buildings and their materials like embodied energy, pollutants, mining and harvesting.

- To reduce the occupancy related impacts like fuel use, land pattern disruption, maintenance etc.

- To reduce the impact of the structure at the end of its life (decaying in place or joining a landfill)

- Creating a more desirable human experience by using natural materials.

Green Architecture helps create or renovate the existing buildings in a way that they have a minimal impact on the environment. One of the primary goals of green architecture is to reduce to the amount of energy required to keep inhabitants comfortable. Similarly, the postion of building on a property can make a significant difference in energy efficiency. A building uses less energy if it generates its own. Green architecture designs often include the use of solar energy to supply most, if not all, of the electricity needs of the occupants of a home or office building particularly for heating hot water which is generally the biggest use of energy in a household.

Water efficiency is also one of the concerns of Green Architecture. It depends on water conserving fixtures like ultra-low flush toilets and low-flow showerheads. Green designs may include grey water systems that use waste water from laundry, dishwashing and bathing. The water can be recycled on-site for landscape irrigation or flushing toilets.