Sustainable Design Basics (eBook)

Sharon B. Jaffe, Rob Fleming, Mark Karlen, Saglinda H. Roberts (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2020
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
978-1-119-44384-1 (ISBN)

Infos

An accessible, climate-diverse guide that transforms readers from sustainable design novices to whole-solution problem solvers.

Sustainable Design Basics is a student-friendly introduction to a holistic and integral view of sustainable design. Comprehensive in scope, this textbook presents basic technical information, sustainability strategies, and a practical, step-by-step approach for sustainable building projects. Clear and relatable chapters illustrate how to identify the factors that reduce energy use, solve specific sustainable design problems, develop holistic design solutions, and address the social and cultural aspects of sustainable design. Requiring no prior knowledge of the subject, the text's easy-to-follow methodology leads readers through the fundamental sustainable design principles for the built environment.

Sustainably-constructed and maintained buildings protect the health and improve the productivity of their occupants, as well as help to restore the global ecosystem. The authors, leading practitioners and educators in sustainable design, have created a resource that provides a solid introduction to broad level sustainability thinking that students can take forward into their professional practice. Topics include space planning for sustainable design, integrative and collaborative design, standards and rating systems, real-world strategies to conserve energy and resources through leveraging renewable natural resources and innovative construction techniques and their impact on our environment.

Usable and useful both in and beyond the classroom, this book:

• Covers building location strategies, building envelopes and structures, integration of passive and active systems, green materials, and project presentation
• Examines cultural factors, social equity, ecological systems, and aesthetics
• Provides diverse student exercises that vary by climate, geography, setting, perspective, and typology
• Features a companion website containing extensive instructor resources

Sustainable Design Basics is an important resource aimed at undergraduate architecture and interior design students, or first-year graduate students, as well as design professionals wishing to integrate sustainable design knowledge and techniques into their practice.

Sharon B. Jaffe, LEED AP ID + C, IIDA, NCIDQ is a designer, educator, sustainable redeveloper, and community activist, specializing in the collaborative development of sustainable environments. She currently teaches at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA.

Rob Fleming, AIA, LEED AP has been teaching, researching, advocating, and practicing sustainable design for over 20 years. He is the founding director of, and a professor in, the MS in Sustainable Design Program at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA.

Mark Karlen, Ph.D., AIA, NCIDQ has been practicing, teaching, and writing about interior design and architecture for several decades. He has chaired interior architecture programs at the University of Cincinnati and Pratt Institute.

Saglinda H. Roberts, IIDA, CID, LEED Green Associate has over 30 years of extensive design experience; her focused research is on the future of restorative and holistic sustainable design. She currently teaches in the Interior Architecture program at Chatham University.

Textauszug

2
Mindset

At the most basic level, designers of the built environment create the spaces and places that provide shelter from the elements, and thermal comfort while creating the surroundings of life. The quality of life is dependent upon the work designers, builders, engineers, and architects accomplish daily. It takes a lot of material and energy to construct and operate the buildings, interiors, and landscapes of the world. The use of these materials and energy sources affect the larger environment that humans rely on for fresh air, clean water, light, energy, and food. Such ecosystem services are fundamental to the continuance of civilization into the future. In other words, if society wastes energy and materials, if society carelessly releases pollution into the air and water, if humanity drives animals to extinction and forever alters the climate to produce uninhabitable conditions, humanity threatens its existence.

Put bluntly, the current pattern of life on earth is unsustainable.

The current distressed state of the planet is a direct result of how people think. Changing how individuals think can change the direction of society's thinking. With a mindset change, one can begin to imagine a sustainable future. This chapter deals directly with the “why” of sustainable design and the essential mindset for a capable, sustainable designer. Included in this chapter are significant historical events, prominent people, and notable frameworks that support an understanding of sustainability and sustainable design. The remainder of the book is the “what” and “how” of sustainable design, and the step‐by‐step methodology used to achieve a sustainable design project.

First, before delving into the methodology, a bit of historical context is appropriate, a brief journey through history that reveals our changing relationship with nature.

Sustainable design focuses on stabilizing the planet, cleaning the water and air, conserving energy resources, expanding renewable energy sources, preserving biodiversity, and using materials wisely: all to save the planet. If the planet is “saved,” humanity is “saved.” Society may persist in the future—hence the word “sustainable.” However, it is not that simple. An overall holistic approach to sustainability must address the many economic, social, and aesthetic dimensions of human existence. Sustainable design is more than just the environment.

Sustainable design is a holistic practice. Physical objects, the built environment, and services are designed by responding to the goals and principles of sustainability as viewed from multiple perspectives across space and time. The triple bottom line is a phrase that expresses key concerns of sustainability:

• Social equity
• Economic prosperity
• Ecological protection

A fourth sustainability value, beauty, is added to make sustainable buildings more meaningful and more satisfying.

THE HOLOCENE AND THE AGE OF AGRICULTURE

To see the big picture and understand the threats the world faces, one must look back 12,000 years to the end of the last ice age. Earth entered what is called an interglacial, a period between ice ages when the planet was very warm. The most recent interglacial is called the Holocene. This period of warmth is rare and valuable. The Holocene set the stage for the Age of Agriculture, a population boom, and civilization as it is known today.

A few key points to remember:

1. The climate today is a rarity in the context of the four‐billion‐year history of the planet.
2. Humans have emerged as the dominant species on the planet primarily due to the advantageous conditions of the Holocene.
3. Humans have assumed it is a right to dominate other species and less powerful and less technologically advanced humans in the pursuit of power and resources.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND THE ENVIRONMENT

As the agricultural age progressed, humanity continued to benefit from a warm climate and seemingly infinite natural resources. Technological advances continued to advance humanity's dominion over the environment. It was also a time when the drive for power, profit, and comfort led to the oppression of millions of people through slavery and indefinable levels of environmental destruction. Humanity's consciousness evolved, leading to great scientific discoveries, insight into how the universe works, and critical social innovations such as labor laws, public education, and democracy.

The seeds of today's environmental and social problems originated during this fantastic time of human achievement. The Western industrial revolution saw the introduction of efficient engines to power industrial production and generate electricity. Industry was powered mainly by coal resulting in air tinged by coal smoke casting a pall across European industrial cities. The pollution of the air with coal smoke became the primary environmental concern in London. In response, the early nineteenth century saw the rise of Romanticism with an emphasis on nature and natural beauty. By the late nineteenth century, the first European nongovernmental environmental organizations (NGOs) came into being in London, focused on mitigating air pollution. In North America, John Muir, an early environmentalist, urged the government to create a national park to preserve the natural beauty of the Yosemite Valley. The industrial society sparked increasing environmental and social concerns during the Enlightenment and Romantic movements.

The industrial revolution ended in what is called the “great acceleration.” This was a period during the twentieth century of rapidly increasing negative impact on the earth's environment and systems from human activity, consumption of natural resources, and the unintended results of technological progress. “Progress” is a two‐sided coin. The post–World War II boom led humanity to previously unequaled technical achievements and unprecedented population growth, yet the presumption of inexhaustible natural resources resulted in undisputable environmental destruction.

ENVIRONMENTALISM AND THE AGE OF INFORMATION

1960s

By the 1960s some individuals started to understand that the environment was in trouble. Humanity's very existence was at risk. The world started to study the environment in many ways, purposefully using scientific methods to prove that there was, in fact, a problem. This understanding was the beginning of environmentalism. The American marine biologist, writer, and ecologist Rachel Carson wrote a book called Silent Spring, which documented the negative impacts of pesticides on the general ecology. She observed that spraying poisonous insecticides that killed crop‐damaging bugs also killed the birds that ate the bugs. No birds left to sing prompted the title, “silent spring.” Rachel Carson's work called for a change in how the world viewed nature and its ecosystems. Her work, along with many others, led to the birth of the environmentalist movement.

The American civil rights movement, begun in the mid‐1950s and building through the 1960s, heralded a new era of progressive thinking about the global condition of humanity and how social equity in society impacts sustainability. Around the same time a Scottish landscape architect named Ian McHarg wrote a book called Design with Nature, in which he outlined how designers can improve the environment using natural systems through ecological planning. The relationship between urban and natural environments can be synergistic and regenerative when the holistic, living nature of the earth's systems and humanity's impact on it are understood. Such understanding can be used to adapt human patterns and process into integrated ecosystems. McHarg's design approach promoted incorporating the natural world into design projects functionally and aesthetically. He showed that the natural world can, and should, act as a partner and co‐designer in the design process.

McHarg also taught people to think about how the environment of a specific place and time influence their experiences and how broad environmental context influences the design of the built environment. He asserted that projects could and should look different in places with different climates, cultures and geographies.

1970s

The 1970s saw the beginning of a response to environmental concerns. Laws were passed to protect the air, water, and endangered species in the United States. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was founded to fight pollution. E.F. Schumacher, a British economist, examined the economic world, determining that the modern economy was unsustainable with natural resources managed as expendable income rather than nonrenewable capital. Schumacher presented a philosophy based on the appreciation of human needs and limitations in his book Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered.

The 1970s also saw the beginning of the growing public awareness that energy sources such as oil, gas, and coal were limited and that these fossil fuels were a significant culprit in polluting the air and causing climate change. The release of carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases as a result of burning fossil fuel created a thicker than usual layer of greenhouse gases around the planet. Greenhouse gases trap more heat inside the earth's atmosphere, causing temperatures to rise...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 19.3.2020
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Technik ► Architektur
• Schlagworte: Architecture • Architektur • Bauentwurf • Building Design • eco-friendly design • ecological site design • Green Building • Green Design • Green Materials • integrated design</p> • <p>sustainable design • sustainable design introduction • sustainable design methods • Sustainable design principles • sustainable design strategies • sustainable design textbook
• ISBN-10: 1-119-44384-9 / 1119443849
• ISBN-13: 978-1-119-44384-1 / 9781119443841