Bioclimatica

PLEA 2003 - The 20 Conference on Passive and Low Energy Architecture, Santiago – CHILE, 9 - 12 November 2003 Paper Code PL01-UK29 Page 1 of 6

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Towards Environmentally-Responsive Architecture
Simos Yannas
Environment & Energy Studies Programme Architectural Association Graduate School 36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES, UK Tel.: + 44 20 7887 4069 Fax: + 44 20 7414 0784 Email:simos@aaschool.ac.uk ABSTRACT: The paper discusses three key issues that are of critical importance in the evolution of an environmentally-responsive architecture, -that is an architecture aimed at achieving occupant thermal and visual comfort with little or no recourse to non-renewable energy sources. These are: knowledge, performance and the urban context. Two of this year’s projects serve to illustratethese issues in an educational context.

1. INTRODUCTION
The architectural literature is abounding with recent buildings that are claimed to be products of a strong environmental agenda. On closer inspection, however, few of these buildings are as “environmental” as claimed. Invariably, projected energy savings are more modest, and the thermal and visual comfort improvements less consistent orwidespread than assumed. So although regular exposure in the architectural press helps spread awareness of environmental issues among young designers and students, the image that emerges is hardly promising or inspiring. For commercial buildings, this is essentially little different from “preenvironmental” models, that is a highly exposed external skin, heavily engineered to counteract the negativeeffects of excessive glazing, at least partly air-conditioned and closely controlled by a building management system. Being more sensitive to climate and site conditions, new built residential schemes may display more architectural and environmental variety, but claims of environmental-responsiveness need close scrutiny when looking at schemes across climates and site conditions. It could beargued that the disparity identified above is mainly a matter of opinion, that is a reflection of different environmental criteria and expectations than those that informed the design of these buildings. If so, where do such opinions, criteria and expectations come from to inform the environmentalresponsiveness and performance of buildings ? And, how do these change over time and as a function ofbuilding type, climate, site and local or national differences in lifestyles or building construction ? One of the lessons of PLEA, now into its twentieth international conference, is that our field is ever changing. An environmentally-responsive architecture is not a fixed ideal, but an evolving concept that must be redefined and reassessed with each new project. The notion of environmentalresponsiveness should

relate to occupants and their activities, to the city, and to change, as well as to the outside climate. For our teaching programme at the AA Graduate School this process starts by looking at three key issues: the knowledge that informS design and decision making the environmental performance targets to be achieved the environmental attributes of the urban context.

These arebriefly discussed below. Acquiring and maintaining the proficiency needed to create and sustain an environmentally-responsive architecture requires motivation, dedication and a considerable amount of time. There can be conflicts with other criteria. For some designers environmental aspects are just an additional concern; for them environmental design is then essentially mainly corrective rather thangenerative. These issues are briefly discussed in the final section of the paper and illustrated with some of this year’s projects.

2 COGNITIVE DOMAINS
Interactions between buildings and the natural or manmade microclimates that surround them vary across space, as well as over time, generally affecting indoor conditions in counter-intuitive and unexpected ways. Predicting the outcome of such...