Dr. Scott Drake - The elements of architecture : principles of environmental performance in buildings

First published by Earthscan in the UK and USA in 2009

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Copyright Scott Drake, 2009. Published by Taylor & Francis.

This is an internationalized version of a book first published by University of New South Wales Press in 2007 under the title The Third Skin: Architecture, Technology and Environment

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Drake, Scott, Dr.

The elements of architecture : principles of environmental performance in buildings / Scott Drake.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-84407-716-8 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-84407-717-5 (pbk.) 1. ArchitectureEnvironmental aspects. 2. Environmental engineering. I. Title.

NA2542.35.D73 2009

720.47-dc22

2008040379

ISBN-13: 978-1-844-07716-8 (hbk)

ISBN-13: 978-1-844-07717-5 (pbk)

Typeset by Safehouse Creative

Cover design by Yvonne Booth

contents

In normal contexts, the room, the simplest form of shelter, expresses the most benign potential of human life. It is, on the one hand, an enlargement of the body: it keeps warm and safe the individual it houses in the same way the body encloses and protects the individual within; like the body, its walls put boundaries around the self preventing undifferentiated contact with the world, yet in its windows and doors, crude versions of the senses, it enables t he self to move out in to the world and allows that world to enter. But while the room is a magnification of the body, it is simultaneously a miniaturization of the world, of civilization. Although its walls, for example, mimic the bodys attempt to secure for the individual a stable internal space stabilizing the temperature so t he body spends less time in this act; stabilizing the nearness of others so that t he body can suspend it srigid and watchful postures; acting in these and other ways like the body so that the body can act less like a wall the walls are also, throughout all this, independent objects, objects which stand apart from and free of the body, objects which realize the human beings impulse to project himself out into a space beyond the boundaries of the body in acts of making, either physical or verbal, that once multiplied, collected, and shared are called civilization.

Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The making and unmaking of the world

Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1985, p. 38

Here is an image you may be familiar with: a young, twenty-something male, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, sitting in the sun on a well-mown patch of grass, staring attentively at a laptop computer. The casual attire and access to a well-groomed landscape suggest that he is probably a university student, filling a bit of time between lectures by catching up on emails or organizing music files, or even, perhaps, studying lecture notes or preparing an assignment. This image, used by advertising agencies around the world, is intended to convince you that owning a laptop is not merely convenient, but is essential for a modern lifestyle where responsibility and leisure merge seamlessly together. The laptop computer is the ultimate product of digital technology powerful, portable and versatile that makes this combination of work and leisure possible.

But one thing intrigues me about those ads: where are the buildings? Is the laptop so convenient and user-friendly that you no longer need a desk and a chair, a power outlet, doors, windows, walls, floor or roof to provide the protection from the elements that is necessary for the work that the rest of us do every day? This idyllic garden wireless, powerless and building-less is something of an urban fantasy. For most of us, even on a university campus, gardens are for looking at or walking through on the way from one building to another. Although we might like to be in touch with nature on a regular basis, the fact is we spend nearly all of our time inside buildings. And while there is increasing concern for preserving the natural environment, the reality is that buildings, for the most part, are our environment.

While promoting advanced technology in the form of a laptop computer, these ads seem to imply that the most advanced form of building is no building at all. In this advertising fantasy, the building has disappeared altogether, leaving us in perfect harmony with the natural environment. The portable computer, along with MP3 players, digital cameras and mobile telephones, is the epitome of technology. These advanced tools enable us to do things that we cannot do with our body alone talk to friends in different places, listen to music without someone in front of us to play it, or perform intricate manipulations of words, numbers and images. Buildings are sometimes thought of as technology too, but since new buildings are often seen to be at odds with the more revered, historical styles that give our cities character and identity, rarely are they embraced with the same enthusiasm that is shown for other consumer goods.

Apart from a few high-tech exceptions, buildings are not normally thought of as a form of technology. This may be because buildings last a long time, together making up the living museum known as a city, where relics from past eras are still in use alongside recent works, setting standards that are used to judge and influence new designs. It may be because buildings need to accommodate human populations in ever-increasing numbers, and are thus resistant to the sort of miniaturization that goes on with gadgets such as computers and mobile telephones. The elements of walls, doors, windows and roofs relate at their most basic level to the size and shape of the human body, which has remained largely unchanged for many thousands of years. Or it may be that, even though there have been advances in construction and servicing of buildings, much of the technology used today is at least 100 years old, and probably more. Steel-frame construction, motorized elevators and glass curtain walls all date from the late 19th century, while materials such as plaster, bricks and tiles, still used in buildings today, date back at least to Roman times. Even the most high-tech building will still contain a a lot of low-tech material just to do the basic job of forming a strong and stable structure.

A building is perhaps the most basic form of technology, a made artefact designed to order, organize or change the shape of the world to make it more habitable for human beings. Buildings modify or adapt the natural environment, using a combination of low-tech and high-tech strategies to determine the physical qualities of interior space. In doing so, they alter the sensory interaction between the body and the natural environment. While the body is largely self-regulating, able to adjust to the ever-changing environmental conditions around it, humans have sought to extend the range of environments that can be inhabited, initially by adding an outer layer of clothing, and then by constructing another layer in the form of a building. This book is, in large part, about how the environment within buildings is created, and how that can be done in ways that provide greater connection with and respect for the natural environment. The aim is to show that environmental considerations are among the most fundamental of all design decisions, affecting the size, shape and orientation of any building, the materials used for construction, the interior layout, and the location of windows and doors that link inside and outside space.