

Why Green Architecture Hardly Ever Deserves the Name - dsego
http://www.archdaily.com/396263/why-green-architecture-hardly-ever-deserves-the-name

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kcorbitt
This is a good example of how the market can outperform centralized governing
councils under certain conditions.

the LEED-certifying body can't possibly hope to know all the 2nd- and 3rd-
degree repercussions of different design decisions. But if we just increased
the energy tax by 20% (arbitrary number), people would tend to find the global
maxima of energy efficiency without having to conform to rigid standards.

The same thing can be seen with cars. I think that raising CAFE standards for
gas mileage is great and all, but at least where I'm from the trend toward
buying more efficient cars is less about their lower upfront cost as a result
of CAFE-induced supply reduction and more about the rising price of gas. A
$1.50/gallon federal "negative externalities" tax on gasoline would do wonders
for the nation's energy consumption levels.

~~~
vy8vWJlco
I get your point, but _promoting a tax to get the most out of the market_ is
doublespeak. A carrot ("This is better because... and you can use it!") is
more "free-market" than a stick ("Don't do that.") - even if I would prefer
not to be tempted (or threatened) by either.

~~~
jfoutz
Weird. Most free market folks say the problem with air quality is no one owns
it, so there's no incentive to protect it. A tax like this is about as close
as you can get to saying, ok, we collectively own the air, and there's a $1.50
fee/gallon of gas for use of the air in your combustion engine.

Collective ownership might be an uncomfortable topic, so i'll go further and
say, you're using my air in your car, and I expect to be paid for it. I
suspect any feasible plan would look a lot like some large organization
charging use fees. But maybe there's some simpler structure I'm overlooking.

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WalterBright
What a tax on, say, pollution, would be called is "internalizing the
externalities". It fits in quite well with free market principles.

~~~
jfoutz
I was specifically trying to counter "promoting a tax to get the most out of
the market itself seems like doublespeak."

The parent is being Mr. weasel word with "seems like" but I'm guessing that's
just sloppy writing.

Also, I agree with you. Tax on pollution is probably the _best_ solution. I
couldn't think of a way to put pollution tax into a short argument. Fee for
"storing your waste" doesn't have quite the same punch as "using my air"

~~~
WalterBright
A tax on pollution has other advantages - it funds the government in a manner
that does not discourage productive behavior.

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brudgers
This article is analogous to a _Why the Automobile hardly ever deserves the
appellation 'Horse Replacement'_ witten in 1903.

We are in the first 25 years of architectural interest in Green Building - it
began among professional architects following the Rio Summit. It took more
than a decade to get the first big projects, such as Foster's built. The
buildings coming online today tend to reflect designs four or more years old -
buildings have long incubation periods.

That's not to say that LEED hasn't been mostly bullshit. But HN'ers of all
people should understand why. They [USGBC] have been focused on creating and
growing a user base. During the boom, they credentialed anyone who could pass
the exam as Certified. You just needed to answer questions about processing
paperwork, you didn't need to know squat about buildings. Then they sold
agencies on the idea of specifying LEED certification.

Now that they have buildings to measure, they can actually look at post
occupancy analysis and make it a criterion.

What bothers me about the article itself is that it juxtaposes historic
landmarks - Lever House and Segrams - with the image of a bucolic residence
which concludes the article. Seagram was designed with the intent that all its
lights would blaze all night for aesthetic effect. Then again, it does help
clarify that the real purpose of the article is not criticism of Green
Building but an attack on modernism.

Everyone in Seoul or Mexico or Rio or Helsinki will not be served by a house
designed for the Bayous of Louisiana.

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chiph
I see a lot of "checklist green" projects. Green construction ultimately
requires a highly holistic approach, considering far more than just the parts
going into the building.

There are a lot of modern (style) homes being built in Austin. They usually
have expensive multi-pane glass windows for energy efficiency, which are
required to get LEED, Energy-Star, and City of Austin certifications. But they
lack any sort of exterior shade on them, so the sunlight just beams straight
in. If they had sheltered the glass under an overhang or put an awning over
it, they probably would have cut their A/C costs by a third or more. They meet
the requirements to get the certificate and be sold as "green", but fail to
achieve the real purpose -- reducing monthly energy costs.

~~~
bluthru
>But they lack any sort of exterior shade on them

What direction does the window face? Are you certain solar insolation is an
issue?

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chiph
You typically want the long dimension of the house to be facing east/west, so
that fewer windows are facing directly into the sun. Passive solar (prevention
or gain, depending on climate) is something that should be taken into
consideration. For Austin's climate, it's fairly important. I saw 113F
temperatures last year, and 103F so far this year, with the hottest part of
the year still to come.

[http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/home/construction/solard...](http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/home/construction/solardesign/orientation.html)

~~~
bluthru
You actually want buildings oriented west/east, facing north/south. Why?
Because you can control the sun with horizontal shading devices. In the
summertime you can block insolation with shading devices while allowing
insolation during the colder months for free heat gain. This also allows all-
day indirect daylighting from the north.

The sun is also low in the east and west, so it's difficult to control and
often glares into inhabitants. Shading the east and west faces of buildings
often requires vertical shading devices or operable shading devices if you
don't want to block the view.

Finally, remember that the face of the building that receives the most solar
insolation is the roof.

I know the article says east/west, but that doesn't apply if you have shading
devices.

~~~
chiph
I think you and the article are in agreement - they said: "If possible, the
longer axis of the building, also known as the ridge line, should be oriented
east/west." And you said facing north/south.

I agree about the roof. Reflective metal roofs are gaining popularity here,
and last a long time (50 year guarantee), but also cost more. Something that
is found in high-end/custom homes is a conditioned attic space, with the
majority of the insulation under the roof, and not directly above the ceiling
of the living space. If you can keep the inside of attic below 100F, the
relatively thin insulation on the air conditioning ducts will be more
effective. Again, it costs more to get this benefit...

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bluthru
The LEED rating system isn't all-encompassing, but it is a good way for
clients to buy into "sustainability". It's "less bad" and not truly "good", as
William McDonough would say.

As building information modeling becomes more sophisticated, computer models
could potentially reliably calculate a building's entire embodied energy over
its expected lifetime. It would be amazing if a project's BIM model was
submitted to a rating agency an was given an all-encompassing environmental
impact rating.

~~~
brudgers
A simulation is not a building. Before I was licensed, I did a fair number of
small residential additions in Florida. For a building permit, a Manual-J
calculation in accordance with the Florida Energy Code was required.

At that time, do to market conditions, 1.5 ton (18k BTU) heat-pumps were about
1/3 less than 1 ton (12k BTU) units. However, oversizing the unit to the
cheaper size would cause the calculation to fail and permit to be denied.

These were small projects and the difference in up front costs could be
relatively substantial and the likelihood of long term payback minimal because
the zoning assumptions upon which the calculations were based did not exist in
the real world.

So, instead of the default of one occupant for the addition, I would enter
two, or three to get the result that was needed.

~~~
bluthru
>do to market conditions

This was the problem, not the software.

~~~
brudgers
I was not implying that there was a problem with the software at all. Nor with
the market. Or even with the permitting process.

A competent designer gets the results they want within whatever constraints
are created by the system.

I made a design decision to use three occupants based on the design decision
to use a 1.5 ton (18k BTU) HVAC system based on a cost benefit analysis based
on the Owner's goals. A permit for construction being among the Owner's goals.

LEED has basically been working the same way. The Owner specifies a Gold
Rating. The designer designs the documentation for a Gold Rating. They design
the building based on other criteria in addition to the Gold Rating.

To be clear, it was not as if my goal was to subvert the system. I could have
specified a 1 ton (12k BTU) unit. Inevitably, I would receive a call from my
client because the AC subcontractor bid a 1.5 ton unit and that was what was
on site and at least partially installed and had been red tagged by the
inspector just because it was his job to red tag it.

Then we would all spend a lot of time back and forth and the end result would
be that the inspector would be a little pissed off because the 1.5 ton unit
got approved by his boss based upon common sense over the fact that it didn't
really matter and that energy calcs for a small addition are meaningless and
the energy code was really designed for larger projects and all we were really
doing was shuffling paper.

And shuffling paper is largely what LEED is all about - at least up until now.

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xradionut
Energy efficient architecture is much easier on the residential level if
properly applied. Unfortunately many of the better concepts run afoul of over
zealous city regs and development restrictions. Plus residential developers
have no monetary incentives for changing their crappy processes.

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coldcode
Many things people say are better are often worse. Proving something as
complex as one large building design is better than another is hard to
calculate as long as unpredictable people are using it.

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contingencies
Great article! Sending to all the (conventional) architects I know. Best
quote, IMHO:

 _Architectural critic Peter Buchanan, writing recently in the UK magazine,
The Architectural Review, placed the blame for these failures squarely at the
feet of the Modernist design model itself, and called for a “big rethink”
about many of its unquestioned assumptions. Modernism is inherently
unsustainable, he argued, because it evolved in the beginning of the era of
abundant and cheap fossil fuels. This cheap energy powered the weekend commute
to the early Modernist villas, and kept their large open spaces warm, in spite
of large expanses of glass and thin wall sections. Petrochemicals created
their complex sealants and fueled the production of their exotic extrusions.
“Modern architecture is thus an energy-profligate, petrochemical architecture,
only possible when fossil fuels are abundant and affordable”, he said. “Like
the sprawling cities it spawned, it belongs to that waning era historians are
already calling ‘the oil interval’.”_

This is so damn right!

