Baden Group Pty Ltd

When designing a building to respond efficiently to its environment, the first and most important consideration should be orientation. The following diagram is from the Your Home Design Guide, a government site that provides in-depth information about sustainable building principals and the fundamentals of great design.

“Good orientation increases the energy efficiency of a home, making it more comfortable to live in and cheaper to run.”

PRINCIPLES OF GOOD ORIENTATION

The above diagram  gives a good overview of the environmental considerations that should be taken into account when designing a successful home.  These considerations include;

• Protection from “high” summer sun by using shading such as pergolas or deciduous trees.
• Maximising “low” winter sun to create passive solar heating.
• Insulation from hot afternoon summer sun.
• Maximising flow-through ventilation with windows to allow for passive cooling.
• Locating thermal mass to store passive heating.
• Insulating from cooling winter winds by reducing exposure to southern elevations.
• Using water features to create evaporative cooling.

As you can see by reading the inserted links, there is a lot to consider when designing a building to suit its environment.  Although these concepts may seem technical at first, they are actually basic principals. What is required is an understanding of our natural surrounding environment as well as a good knowledge of building materials and principals.  Of course none of these ideas are new, but with increased technology powered by fossil fuels we’ve ignored many of these fundamental principals for years.  We tend to give more consideration to street appeal and aesthetics rather than the function of the building, and by doing so I believe we’re creating impoverished buildings.

Although we can often  maintain comfortable living environments in poorly deigned buildings through the use of artificial heating & cooling, we will never be able to emulate the quality of living environment afforded by a well designed home; the simple delight experienced while eating breakfast in front of an east facing window, or basking in warm winter sun on your lounge room floor, or while sharing wine with friends under the shade of a vine draped pergola in the heat of summer……

Whereas we can easily weigh-up the environmental impacts of our poorly designed homes, it may not be so easy to gage the effects poor design can also have on our lifestyle and greater happiness!

Sustainability hit the mainstream long ago! It’s no longer the territory of the ageing hippy living in clusters in outer rural towns disconnected from the grid and living off the land…… No it’s now part of the greater communities’ mindset, it’s debated in parliament, enforced in industry and taught in schools.

Global Warming is widely accepted as reality, and to publicly denounce the theory is sure to bring condemnation and criticism from a widespread audience; so much so that it would be political suicide for any budding leader to show more than a glimmer of scepticism.

Rather than green, sustainability seems to be the catch cry of the times and I want to use this post to explore how this term is being used (and abused) and to define what sustainability really is.  Although my main focus is sustainability in urban development I will use a broader brush on this post and discuss lifestyle in general.

So what does it mean to be sustainable?  To most people today I’d say sustainability means paying a premium for goods and services to reduce their impact on the planet.  You can pay more for your power use by selecting zero emissions green energy, you can pay additional fees to airlines to buy carbon credits, you can spend more on your cars and buy hybrids and then spend more to replace the expensive replacement parts, you can pay a premium for fuel that ‘reduces consumption”, and you can even buy tyres that claim the same…..

“Green washing” is the term used to describe the use of sustainability as a marketing tool for products that aren’t usually associated with the environment; one of my favourites would have to be the “green credit card” issued by one of the major credit unions!

Of course in the building industry the list of products and suppliers touting sustainability as their focus is extensive.  Our government has enforced new requirements outlining performance criteria for new homes and extensions as well as commercial buildings and this has also increased market demand. There is also no shortage of “green washing” in amongst these products!

My view is that sustainability is built into the design of a dwelling rather than as a product add on.  There are certain fundamental principals that will dictate the performance of  the building much more than any add on product could even wish to aspire to.  These fundamentals are age-old principals that use the environment of the building to guide the design, but these have largely been neglected over the past fifty years or so due to the development of technology such as air-conditioning and ducted heating and availability of  unlimited resources to fuel this technology.  The buildings of today are build in spite of the environment rather than in response to it.

I believe the same can be said about our overall lifestyles; rather than paying a premium to off-set the impact of our lifestyles we have the opportunity to design our lives in such a way to reduce our impact.  In this sense where we choose to live, work and interact become more important decisions than how sustainable our car is; far better to drive ten minutes up the road to work in your V8 Range Rover than to be your co-worker who drives for an hour across town in his Toyota Prius (and he has the nerve to call you environmentally irresponsible!)

I will delve further into the different aspects of sustainable design in future posts and I’ll leave the lifestyle design for you……