Sustainable Building Conservation

Theory and Practice of Responsive Design in the Heritage Environment

Oriel Prizeman

• Publisher: RIBA Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000702699
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

This book incorporates UK and international case studies and essays to identify the overlaps in the interests of energy and building conservation. The relevance and adjustments of qualitative and quantitative frames of reference are introduced, alongside the various expertise of the contributors: architects, designers, conservation consultants and academics. The second part of the book showcases sustainable domestic and non-domestic heritage projects, translating the preceding research into information that practitioners can use in their everyday work.

The book will appeal to architecture students, newly qualified professionals and conservation architects and will enhance readers' ambitions, so that they feel equipped and inspired to work with old buildings sensitively, creatively and sustainably.

Part 1

Evaluations – Theories

The evaluation of concerns regarding climate change can be seen to emanate from, and add weight to, a wide range of political and theoretical agendas. The aim of the first part of this book is to present a diverse range of interests and perspectives that are generated through historical, theoretical and practical research and experience. Certain conclusions overlap and others diverge: the reader is invited to join in with the debate. The chapters set out the conflicts and potential overlaps in the interests of energy conservation and building conservation. The relevance and necessary adjustment of qualitative and quantitative frames of reference are introduced alongside the various expertise of the contributors.

One
The English climate and enduring principles of environmental design

Dean Hawkes

Introduction

The western and northern parts of the United Kingdom lie close to the normal path of the Atlantic depressions and are mostly cool and windy. The lowlands of England have a climate similar to that of the Continent: drier, with a wider range of temperatures than in the north and west. However, the winters are not as severe as those on the Continent. Overall, the south of the United Kingdom is usually warmer than the north, and the west is wetter than the east. The more extreme weather tends to occur in the mountainous regions, where it is often cloudy.¹

In the broadest of terms, the inhabitants of these islands would have recognised this modern description of the climate of the British Isles at any moment in the last four centuries. They would also have been accustomed to the vagaries and unpredictability of the weather, with the changes from hour to hour and day to day that we continue to endure. This is the background against which the following narrative is set, in which we trace the way in which British architecture has been shaped by the climate and, reciprocally, how it provides us with a vivid, alternative climate history.

Hardwick Hall and the Climate of Shakespeare’s England

Hardwick Hall (Fig 1.01), with its tall, glassy facades and clusters of chimneys seen high above its monogrammed parapets, stands on a hilltop in the middle of England. Completed in 1597, the house is the masterwork of Robert Smythson (1535–1614), the greatest architect of the Elizabethan age. It is also a remarkable demonstration of how a building may aspire to architectural greatness and also exhibit a deep understanding of, and response to, the physical climate in which it is set.

Fig 1.01 Robert Smythson, Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, West Front

At the end of the 16th century Britain, and the whole of northern Europe, was in the midst of the so-called Little Ice Age.² It has been calculated that the average annual temperature at the end of the 16th century was between 1° and 1.5°C colder than in the present day.³ There is, however, evidence that, even in this chilly period, respite would occur in pleasant, mild summers. This was the context in which Hardwick was conceived and first inhabited. We should imagine a climate setting not unlike that we experience in the 21st century, but with generally much colder winters. We should also consider that the weather would be as unpredictable as ours.

Hardwick’s hilltop site, 181 metres above sea level, exposes the house to the elements from all directions. This appears directly to contradict the general perceptions of the time on the placement of houses, which were declaimed by William Harrison in The Description of England, published in 1587:⁴

In this island … the winds are commonly more strong and fierce than in any other places of the main. … That grievous inconvenience also enforceth our nobility, gentry and commonality to build their houses in the valleys, leaving the high grounds unto their corn and cattle, lest the cold and stormy blasts of winter should breed them greater annoyance.

Hardwick’s owner was Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, usually known as Bess of Hardwick, one of the most important figures of the age and, among women, second only to Queen Elizabeth.⁵ For her, the modesty and shelter of the valley floor would have been inconceivable. The house is clearly an object of display. Its tall silhouette, with the initials ‘ES’, for Elizabeth Shrewsbury, carved into the parapets, declares her dominant presence across the Derbyshire landscape. Robert Smythson’s task was, therefore, to meet his patron’s seemingly complex expectations for grandeur and display, while shaping a building that provided protection from the testing context of this Derbyshire hilltop.

Two important facts should be stated here. First, the Elizabethan climate was unmeasured. The instruments for giving numbers to meteorological phenomena were yet to come.⁶ But both chill and warmth were keenly felt and, perhaps, given most eloquent expression by Shakespeare (1564–1616), who lived at precisely the date of Hardwick:

When all aloud the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,

And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marion’s nose looks red and raw,

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl …

Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V, Scene ii

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

Sometimes too hot, the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d …

The Sonnets, 18

These descriptions are certainly as potent as a modern weather forecast.

In environmental design in architecture, climate is, of necessity, connected to the idea of comfort. At the end of the 16th century comfort was quite unlike that of our modern perceptions and expectations.⁷ The numerical codification of modern comfort theory began in the 20th century in the work of, for example, Bedford and Dufton in the thermal environment, Luckeish and Walsh in lighting and vision, and Knudsen and Hope Bagenal in acoustics.⁸ Before then, just as with the perception of climate, comfort was subjective and, equally important, it was a relative concept. Before the development of modern mechanical services for managing the environments within buildings, which permit the maintenance of constant conditions at all seasons of the year and times of the day, the inhabitants would expect the internal conditions to be directly connected to the state of the natural climate. These would, therefore, vary widely, and both temporally and spatially. Such conditions were the expectation and experience of the occupants of Hardwick Hall.

Fig 1.02 Hardwick Hall, floor plans

The plans of Hardwick (Fig 1.02) are the key to its environmental logic. Peter Smithson, Robert’s 20th-century architect namesake, offered the following analysis of the house:

In Hardwick New Hall there is a gallery which runs along the whole extent of the house. What’s nice about [the plan] is that it indicates the thick spine wall, where the fireplaces are … and the perimeter windows that let in the light. … in the winter you have screens around the gallery against the fireplaces and in the summer you moved into the bay windows.⁹

This captures the environmental essence of the house. The spine wall and the corresponding internal walls on the more compartmented lower floors contain a total of 28 fireplaces. In winter it is likely that fires would burn continuously and would heat the thermal mass of the masonry at the heart of the plan. These would create localised warm places throughout the house, which would be enhanced by the use of enclosing screens to form smaller enclosures by the fireplaces.¹⁰ More generally, the heat in the spine walls would offset the heat loss through the glass of the bay windows.

Fig 1.03 Hardwick Hall, Long Gallery

Peter Smithson’s account proposes that, in the summer, the house became a completely different place, with the occupants moving to the perimeter to enjoy the sun’s warmth. The long axis of the house is oriented almost exactly north–south, and this clearly influenced the disposition of rooms. This is most strikingly seen in the location and arrangement of Bess’s own apartments at the southern end of the first floor, where they enjoy the best of the sun. They also receive protection from the floors above and below. The great staterooms of the second floor, the Long Gallery (Fig 1.03) and the High Great Chamber (Fig 1.04), are equally carefully oriented. The Long Gallery, as mentioned by Peter Smithson, occupies the entire east side of the house. These rooms were used for indoor exercise, which was taken in the morning, warmed by the early sun. The High Great Chamber was where the grandest events in the life of the household took place. At the south–west corner it is filled with south and west light, bringing with it the sun’s warmth.

Fig 1.04 Hardwick Hall, High Great Chamber

The symbolic purpose of this great house was to proclaim the status of its remarkable owner. This was the genesis of its striking appearance on its exposed hilltop; but beyond appearances lay a rich and sophisticated response to the English climate, at a time of extremes. Four centuries ago Robert Smythson demonstrated that significant architecture could reconcile the symbolic with the functional and the environmental.

Christopher Wren: Environmentalist

Within less than a century after the construction of Hardwick Hall, architecture in England had undergone a profound transformation as classicism had become the dominant style. At the same time, although unremarked in the standard architectural histories, the understanding of the environmental context of architecture had taken an equally significant step. It was now possible to give number to the temperature of the air and to the pressure of the atmosphere, and the science of meteorology was born. It was almost certainly in England that a direct link was first established between architecture and meteorology, in the works of Christopher Wren (1632–1723), who was both scientist and architect.

Fig 1.05 Thames Frost Fair of 1683

Before examining the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Part 1: Evaluations – Theories
• Part 2: Responses – Practices
• Part 3: Conclusions
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Image credits
• Index