Environmental Diversity in Architecture

Mary Ann Steane, Koen Steemers, Mary Ann Steane, Koen Steemers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134378661
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

This book takes the position that the dynamic of the architectural environment is a key aspect of good design, yet one which is not well anticipated or understood. Environmental variety is a design characteristic closely related to our experience of architecture - an architecture of the senses. Each chapter demonstrates how an understanding of a particular context or environmental characteristic in dynamic terms informs design. The book is an antidote to the misconceptions of 'optimum' environmental performance or fixed criteria, instead embracing the richness of environmental variety.

PART 1

Introduction

Chapter 1

Environmental diversity
in architecture

Mary Ann Steane and Koen Steemers

Introduction

This book has a twofold aim: to establish a range of useful definitions of environmental diversity and to explore the role it plays in ordering and enriching architectural experience. In bringing together architectural research work that clearly identifies why environmental diversity is of significance and how it relates to design, it illuminates the potentially pivotal role played by environmental thinking at all stages of the design process. It is perhaps not surprising that many contemporary approaches to design development prioritise spatial design, but with the intention of prompting debate on how design ambitions ought to be framed, the discussion presented here questions the degree to which spatial and environmental design can ever be separated. In addition it underlines why environmental design guidance needs to change to reflect the idea that diversity is a fundamental design criterion alongside comfort.

Discussion of the environmental aspects of architecture and the way in which people interact with buildings is not as commonplace as some might assume — much recent architectural discourse has concentrated on aspects of construction or aesthetics, while the analysis and review of environmental strategy has received considerably less attention. Despite the obvious significance of programmatic issues to design it is surprising how frequently either occupation patterns or the views of occupants have been ignored, as if commentary on how buildings are inhabited somehow diverts attention from the finished artefact that is the building itself. Buildings, however, are hardly finished without their inhabitants and the activities that they pursue inside or around them. As in Rasmussen’s seminal work Experiencing Architecture (1959), and Heschong’s later Thermal Delight in Architecture (1979), a detailed commentary on our perception of and engagement with the built environment is offered here. This book takes the position that the dynamics of the architectural environment is a key aspect of good design, yet poorly understood. An antidote to the misconceptions of optimum environmental performance or fixed criteria, it seeks to demonstrate why a richness of environmental variety is worth pursuing.

Though concerned with environmental science, this book deliberately avoids providing a purely technical view. A wide spectrum of approaches are offered that are mutually supportive rather than exclusive, with each section of the book demonstrating how an understanding of a particular context or environmental characteristic informs design in dynamic terms. Ranging from the individual’s perception to the urban scale, and encompassing visual, thermal, aural and climatic characteristics, different aspects of the issue are covered as follows:

1 the way in which environmental objectives shape design;

2 the need to characterise different kinds of urban structure in terms of the level of environmental diversity that they provide;

3 the scientific evidence for how and why environmental diversity is exploited by building users;

4 how and why the idea of diversity ought to engender a new role for architects and engineers, new approaches to building design and indeed even new kinds of building;

5 the way in which the pursuit of diversity has informed or qualified design ambitions through extended discussion of a range of case-study buildings.

The aim is not to overturn current thinking completely. Rather the book attempts to review some of the problematic ambiguities and unintended consequences of that thinking, and to indicate how the pursuit of diversity can help to reframe design issues and prompt new ways of exploring, testing and communicating design strategies.

The first section of the book introduces the issues related to environmental diversity from four perspectives: a sociologist’s, an architectural philosopher’s, a scientist’s, and a technologist’s view. These chapters take broad and discursive views that provide a wider framework for the subsequent discussions. What follows is a combination of technical and theoretical chapters that are structured into sections related to the urban and intermediate scale, and the interior environment, before ending with a chapter related to design integration. The structure is thus as follows.

Introduction:	1. Environmental diversity in architecture
Framework:	2. Social, architectural and environmental convergence
	3. The ambiguity of intentions
	4. Human nature
	5. Designing diverse lifetimes for evolving buildings
Urban:	6. Urban diversity
	7. Outdoor comfort
	8. Intermediate environments
	9. The reverential acoustic
Interior:	10. Environmental diversity and natural lighting strategies
	11. Daylight perception
	12. Exploring thermal comfort and spatial diversity
Design:	13. Experiencing climate: architectural and environmental diversity

Commodity, firmness and delight

It was in the first century BC that Vitruvius first suggested that ‘commodity, firmness and delight’ stated the proper ambitions of architectural design. Debates have subsequently arisen over such issues as whether ‘delight’ is a matter of personal taste or whether ‘commodity’ can be reduced too easily to supplying the lowest measurable common denominator, but essentially the three areas of concern have been accepted ever since. From the Enlightenment onwards, however, these different aspects of design have become increasingly divorced from one another, with ‘firmness’ and ‘commodity’ usually approximated to structure and comfort respectively, and defined in technical terms; and ‘delight’ to aesthetics, as a matter of what can be drawn or conveyed visually. The tasks of defining and achieving structure and comfort have now frequently been handed over to technical experts, while aesthetics and spatial design have been made the responsibility of the architect. The desire to encourage sustainable development is, however, fostering a new interest in the relationship between ‘commodity’ and ‘firmness’, in as much as a new emphasis on the potential future adaptability of architecture involves asking how structural and environmental strategies may co-evolve with changes of use and reconfigurations of the building fabric. It is also worth underlining that, experientially speaking, ‘delight’ and ‘commodity’ are not possible to separate, particularly if the emphasis on visual matters implied by the definition of delight as aesthetics is ignored in favour of a broader acceptance of the range of stimuli that architectural experience provides. In this exploration of environmental diversity it makes sense to reassess the relationships between both ‘delight’ and ‘commodity’, and ‘firmness’ and ‘commodity’, and to examine the extent to which the three aspects are interlinked.

Commodity and delight: comfort and stimulation

We need to begin by asking how ‘commodity’ or comfort is defined and experienced. In thermal terms, comfort has been defined as ‘that state of mind which expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment’ (ASHRAE 1992). The definition goes on to say that comfort is the absence of thermal discomfort and a condition in which 80% of people do not express dissatisfaction. Interestingly, the International Standards Office (ISO 1994) defines comfort in purely technical terms and suggests that comfort is achieved when there is ‘thermal neutrality’, or in other words maintenance of the body’s energy balance. Although both AHSRAE and ISO establish relatively narrow standards for thermal comfort, it is important to note the reference to ‘state of mind’ in ASHRAE’s definition. This suggests that despite the narrow physiological definition, thermal comfort is, at least in part, a psychological phenomenon open to influence by variables other than thermal. Recent research has identified some of the reasons for the discrepancies between the laboratory-based comfort studies, which form the basis of both ASHRAE and ISO standards, and field-based research, which recognises the significance of behaviour, context and culture. It is thus all the more surprising that such standards are applied in all climates and for all building types.

A further deficiency in the technical definition of comfort is the reference to ‘absence of discomfort’, which assumes that the absence of stimulus is good. The absence of discomfort is a ‘commodity’ that might be prescribed, yet it omits the potential ‘delight’ that can be present with some degree of stimulus and contrast. Melville in Moby Dick evocatively describes this apparently paradoxical state of affairs, where the presence of discomfort engenders a stronger sense of comfort:

We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out-of-doors; indeed out of bedclothes too, seeing there was no fire in the room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in the world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable anymore. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head is slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm.

(Melville 1966: 66)

Thermal comfort conditions are usually sketched out by indicating the range of air temperature and relative humidity levels within which most people feel comfortable. Olgyay’s bioclimatic chart is one such description, although it needs to specify that these conditions only apply if the subject is at rest, in office dress, out of the wind and in the shade (Olgyay 1963). Yet, neither the measurement of the thermal environment or the appreciation of thermal comfort is as simple as this in reality. The mean radiant temperature, for example, is a better measure of human comfort than air temperature, though more difficult to gauge accurately. In addition, as Kwok (2000) nicely summarises, acclimatisation to particular conditions (physiological adjustment) may lead to changes in the definition of comfort, while the possibility of altering the environment (behavioural adjustment) or an expectation of a lack of comfort (psychological adjustment) may lead to a greater tolerance for temperature variation.

In visual terms, the definition of comfort is complicated by the fact that our eyes adapt to the light that is available. Our comfort depends on the quantity of light available and the relative brightness of the different areas of the visual field that are in view. We struggle to sew in too little light, but too much light for long periods can be tiring. We suffer from glare if our eyes are asked to adapt to too great a range of brightness at any one time. In aural terms, comfort is even more difficult to define. Apart from the kind of noise that is so loud it is literally deafening, or so rhythmically insistent, like a warning signal, that it cannot be ignored, it is only possible to discuss aural comfort from a relative point of view. Silence in certain circumstances may be as disturbing as loud or distracting sound is in others, it all depends on what kinds of conditions are being sought.

How we evaluate and communicate ideas about comfort is even more complicated. We are in fact conscious of a comfortable environment only when we know we have found it, or are aware that we have abandoned it, or when we are specifically questioned on the subject. Usually we take it for granted — when we are comfortable we do not notice our environment at all. It is usually assumed without question that thermal comfort requires the thermal environment to be an even, stable temperature but, as Melville notes, to be actively aware that we are for the most part comfortable, paradoxically some part of us has to be uncomfortable. The fact that we do not notice stability, and we do notice change or difference, means that the separate analysis and discussion of comfort and stimulation is not straightforward.

Because we are constantly in league with our environment, if not always consciously so, in addition to seeking definitions of comfort, we need to take the issue of how we make ourselves comfortable more seriously, whether in thermal, visual or aural terms. Definitions of comfort in technical terms need to be illuminated by an examination of the issue from a different point of view: the relationship between behaviour and setting. A more dynamic perspective is required that considers how and why we orchestrate stability or instability environmentally and the degree to which stable rather than unstable conditions determine comfort (and/or stimulation). By reframing this issue it is to be hoped that a more nuanced articulation of the relationships between occupants and building ought to be possible, whether building-scale strategy, spatial design or local detail is in question.

Commodity and firmness: adaptability and permanence

Adaptability over time is as much a concern in the life of a room, as in the life of a building or the life of a city. In the short term and at room scale, the issue affects how users can interact with the building, whether by reconfiguring an element of the building, as say in opening a window, or by moving from one place to another within it, to create or find a more appropriate environment. In the medium-term, and at building scale, the issue that needs to be addressed is how the building’s fabric can be adapted to respond to changes in conditions (e.g. working patterns, changes in the immediate physical or environmental context, or climate change). The pursuit of adaptability is directly linked to the provision of diversity in as much as buildings whose environmental conditions vary to embrace the potential of the local site and climate are more likely to accommodate a range of uses with only relatively small-scale transformations of the building fabric. But the question is more complex than this. It has been pointed out that more attention needs to be given to how building design may be made more indeterminate, that is to say, at the initial design stage, the range of possible future occupation patterns of a building needs to be taken more seriously. Clearer thinking on how ‘commodity’ and ‘firmness’ are in reciprocity with one another is required, whether this has to do with the range of lifetimes that ought to be projected for the different elements of construction, or the manner in which changes to the fabric might affect the environments that the building provides. This is a matter of understanding how to devise structural and environmental strategies that make buildings environmentally adaptable, so that they can be made more specific to particular uses. This contrasts with providing conditions that are excessively flexible and, though apparently neutral, are actually more difficult to fine-tune sensibly in spatial or environmental terms.

In the longer term and at the urban scale, the drive to make cities more sustainable demands a more in-depth study of urban dynamics, that is to say of the structures and processes that have informed urban order and allowed cities to accommodate change. In acknowledging the three general areas of urban order — physical structure, environment and civic ideals — such a study of the urban metabolism ought to ensure better communication between all those concerned with the social, environmental and economic issues that are involved, and allow them to collectively identify and nurture more sustainable patterns of development that balance the need for permanence with the need for evolution while maintaining the appropriately diverse range of environmental conditions without which the urban ecosystem cannot prosper.

The characterisation of architectural experience

As a diversity of environments is what buildings always provide, at least to some degree, how diversity can be a design criterion deserves exploration. Although, to do this, what is meant by diversity itself clearly needs to be characterised, and thus the identification of a range of possible aims in designing for diversity is a valuable first step:

• to coordinate a dynamic environmental strategy with other spatial, programmatic or social intentions in order to ensure that the architecture provides a series of appropriate and stimulating settings and sequences that vary over time and/or space;

• the provision of adaptive opportunities that allow occupants to engage with the building and take active control of their environment;

• to orchestrate sequences or transitions, especially between the exterior and the interior (or vice versa), in appropriate ways at different times of the day or season;

• to moderate climatic conditions in such a way that occupants remain aware of the passage of time and weather, and can appreciate their distance from...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Illustration credits
• PART 1. Introduction
• PART 2. Framework
• PART 3. Urban
• PART 4. Interior
• PART 5. Design
• Index