Tropical Sustainable Architecture

Joo Hwa Bay, Boon Lay Ong, Joo Hwa Bay, Boon Lay Ong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781136352089
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

The tropical belt – where large areas of South East Asia, India, Africa and parts of both North and South America are located – forms the biggest landmass in the world and has one of the highest numbers of rapidly developing cities. Coincidentally, architecture in these regions shares common problems, the most easily identifiable being the tropical conditions of climate and natural environment. The context for architecture here is fraught with conflicts between tradition and modernization, massive influx of rural poor into urban areas, poorly managed rapid urban development as well as the cultural and social strain of globalization. Many local and overseas architects, planners and city fathers are interested in the social and environmental dimensions of these areas that contribute towards short terms solutions and long term sustainable developments. This book, developed from the first conference of the International Network for Tropical Architecture, supplies a wealth of information from experts worldwide covering the cultural, environmental and technical aspects of thinking, researching and designing for the tropics.

1 Social and Environmental Dimensions in Tropical Sustainable Architecture Introductory Comments

Joo-Hwa Bay and Boon-Lay Ong

Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore

Keywords

Architecture, urban design, ethics and poetics, social, environment, design guidelines, high-rise high-density, tropical, sustainable, ecological.

Why tropical architecture? Critics argue that the term ought not to exist, and that it is perhaps a misnomer or a faux pas. Can any architecture built and inhabited in the tropics not be tropical? Some point out that the phrase, if not the concept, originated during colonial times and is a vestigial legacy of European sovereignty in South East Asia. Not something to be mentioned in polite company. Then there is the problem of political boundaries. Many of us practicing in South East Asia forget that tropical architecture applies also to parts of Australia, Africa and the Americas. On the other hand, the influence of traditional tropical architecture may be seen in Asia as far north as India, China and Japan – countries which are largely not tropical in climate.

This book, resulting from the first conference held by the International Network for Tropical Architecture (iNTA) in 2004, does not provide a simple answer to all these questions. It was not set out to do so. The conference itself had no lack of interested participants – garnering over 150 applications from 24 nations. iNTA¹ was itself constituted during this conference and has gone on to be staged in 2006 in Indonesia and thereafter, if all goes well, in Australia also.

The significance of tropical architecture lies beyond its climatic and regional concerns. Inasmuch as it confronts the spread of a homogenous globalism and argues for a locally and environmentally sensitive approach, it also signals the issues and contentions for a sustainable future. Indeed, the essays presented in this book are distinctive not just for their relevance to the tropical nations today but in their engagement with issues that ought to be of concern to architects everywhere. To this end, we have carefully selected presenters from the conference and asked them to write essays especially for this book².

1.1 Tropical Architecture and Modernism

One of the impetuses for developing research around tropical architecture lies in the historical origins of modernism in Europe and the US. From its early days, modern masters like Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer understood that Modernism in architecture ought not to be transplanted globally without some recognition of its changed context. Alvar Aalto, in championing modernism in the Scandinavian countries, also emphasized the importance of understanding the region, climate and social context. In the US, Frank Lloyd Wright devised the term Usonian architecture to emphasize the grounding of his architecture on locality. The Arts and Crafts movement in the UK too sought their grounding in local traditions and to preserve their culture.

Unfortunately, much of the work that passes for architecture in the tropics today are unadulterated transplants from temperate countries, particularly the US – justified in the name of International Style. The inappropriateness of such transplants was argued by many schools of architecture, armed with the writings of environmentalists like Victor Olgyay (1952) with Aladar Olgyay (1963) and Maxwell Fry (1956) and Jane Drew (1964), and the designs of architects like Paul Rudolf, Richard Neutra, and several local masters, many of whom are not known outside the shores of their own countries (Lefaivre and Tzonis, 2001). The ease with which the International Style can be transplanted and the ubiquity and low-cost of energy as a solution to any environmental woe meant that by and large, the call for a more appropriate architecture went unheeded in the tropics – as it was elsewhere.

Countries in the tropical belt have seen unprecedented growth in the last 50 years and are poised to escalate in terms of economic, technological and material development. Not only are the issues facing countries in the tropical belt relevant to other countries, it is also likely that countries in the tropical belt will be among the leaders in terms of economic and urban development in the world in the foreseeable future. The fact that the impending escalated development in the tropics is unprecedented poses new problems and challenges to architects and planners all over the world and requires fresh ideas from our very best thinkers.

1.2 Climate as Design Generator

The point of departure for most tropical architecture is climate. At the simplest level, modern tropical architecture has been simply an adaptation of modern trends in design and construction to climate, taking into consideration some changes in the lifestyle that the tropical climate affords. Often, there has been an exploration of open and semi-open spaces, verandas and balconies, and open plans.

But the city and the modern lifestyle it encapsulates do not encourage such natural living. Strong breezes, so welcome in the hot humid conditions, mean that paper had to be kept in place or it might be blown away. Iron rusts, materials deteriorate and fungi grow faster in the tropics than in temperate countries. Working indoors, as most city dwellers do, is not comfortable and productivity is low. Most buildings in the tropical city adopt air- conditioning as the panacea to all these. The further advantage of air-conditioning is that, if costs and environmental degradation are not of concern, the architecture can be entirely stylistic and the immediate environmental and climatic conditions ignored. For these two reasons – that it can resolve environmental comfort problems by simply guzzling more energy resources, and it is stylistically open- ended – air-conditioned buildings are both popular with the public and a bane to the responsible architect.

The challenge to define a modern idiom for tropical architecture is not just a climatic issue but also one that is related to the problem of adapting to the modern lifestyle, of the transformation of local cultures to the modern city. While it is possible to retain enough of the vernacular lifestyle for residential designs to be naturally ventilated, other building typologies like offices and shopping centres have not been so lucky.

1.3 Ethics, Poetics, Sustainability and Contemporary Architecture

Perez-Gomez (2005), in “Ethics and poetics in architectural education”, asserts that the architect has a responsibility to make poetic statements of social and cultural conditions with their works. Science has its limits, and aesthetics is not just the icing on the cake or an afterthought but an intrinsic responsibility of the architect.

Unfortunately, the ease with which architects can use the umbrella of the International Style to indulge in form-making can lead to an “emotivism” (Bess, 1996) in architecture that blithely ignores all aspects of context, climate, environment and even human needs. Aesthetics in architecture becomes simply selfexpression and self-referential. To give it its due, emotivism has given us some very interesting and awe-inspiring architecture – e.g. the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao by Frank Gehry or the Sydney Opera House by Jørn Utzon. Monumentalism and iconism have their places too.

Architects have to contribute to mankind with their work. The question is how? Whatever the personal stands of individual contributors, this book supports Communitarianism. Susan Hagan (2001) proposes a moral contract between architecture and the environment. Since the 1970s, many architects, e.g. Tay Kheng Soon and Ken Yeang in Malaysia and Singapore³, have criticized the limitations of architects who restrict themselves to the discussion of ‘linguistics’ and ’styling’ without engaging the volatile environment and the city.

A common perception is that sustainable environments are not really “visible,” and “trendy architecture” with seemingly sustainable features can fail badly and not work ecologically. Lucius Burckhardt (1992) comments that ecological architecture, or more precisely, the ecological house, an issue from the 1970s, has turned out to be a trap. They appeared well in magazines, won awards, and were examples to model after, but failed miserably in terms of measurable environmental performance. He suggests that one cannot really see an ecological building, but one can either build the image of an ecological house or one can calculate how to save energy and how to clean up the environment. The problem with the second option is that nobody will take photographs of it for architectural publication. Perhaps this problem can be avoided if we can bring the two dimensions together.

William McDonough (1996) hits out at irresponsible architectural practices that seek only short-term benefits, and proposes reforms with a “Declaration of Interdependence” (similar to issues raised in many fields since the first Earth Day in 1970). He claims that architects have a special role to play, where design becomes the foremost statement of human intention. He postulates that the new role of architects is one of leadership in developing new definitions and measures of prosperity, productivity, and quality of life. In the “Hannover Principles,” he also proposes criteria for assessing whether a design solution is safe and just, and operate from the current solar income.

In contemporary architecture, there is a trend towards the commercialization of the image that titillates, aggravated by the internet and the flat screen. Juhani Pallasmaa (1996), in The Eyes of the Skin, criticized the hegemony of vision in architecture, and proposed more enduring and rich ways to sense and experience the environment and the place. Pallasmaa (1993) had also suggested that architecture will pick up on early Functionalism with a social mission, with better understanding and sophistication, shifting from the “metaphorical” towards an “ecological-functionalism.” Tzonis and Lefaivre (1990), in “Critical Regionalism”, traced Mumford’s position that the modern architect could and should engage a place and its community critically, using innovation in technology in a progressive way, thus ensuring continuity as well as change and growth into the future. Donald Watson (1991, 1995) on rethinking good architecture, suggests that architecture that embraces sustainability issues of a context is akin to Le Corbusier’s precepts for an ideal architecture.

1.4 Building Science and the Architect

Building science is, in many ways, an attempt to reduce environmental issues and their spatial dimensions into mathematical formulas and numbers. Two threads of research can be detected here. The first deals with physiological studies and is epitomised by Ole Fanger’s concept of thermal comfort. Such studies are the bedrock upon which environmentally responsive architecture can be devised. They can, and often are, legislated as design standards that provide a much-needed objective framework for architects. While it is, on the one hand, highly scientific, physiological standards of comfort do not translate readily into design (Ong, 1994, 1997; Ong and Hawkes, 1997). They are best utilized as checklists after the design has been put at least to paper.

As building science becomes more sophisticated and complicated, the danger is that the architect will find it increasingly harder to incorporate its findings into his work. While building science is reductionist and precise, in contrast, the architect’s design mind tends to deal with pre-parametric heuristics, qualitative thinking with transformations from precedents, allowing him to make quick and efficient design decisions that synthesize complex criteria besides including environmental issues (Bay, 2001b). The difficulty in architectural design is that the architect has to address many diverse issues simultaneously during development of his design. The issues may be isolated, different and even conflicting but the product is a singular building that responds to all these issues at the same time. The only way for an architect to function adequately is to internalize these issues and intuitively resolve them through creative design. Architects tend to avoid applying building science directly in their design process, prefering where feasible to work with a building scientist as a consultant. The typical architect prefers to work with broad principles and strategies (Hyde, 2000). A survey on the use of environmental design software among architects showed that almost none of the architects surveyed employed such tools in their practice, and that consultations with building scientists are rare (Wong et al., 1999).

The second thread of research, typified by the Olgyays’ bioclimatic approach to design, found more followers and inspired later generations of architects like Ken Yeang and Tay Kheng Soon. Olgyay and Olgyay (1963), in Design with Climate: Bioclimatic Approach to Architectural Regionalism, stated that architects do not have the time and mental resource to compute all the bioclimatic data. They propose that calculations on how parametric variations in building form can affect indoor human comfort in a climatic context be made separate from the architect’s design process, to produce principles and graphical guidelines for the architects to use as a generator towards a regionalized architectural language.

Over the years, these parametric studies have grown and have become more sophisticated with attempts at integrating the different fields in building science and addressing other environmental and sustainable issues.

1.4.1 Social and Cultural Dimensions

One challenge for building science is the influence of social and cultural dimensions in the application of building studies into architectural design. Over the years, social and cultural rituals have evolved to adapt to climatic conditions and vernacular architecture, in particular, embodies some of these adaptations in their plan and design features (Hawkes, 1996). It is important that these socio-cultural factors are somehow subsumed or incorporated into building science studies. While socio-cultural factors are a common thread in the writings of many architects, such concerns have not found a suitable quantitative expression. Various essays in this book observe the sensibility and necessity of such integration, and suggest ways to think about and correlate these seemingly opposed dimensions.

In “Rethinking Design Methodology for Sustainable Social Quality” (Chapter 2 of this book), Alexander Tzonis observes that an emerging movement is drawing attention to the problem of “sustainable” artificial and natural environment, initially related to its physical quality, but increasingly associated with social quality and resulting in new knowledge. He suggests that methods and architecture theory do not end like movements that rise and fall and points out that Design Methods and Critical Theory, thought to have ended, are tools that can enrich design thinking and understand...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• About the Authors
• 1 Social and Environmental Dimensions in Tropical Sustainable Architecture Introductory Comments
• Part I Architectural and Environmental Theories
• 2 Rethinking Design Methodology for Sustainable Social Quality
• 3 The Selective Environment Environmental Design and Cultural Identity
• 4 Green Design in the Hot Humid Tropical Zone
• Part II High-Rise High-Density Living
• 5 Socio-Environmental Dimensions in Tropical Semi-Open Spaces of High-Rise Housing in Singapore
• 6 Beams and Architectural Design in Singapore Public Housing
• Part III Building and Planning Requirements
• 7 Policy and Evaluation System for Green Building in Subtropical Taiwan
• 8 In Search of a Habitable Urban Space-Built Ratio A Case Study of Building and Planning Regulation in Dhaka City
• Part IV Urban Environmental Impacts
• 9 Designing High Density Cities – Para-Metric Studies of Urban Morphologies and Their Implied Environmental Performance
• 10 The Urban Heat Island Effect in Singapore
• 11 Tropical Urban Street Canyons
• Part V Experimental Sustainable Projects
• 12 Tropical and Traditional Inventing a New Housing Model for the Old 36 Streets Quarter in Hanoi, Vietnam
• 13 Ecopet 21 An Innovative Sustainable Building System for Ecological Communities in Tropical Regions
• Part VI Critique on Tropical Architecture
• 14 Is Sustainability Sustainable? Interrogating the Tropical Paradigm in Asian Architecture
• Index