Water and Energy (mo money mo problems)
In design school, blossoming architects are given case studies to review and design problems to solve. They’re asked to design buildings that consider structure, aesthetics, social and financial impact and --- wait for it -- that magic word sustainability! But how complete is the architectural education concerning sustainability? If you slap a green roof on your studio project, do you get to check the “sustainability” box for your next crit?
There are design problems that architects don’t know they have. These problems are energy and water.
In 2020 the world population is expected to exceed 9 billion people (according to the EPA - holy cow). 6 billion of those people are going to be in cities (more than double the number of people currently living in cities). A hot topic in the architecture community is the migration of people settling in cities instead of suburban areas and everyone is aware of the land restrictions and financial implementations that really make this a problem. But if we’re focused on making buildings taller so that even more people can live in Manhattan, we also need to focus on how to provide heat, light, and running water to these people, all while being environmentally responsible.
It’s a common misconception that designing a building to be green is “expensive” - and this is often true for retrofitting existing buildings that weren’t designed to have natural irrigation or passive cooling systems. But if every building from here on out was created with the design team thinking about recycling, reducing, and reusing water and energy than these “green” buildings would not cost more to build and design than the current status quo AND the additional efficiency of the utility systems of this buildings would actually save money in a matter of years!
But what about the buildings are already built? That’s where monitoring energy and water usage is key. Let’s look at the Vancouver Island University Cowichan Campus as a case study for energy and water monitoring. The Cowichan Campus was designed to be an incredibly sustainable building and without getting into too much detail, the energy model used to predict the building’s energy usage reported more than the measured first year of energy/water usage. A variety of factors could explain this discrepancy, but regardless Vancouver Island University has been monitoring its energy and water usage in order to reduce its consumption. By using smart systems such as lights that only turn on in occupied rooms, and internal temperature systems that utilize the outside weather to keep occupants comfortable, they’re well on their way to meet sustainability goals. My favorite monitoring strategy of the Cowichan Campus building is that a display monitor at the entrance of the building shows the current weather conditions of the region with the buildings corresponding energy/water performance. This technique ties in a social aspect to sustainability - it reminds occupants to use energy and water responsible. It’s only a matter of time before The Vancouver University Cowichan Campus reaches its sustainability goals, and more designers should use the lessons learned here in their own sustainability design.
