Sustainable Retrofitting of Commercial Buildings

Warm Climates

Richard Hyde, Nathan Groenhout, Francis Barram, Ken Yeang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781849712910
• eBook ISBN: 9781317605478
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

Despite recent improvements in energy efficiency being made in new build, it is important that the existing commercial building sector also take action to meet emission reduction targets. The objectives and challenges of such action will reduce the risk of the sector becoming obsolete due to high energy use and poor environmental performance.

This book presents a theory-based, practice-support methodology to deal with sustainable retrofitting opportunities for existing commercial buildings in warm climates using bioclimatic design as the basis. The book has four main parts, focusing on eco-design and renovation, bioclimatic retrofitting, technological and behavioural change and case studies of retrofitting exemplars. In the first part, the context of climate change effects on design and renovation at the city scale is discussed. The second part looks at bioclimatic retrofitting as a 'design guide' for existing buildings, highlighting the significance of architectural design and engineering systems for energy performance. The technological and behavioural contexts of the existing building sector – policies, modelling, monitoring and trend analysis in respect to energy and environmental performance – are covered in part three. The final part gives some case studies showing the effectiveness of strategies suggested for effective environmental performance. This book is a must-have guide for all involved in the design and engineering of retrofitting projects in warm climates.

PART I

ECO-DESIGN AND RENOVATION

1.1

INTRODUCTION

Richard Hyde

Part I examines the argument for developing an eco-design approach to the built environment and, by extension, how eco-design can be integrated into building retrofitting.

Chapter 1.2 by Ken Yeang examines the question, why should buildings be designed to integrate with the natural environment and climate for indoor comfort in environmentally sustainable efforts in the face of changing climate conditions? Green design, it is argued, has to go beyond conventional rating systems such as LEED or BREEAM. While they are tools which are useful indexes for providing a common basis for comparing the greenness of building designs, they are, however, not totally effective design tools. They do not provide a sufficiently comprehensive approach to the issues of environmental design at the local, regional and global levels. The set of eco-design principles outlined here provides the fundamental basis to this approach but remains only partially tested.

Chapter 1.3 by Richard Hyde aims to address the issue of how eco-design can be applied to the renovation of office buildings. Further testing of the use of eco-design for retrofitting sustainability into buildings was carried out. To be successful, it requires a broad approach at the city scale in order that strategies can operate at the building level. In eco-design, the use of nature as a metaphor for design provides a powerful tool to conceptualise eco-retrofitting projects. However, we have assessed the process of building obsolescence into the physical: buildings that are now 20 years old need to have their systems, façade and service systems renovated. The temptation is to replace systems with the existing specifications, so we argue that retrofitting is needed to replace buildings with new green technologies or face further obsolescence from social, economic and environmental drivers. This provides an emerging context for change and hence we argue that eco-design can provide a framework for sustainable retrofitting which can operate across the levels of city and building obsolescence.

Chapter 1.4 closes Part I with a summary by Richard Hyde.

1.2

STRATEGIES FOR DESIGNING OUR GREEN BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Why should buildings be designed to integrate with the natural environment in the face of changing climate conditions?

Ken Yeang

INTRODUCTION

We are all only too aware of the numerous pressing global social issues that need to be addressed. These include issues such as addressing abject poverty, providing clean water, adequate food and shelter, proper sanitation, and so forth. But ultimately if we do not have a clean environment, such as clean air, clean water, and clean land, all those other pressing global social issues become even more difficult and costly to resolve. Thus, saving our environment has to be the most vital issue that humankind must address today, feeding into our fears that this millennium may be our last.

For the designer, the compelling question is: how do we design for a sustainable future? Globally, businesses and industries face similar concerns of seeking to understand the environmental consequences of their functions and processes, to envision what these might be if they were sustainable, and to take action to realise this vision with comprehensive ecologically benign strategies, with new business models, new production systems, materials and processes. More than these, our human society has to change to a sustainable way of life; we need to change how we live, behave, work, make, eat, learn, and move about.

We would be mistaken if we regarded green design as simply about eco-engineering. These engineering systems are indeed an important part of green design (see the section on ‘grey eco-infrastructure’), giving us an acceptable level of comfort that is sustainable, while such technologies continue to rapidly develop and advance towards greener and cleaner engineering solutions for our built environment. However, it must be clear that eco-engineering is not exclusively the only consideration in green design.

Neither is green design just about rating systems (such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method), carbon profiling, etc.). These are certainly useful checklists and guidelines but they are not comprehensive. They are useful as a partial tick list of reminders of some of the key items to consider in green design or for comparing buildings and masterplans using a common standard. They have also been useful in proselytising green design to a wider audience. But as they are not comprehensive and ecologically holistic (an aspect crucial in eco-design), many designers, once they have achieved the highest level of rating (such as platinum) are asking – What next? Where do we go from here?

Clearly, green design has now entered the mainstream of architecture. Ask any architect today about green design and you will find the same pitch – use of renewable energy systems (such as photovoltaics, wind generators, etc.), compliance with accreditation systems, carbon profiling, planning as new urbanism, etc. We need to ask whether this is all there is to green design.

The contention here is that achieving effective green design is much more than the above and that green design is not as easy as it once was claimed to be. It is complex. While still incomplete, there are a number of design strategies that can be adopted in combination to get as close as we can to the goal of achieving a state of stasis of our built environment with the natural environment.

FOUR STRANDS OF ECO-INFRASTRUCTURE

The first design strategy is to view green design in terms of weaving four strands of eco-infrastructure, colour-coded here as follows:

1 the ‘green’ (the green eco-infrastructure or nature’s own utilities which must be linked);

2 the ‘grey’ (the engineering infrastructure being the eco-sustainable clean-tech engineering systems and utilities);

3 the ‘blue’ (water management and closing of the water cycle by design with sustainable drainage);

4 the ‘red’ (our man-made systems, spaces, hardscapes, society, legislative and regulatory systems).

Green design is the seamless and the benign blending of all these four sets of eco-infrastructures into a system. This concept provides a platform for green design. Like the factors in DNA which reduce a complex concept into four simple sets of instructions, these four sets of eco-infrastructures and their integration provide the integrative bases for green design and planning – the blending of all these four sets of infrastructures into a system.

The green eco-infrastructure

The green eco-infrastructure is vital to every design and masterplan. It parallels the usual grey urban infrastructure of roads, drainage systems and utilities. This green eco-infrastructure is nature’s utilities. These are the interconnected network of natural areas and other open green spaces within the biome that conserve natural eco-system values and clean air and water. This network also enables the area to flourish as a natural habitat for a wide range of wildlife as well as delivering a wide array of benefits to humans and the natural world alike, such as providing habitats linked across the landscape that permit fauna (such as birds and animals) to move freely. This eco-infrastructure is nature’s functioning infrastructure (equivalent to our man-made engineering infrastructures, designated here as grey, blue and red eco-infrastuctures), and in addition to providing cleaner water and enhancing water supplies, it can also result in some, if not all, of the following outcomes: cleaner air; a reduction of the heat-island effect in urban areas; moderation of the impact of climate change; increased energy efficiency; and the protection of source water.

Incorporating an eco-infrastructure is thus vital to any eco-master-planning endeavour. Without it, no matter how clever or advanced the eco-engineering systems are, the design or masterplan remains simply a work of engineering, and can in no way be called an ecological masterplan, nor in the case of larger developments, an eco-city.

These linear flora and fauna corridors connect existing green spaces and larger green areas within the locality and link to the landscape of the hinterland, and can create new larger habitats in their own right, or may be in the form of newly linked existing woodland belts or wetlands, or existing landscape features (such as overgrown railway lines, hedges and waterways). Any new green infrastructure must clearly also complement and enhance the natural functions of what is already there in the landscape.

In the masterplanning process, the designer identifies existing green corridors, routes and green areas, and possible new routes and linkages for creating new connections in the landscape. It is at this point that additional green functional landscape elements or zones can also be integrated, such as linking to existing waterways that also provide ecological services, such as drainage to attenuate flooding.

This eco-infrastructure takes precedence over the engineering eco-infrastructure in the masterplan. By creating, improving and rehabilitating the ecological connectivity of the immediate environment, the eco-infrastructure turns human intervention in the landscape from a negative into a positive. Its environmental benefits and values are as a green armature and framework for natural systems and functions that are ecologically fundamental to the viability of the locality’s plant and animal species and their habitats, such as healthy soils, clean water and clean air. It reverses the fragmentation of natural habitats (as a consequence of urban sprawl and transportation routes, etc.) and encourages an increase in biodiversity to restore functioning ecosystems, while providing the fabric for sustainable living, and safeguarding and enhancing natural features.

This endeavour by design to connect the landscape must extend to the built form, both horizontally and vertically. An obvious demonstration of horizontal connectivity is the provision of ecological corridors and links in regional and local planning that are crucial in making urban patterns more biologically viable. Connectivity over impervious surfaces and roads can be achieved by using ecological bridges, undercrofts and ramps. Besides improved horizontal connectivity and ecological nexus, vertical connectivity with buildings is also necessary since most buildings are not single-storey but multi-storey. Design must extend the ecological corridors vertically upwards, with the eco-infrastructure traversing a building from the foundations and landscape at the ground level to create habitats on the walls, terraces and rooftops.

The grey eco-infrastructure

The grey infrastructure is the usual urban engineering infrastructure such as roads, drains, sewerage, water reticulation, telecommunications, and energy and electric power distribution systems. We need not be prescriptive of any specific engineering system, but require that these systems be clean technologies, of low embodied energy and be carbon-neutral as much as possible, and at the same time be integral with the green infrastructure.

The blue eco-infrastructure

Parallel to the green ecological infrastructure is the water infrastructure (the blue eco-infrastructure) where the water cycle should be managed to close the loop, although this is not always possible in locations with low rainfall. Rainfall needs to be harvested and water use must be recycled. The surface water from rain needs to be retained within the site and be returned back to the land for the recharging of groundwater and aquifers by means of filtration beds, pervious roadways and built surfaces, retention ponds and bioswales. Water used in the built environment (both grey and black water) needs to be reused sustainably as much as possi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• General Introduction
• Part I Eco-Design and Renovation
• Part II Bioclimatic Retrofitting
• Part III Technological and Behaviour Change for Performance Improvements
• Part IV Retrofitting Exemplars
• Index