From principles of architectural science to practice

Introduction

The 45th Conference of the Architectural Science Association was held at the University of Sydney in November 2011 and once more delivered an intriguing diversity of papers reflecting the wide purview of architectural science. Although, traditionally, this is a great strength of the conferences it can make the task of the journal editor a little difficult in drawing a common thread to present here. This time, however, it is much easier. As would be expected, many papers are concerned with issues of sustainability but fundamentally all are concerned with the users of buildings, how they interact with the built environment and how they can provide us with knowledge and methods to improve outcomes.

Summary

A number of papers, which represent both the quality and diversity of the research from the conference, have been selected though many papers report the results of post-occupancy evaluations (POE) of sustainably designed buildings. For example, Lenoir et al. (2012) present a study of an educational net zero energy building (NZEB) on the sub-tropical island of La Réunion that has had a very positive response from the mixed users. This paper seems to provide a successful case study; however, it does pose interesting and challenging questions of principle and definition, such as what is the meaning of the term Net Zero Energy Building and can it be achieved in practice?

The usual definition taken for NZEB is that there is a local balance between consumption and production of renewable energy on an annual basis. Stepping back from this ideal many buildings can achieve ‘nearly’ net zero energy. The authors argue that two definitions of ‘nearly’ NZEBs are current and useful in this respect. Firstly, the term ‘nearly’ means that the balance is not reached, but close with a percentage that is not defined yet. For example, some buildings are considered nearly net zero when 50% of the consumption is balanced by renewable energy. Secondly, a building is considered to be ‘nearly’ net zero when it balances its consumption by renewable energy without taking into account the consumption due to plug-loads.

In a tropical climate, the maximum energy load of the building occurs in summer when the temperature is the highest which corresponds to the maximum production that occurs when the solar radiation is the highest. In a low-energy building the reduction in consumption is mainly achieved by maximizing the passive elements, i.e. cross-ventilation and efficient solar shading systems, and ensuring the efficiency of many active systems (mainly heating, ventilating and air-conditioning systems, artificial lighting and computers). In such a climate it is possible to have energy balance on a daily basis. However, a common problem in these perceived warm to hot climates, where emphasis is placed on reducing the impact of high temperatures, is that comfort in colder months may be traded off.

NZEB is the ‘holy grail’ of sustainability, and increasing policy makers in the US and Europe see this as a target for design (Kibert 2011). However, for NZEB policies to be anything less than aspirational the methodologies to test designs will need to be developed. The International Energy Agency SHC Task 40 details the work to define this concept more clearly (IEA 2012). In particular, the need to develop a method of calculation that facilitates assessing the balance point for particular buildings. This model would be extremely useful for operational management of the building since occupants could manipulate the inputs and outputs to maintain carbon neutrality on a daily basis.

Such adaptive buildings are also the focus of Healey's (2012) paper which highlights the fact that thermal comfort in spaces, where adaptive environmental controls are available, are subject to social negotiation that can impact on an individual's experience. This raises questions of when, by how much and by whom is the heating/cooling adjusted in a collective space. In this context, the construct of ‘thermal comfort’ is a question of ‘satisfaction’ and ‘behaviour’ and to unpack the complexity of this kind of research can be challenging, requiring a cross-disciplinary approach and well-tested methodologies and instrumentation.

This is the case in the next paper by O'Callaghan et al. (2012), which involves an occupancy study comparing ecologically sustainable housing conventional developments in Queensland. It not only continues this theme on ‘satisfaction’ but also uses people's attitudes as an indicator for behaviour and how they impact on the use of sustainability designed buildings. A predisposition to environmental issues results in people using less energy; however, this can be severely compromised in developments that have not been designed sustainability.

This is not to say that there is any shying away from thorough methodology and hard data in any of this research. So Anderson et al. (2012) in their investigation of glazing systems and their impact on the thermal comfort of occupants close to windows carry out the full range of modelling from computer simulation through to field testing of glazing systems. Concluding that air temperature is the determining factor to 25°C for all glazing systems, but above that there is a need to reduce solar radiation and glass temperatures. However, as it deals only with the effect that solar radiation has in the long-wave spectrum through absorption within the glazing system, there are limitations. The predicted mean vote and predicted percentage dissatisfied metrics used do not consider the direct or diffuse transmitted solar load on the occupant which would occur in the perimeter zone of the building studied and can be significant even at low levels for the investigated glazing systems.

Newton et al. (2012) carry out indoor environmental quality (IEQ) monitoring of a number of new educational buildings and recommend adjustments to environmental systems to ensure temperatures and carbon dioxide levels be kept within acceptable limits as well as how budget cuts can impact on environmental performance. The innovation here appears to be the integration of a number of dissimilar research methods aimed at addressing very different questions to provide evidence of IEQ. This is a pilot study to test a methodology, and the reported results should be carefully used especially as the monitoring period was limited.

New approaches are evident in this collection. Gamage and Hyde (2011) argue that a philosophical approach to ‘ecologically sustainable design’ based on biomimicry can potentially provide a more holistic fit between building and environment as it is based on the interaction of form, process and ecosystem and emphasizes both spatial and temporal patterns. However, to be applied in practice will need sympathetic designers. Research using a survey of practice is underway to reveal some insights as to how sustainable designers respond to the challenges of this approach. The authors argue that there are a number of barriers to achieving ecological sustainable development and argue that this approach has the potential to address these barriers.

Wong et al. (2012) take a novel path, through the use of humanoid robots, to simulate, test and draw conclusions on human gaze and pedestrian movement in an urban environment. Its technically thorough and refined laboratory approach, however, could be seen as having limited relevance to the field of design. For example, a reviewer felt that ‘very little is said in this paper about the effect, which the built environment could have on the observations. The yellow and blue beacons, as representations of attractive landmarks, establish the paper's sole tangible link to a realm where architectural design, per se, could be seen to impact the results. The relevance of this work to an architectural audience would be significantly stronger … if the results were placed in direct graphic comparison to some of Whyte's (1955) analytical work.’

In contrast, a novel low-technology methodological solution is provided by Byrd (2012) in assessing the impact of over-glazing in buildings. It overcomes some of the problems of attempting to study buildings where there is resistance from owners and occupiers due to negative perception problems, particularly if the building is ‘green’.

Future research

Many of these papers are reporting encouraging and potentially exciting results of pilot schemes that obviously require expansion into full scale studies. Byrd's (2012) non-invasive approach needs supporting through (invasive) POE and energy studies, to validate as an economic assessment tool. The case study by O'Callaghan et al. (2012), although it would appear common sense, needs to be extended to a larger sample to give weight to the argument that environmental sustainable design (ESD) developments facilitate ESD inclined users. The single bay prototypes by Anderson et al. (2012) would benefit from extension to complete installations. Regardless, the rule of thumb observation, the temperature at which radiant control is necessary, should be tested full scale on the existing buildings of varying glazing types.

Another common observed problem in the papers that requires extensive research involves the acquisition and communication of knowledge. Lenoir et al. (2012) conclude that their case study is a good example for new projects but the issue that remains is how best to get that design and performance information appropriately to avoid the problem of form without substance. It is a problem of education at all levels for designers, an issue explored by other papers at this Conference such as integration into everyday design tools (Pitman and Watts 2011), building procurers and users. The latter is highlighted by Newton et al. (2012) who investigated the problem that monitoring systems for IEQ are not understood by users requiring research into user interface design and interaction. Coupled with Healey's (2012) observation on the reality of social negotiation there is an obvious need for cross-disciplinary work with psychological and sociological inputs these can facilitate social conditions that are conducive to adaptive practices which are pro-environmental in nature and support technical energy efficiency practices with in buildings. Even the robots of Wong et al. (2012) require further validation against human behaviour in urban environments to become a predictive tool. This will involve a wide range of psychological and social issues, e.g. safe movement, way finding and factors that contribute to environmental delight.

Architectural Science, with its broad history, is uniquely positioned to take the lead in such cross-disciplinary research and we can look forward to some productive work reported at the next Conference of the Architectural Science Association in 2012 at Griffith University, Queensland, and the pages of this journal.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thanks the referees for their input into these papers.