C. Alan Short

Low energy refurbishment strategies for health buildings

Public health buildings contribute significantly to UK carbon emissions. New build initiatives have received more attention than the considerable opportunities to reduce carbon emissions within the retained health estate. The research reported here has considered the environmental performance of a typical medium rise, medium depth, concrete-framed, late 1960s acute hospital following low energy environmental design interventions. The interventions are made to optimize daylighting and natural ventilation/cooling whilst reducing overheating caused by summer time solar gains. Three options are investigated: advanced natural ventilation using plena and exhaust stacks; fan-assisted natural ventilation in which fans are used in the exhaust stacks; and mechanical ventilation/cooling with heat recovery. Computer simulations have been carried out to predict the influence on thermal performance (overheating risk) and energy consumption of each of these options on the original design. For each case, current weather data, and future weather data for the years 2020, 2050 and 2080, have been used.

What is ‘architectural design research’?

The September 2007 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Research Symposium was particularly and perhaps unexpectedly well attended this year. This review speculates on the context for this renewed interest in research in architecture. The audience was swelled by many more practitioners than the organizers expected, architects interested in understanding more about ‘reflective practice’. This evocative term, credited to Donald Schon, was given new force on the day by keynote speaker Leon von Schaiks account of his Melbourne Masters Architecture initiative. Subsequent speakers reported here included Piers Gough, Sean Griffiths, Kathryn Findlay, Jane Rendell, Deborah Saunt, Alex de Rijke, and Susan Francis who tackled, from various directions, the principal question emerging on the day: ‘What is design research as applied to architecture?’ Speakers presented built and unbuilt projects as ‘design research’. In one notable case, the designer denied absolutely any research dimension to his work, anxiou...

A medium-rise 1970s maternity hospital in the east of England: Resilience and adaptation to climate change

The late 1970s design for the Rosie Maternity Hospital on the Addenbrookes campus in Cambridge is a recurring type across the UK National Health Service, a framed three-storey courtyard configuration in brick masonry. It was selected as a case study project for the ‘Design and Delivery of Robust Hospitals in a Changing Climate’ project, pursuing the methodology developed for that research. Temperature data were collected in representative spaces within the hospital, over a two-year period. These revealed overheating in mild conditions relative to an observed 24℃ threshold for sleep but concealed within the customary 28℃ threshold marking the upper limit of acceptable conditions. The building was modelled using current climate data to predict 2010 conditions. The model was then calibrated against the observed 2010 data and used to predict the likely internal temperatures in current and 2030s. The results indicated an increase in peak temperatures. Four adaptive intervention schemes were subsequently developed: an ‘enlightened’ industry standard ‘Passivhaus’-type option providing superinsulation, sealed glazing and heat recovery; a lower technology-based scheme promoting natural cross-ventilation by providing greater opening glazing area, opening up the plan, sunshading and additional insulation; an enhanced natural ventilation scheme glazing over the courtyards to provide supply air winter gardens, and an advanced natural ventilation option pursuing passive downdraught cooling. All four schemes were modelled using the projected current and 2030s weather data and their performance was compared. The schemes were fully costed to yield relative ‘value for money’ guidance to National Health Service Trusts. Practical application: The Heat wave Plan for England 2014 warns National Health Service (NHS) organisations of the risks to patients, particularly the very young, the elderly and the seriously ill, from extreme summer heat events.1 The Chief Medical Officer in her introduction challenges each NHS locality to plan well in advance of hot spells, as appropriate. This paper describes the likely extent of overheating risk and a series of potential adaptation plans for a recurring NHS hospital building type. As a consequence, estates and facilities decision makers in NHS organisations and Public Health England officers charged with the mitigation of risk resulting from overheating of wards and clinical spaces will benefit directly in their necessary decision making from the findings. Policy makers in the Department of Health and policy advisors in the NHS Sustainable Development Unit and the Climate Change Committee Adaptation Sub-Committee will benefit from the evidence presented in advising the NHS and Department of Health.

Exploiting a Hybrid Environmental Design Strategy in the Continental Climate of Beijing

Abstract The built environment in China is required to achieve a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 against the 1980 design standard. A particular challenge is how to maintain acceptable comfort conditions through the hot humid summers and cold desiccating winters of its continental climate regions. Fully air-conditioned sealed envelopes, often fully glazed, are becoming increasingly common in these regions. Remedial strategies involve technical refinements to the air-handling equipment and a contribution from renewable energy sources in an attempt to achieve the prescribed net reduction in energy use. However an alternative hybrid environmental design strategy is developed in this research project. It exploits observed temperate periods of weeks, days, even hours in duration to free-run an office and exhibition building configured to promote natural stack ventilation when ambient conditions permit and mechanical ventilation when conditions require it, the two modes delivered through the same physical infrastructure. The proposal is modelled in proprietary software and the methodology adopted is described. The challenge is compounded by its first practical application to an existing reinforced concrete frame originally designed to receive a highly glazed envelope. This original scheme is reviewed in comparison. Furthermore the practical delivery of the proposal value engineered out a proportion of the ventilation stacks. The likely consequence of this for the environmental performance of the building is investigated through a sensitivity study.

Challenges in the low-carbon adaptation of China’s apartment towers

ABSTRACT Low-carbon building retrofit will contribute to delivering China’s policy to reduce carbon emissions. This paper proposes viable low-carbon adaptation strategies for a recurrent building type within the Hot Summer and Cold Winter (HSCW) zone. An existing 23-storey tower in Hangzhou is investigated within the context of a representative city environment. Indoor air temperatures and energy consumption were monitored across a typical floor and simulated in EnergyPlus. Outdoor and indoor airflow patterns were modelled in an advanced computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool, FLUIDITY. Across a typical floor, observations and modelling show marked variations. South-facing flats overheat significantly in summer largely due to solar radiation. External sun-shading structures are proposed and evaluated to counter summer overheating. An innovative wind catcher and exhaust-stack natural ventilation system is proposed to enhance indoor thermal comfort using natural ventilation. Modelling of this integrated ventilation system indicates that the proposed retrofit system will improve indoor thermal comfort even in the lower floors. The proposed building retrofit strategy is costed using locally established construction cost estimates. Predicted energy savings suggest that the adaptation strategy proposed is potentially viable with significant implications for policy-makers, developers, constructors and designers in this challenging climate zone in China.

Is pragmatism sustainable in a changing climate

Ambitious architect–urbanists brace themselves at the mention of the word ‘pragmatic’, anticipating another unwelcome immersion in the ‘real’ world of appeasement and compromise, enfeebling their collective ‘will to form’. Imagine then the effect of conjoining ‘pragmatic’ with ‘sustainability’, a word conspiring to label a new dark age of dogged design miserableness. This avant-garde community will fear a new pandemic of worthy unambitiousness. Peter Davey, as Editor of the Architectural Review magazine, experienced just such a negative reaction in the mid1980s when, in an attempt to recognize and celebrate the collective work of the then current breed of arts and crafts-tainted, socialistically inclined, ‘old’ modernists in England, he welded together the words ‘Romantic’ and ‘Pragmatism’. His invention provoked derision from such figures as Peter Cook, anxious to distance himself as an English architect. Cook’s withering critique brought forward the next generation’s disenchantment in this very English school by at least a decade, sliced off its proponents’ careers and lubricated the onset of a persistent technological Rococo, the most mature examples of which are found in Singapore’s many shopping centres.