FEATURE

The design of Eastgate in was inspired by mounds. Mr Resilience

Committed to appropriate architecture, Mick Pearce specialises in buildings that have low maintenance, low capital and running costs, and renewable energy systems of environmental control. Matt Dillon and Phil Wilkinson spoke to Pearce on the eve of his appearance at the Melbourne Pre-loved Buildings conference.

Sitting in a sunlit office on the 51st level Pearce is forever searching out ways to and it uses 35 per cent less energy than of Melbourne Central Tower, trailblazing make buildings work more efficiently. six conventional buildings in Harare architect Mick Pearce is explaining why Referring to himself as a “designer” combined. In the first five years, the he isn’t particularly fond of the word rather than an architect, he happily building saved its owner $3.5 million “sustainability”. He prefers the term absorbs knowledge from any discipline in costs.” “resilience”. he thinks might be helpful – engineering, biology, entomology. He reads widely. Ecolibrium: Have you always been “There’s this whole problem of interested in ecologically sustainable this conservatism surrounding it The building most closely associated with design? [sustainability],” says -born Pearce is Eastgate, a mixed office complex Pearce, 71. “It implies keeping things as and shopping mall covering half a city MP: What got me going in the they are. And there’s this whole mix-up block in the business centre of Harare sustainable direction was a guy called with economic sustainability. Everybody that was inspired, incredibly, by termite Bill Mollison, an Australian who is using this word ‘sustainability’. In mounds. invented permaculture (Ed’s note: along the corporate world it’s come to mean with David Holgrem and associates). “What makes it unique is that not only is ‘staying in the black’. Permaculture mimics the rainforest. it ventilated, cooled and heated entirely Plants support each other; you can “Then you have the term ‘sustainable through natural means, but it works,” actually grow crops without fertiliser. development’, which in a funny sort of wrote Liane Lefaivre and Alexander way is an oxymoron. I don’t like it. I Tzonis of Architects for Peace. “Its In Harare in about 1986 Mollison gave use ‘resilience’, actually. That’s what I’m ventilation costs one-tenth that of a a lecture that I went to, in a building trying to do anyway.” comparable air-conditioned building that I’d built. And he was marvellous.

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buildings that needed as little electrical power as possible. Zimbabwe has a beautiful climate of hot days and cold nights. It’s subtropical, about 15° south, with an altitude of 1,500m, so it’s quite cool at night and hot during the day because of the thinner atmosphere. So you get a big diurnal shift, which is the difference between the day and the night. We found that building courtyards with plants in them helped because they trapped the cold air. And if you put plants in them you could actually drop the ambient temperature. And therefore you can save huge amounts of energy by sucking that air into the air conditioners. In fact, the air conditioning units we put in really didn’t Mick Pearce run half the time. Also, we were worried much more about He said completely the things that I the sun shielding. The buildings that had wanted to hear – we were absolutely in been built didn’t have any sun shielding, tune. I thought perhaps that one could they were just glass towers. That in the do with architecture as permaculture radiation belt was madness, just crazy. had done [with plants]. In other words, ® My buildings were the first to have mimic the processes in nature. That would EC plug fan serious solar shielding on the outside. give you an intellectual basis for building design. And then I started doing office And then we go to the point where a client blocks, university buildings and schools. asked me to build one huge building without any air conditioning. He said, So little research and “We just can’t afford to go on importing “ air conditioning.” And that was Eastgate. development is done The next on buildings, anywhere. We formed a team, using the London and Harare Arup offices to design a building We spend more human which used night air to cool itself. energy designing We devised this system of laying night air bloody corkscrews than through voids in the structure – channels step. buildings. Buildings are under the floor and things like that – so always in a rush. There’s that the structure would then be cooled enormous pressure to down and return that coolth and then cool the air the next day before it went Innovation – new 6kW, get buildings up” into the room. high efficiency air I did about four in a row, and each time Eco: Was Eastgate the building that was we went further down the track, getting said to be based on termite mounds? handling technology. more and more sustainable. We found MP: I had watched a David that most buildings in Harare used the Attenborough documentary about international style. One thought that the . I told the engineers this, and it universal style could be built anywhere, started as a joke. But then it became more and that all you needed was power. That’s serious because I realised it was a good what architecture was all about: that metaphor for the building. nature could be conquered by the city. You could just plug into the power station The interesting thing about the termite and there was endless energy. mounds in Zimbabwe (the ones here work on a different principle) are that All of that, that line of thinking, fell apart they are chimneys. At night the chimney The engineer’s choice. in the Third World, in Africa. Certainly works because it’s hotter inside than I couldn’t do that architecture in Africa outside. The more air rushes up the because there was no technology. It was spout, the more oxygen gets in, and so very primitive. And secondly energy was their activity increases. A beehive works www.ebmpapst.com.au more and more expensive, particularly in on a similar principle, except they cool central Africa. You were forced to design the air by fanning their wings. Ph: 1800 764 440

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So you get this amazing picture of activity desert, very dry, and then it switches and And we used the night air for cooling the at night, all based on oxygen. They also you get these cold winds off the Southern building water. All of the cooled water have evaporative cooling, because they Ocean, and it switches from about 40°C goes straight to the phase change. We used moisture from the water table, and to about 18°C in half an hour. should have much more phase change – evaporate the air that comes in, and that double the amount. We wanted to, but Eco: Does that mean the low-tech drops the temperature. solutions suitable for Africa won’t couldn’t afford it. They keep the air temperature in a very work here? CH2 is the usual story of pioneering narrow band, about 30-31°C inside all the MP: In order to squash the thermal everything. We’ve given them a Rolls time. And the outside temperature goes temperatures into the comport band you Royce, because they’ve got everything, from 0 to 40°C. need much more thermal storage than and the conditions in there are just We thought that there’s got to be a way can be achieved with rock stores. [With ridiculously good. The range of of mimicking the termites, and we got CH2] we tried a big container of water. temperature is literally just 1°C. It’s better quite excited about this. It remained the We got 4,500 cubic litres of water, which than an A-grade building. metaphor for the building right the way is just out of the question. So little research and development is through the design process. So we had a different set of problems. done on buildings, anywhere. We spend And then I mentioned this to a journalist We devised many systems, high-tech more human energy designing bloody when we walking past the buildings and solutions. We had phase-change material. corkscrews than buildings. Buildings looking up at the chimneys on tops of it. Phase change is a way of storing energy, are always in a rush. There’s enormous He said, “What on Earth are those?” I which is so much better and doesn’t need pressure to get buildings up. There are said, “Well actually there not chimneys, as much as space as doing it with water, vast amounts of money at stake, and they’re vents that let the night air out.” rocks or the building structure. everything else. And then I told him about the termites. What we did here that we couldn’t do Eco: Why do you call yourself a designer He cooked up a story that was in the New in Harare is night purging. Because the rather “architect” or some other title? York Times the next day. The whole thing temperature drops lower than what it just went “boom”! would do in Harare, what you do is open MP: This line of architecture is driven by That story kind of put me on the map a bit, the windows. But then you need a body science, so it’s a sort of intellectualisation and allowed me to come [to Melbourne to of thermal mass to cool down, to retain of architecture. There is an old dictum: work on CH2}. Rob Adams was here, and that coolth for the whole day. So we form follows function. It’s different and it he thought he could build a building that devised a wavy ceiling in the office space doesn’t earn you much with the architects, was a model for sustainability in Victoria, made from concrete. If the windows open because the architects generally like which was what we did. correctly and everything works right, it form-driven objects, and their forms are really does perform brilliantly. And we sculptural, really. In a way, I don’t think Eco: You had low-tech solutions that can get 20 to 25 per cent saving in energy. they are very good sculptures, some of worked in Harare. Do we do high-tech them. They are driven by an aesthetic: a in because we can or because And we also used displacement use of material, a use of glass, a use of this we need to? ventilation. That means you’re not using and that. My architecture, and certainly air to cool people, you’re actually cooling MP: That’s a very good question. I cooked the architecture of this firm, is driven them with radiant systems. That’s when up the brief with the client, who said, much more by form follows function, you’re body is emitting heat and it’s being “Your brief is to design yourself out of a but the function is expanded to include absorbed by surfaces around it, and not job, and we’ll pay you the same fee as you nature, culture and the economy, simply by contact with the air. It’s a much would have got for a high-tech building. so it’s a sort-of tripartite arrangement. more comfortable way of cooling people; We took that on as a huge challenge. They it’s fits the human physiology much better. We do build forms that are derived from did some amazing modelling in London. nature, but not always. CH2 doesn’t look And in those days, ’92, there were no The problem of cooling with air is you’re computer programs or simulations. But drying the skin and also recycling the air. like a termites’ nest. It’s the processes; we’re they’d done quite a bit of work in this area. Although it has enough oxygen in it, it copying the processes of nature, not nature. tends to lose its ionic balance and all those It was very scientific. But what we I’m doing a building at the moment sorts of things. It’s not as good. You’re also were doing was designing ourselves which is like a seashell and sits on a lake. recycling pollutants, and these days with out of engineering. It’s next to a big water-processing factory. the flu around that’s not a good idea. It demonstrates the physical properties Arriving here [in Melbourne], the first We devised a system whereby you deliver of water, or tries to. One of them is that things that hits you is that it’s much more the air at 20°C straight away, and like you can use water to cool the building sophisticated. And the climate is more Eastgate there’s no recycling of air. It’s at night by running the water over the complicated. In Africa it’s day/night, but just once through. That wastes energy, roof. The water then falls into a lake. It here it’s three days hot and three days so you have to then find ways of doing demonstrates that a very light building cold. And more of a seasonal differential: everything else much more efficiently. can have its thermal mass elsewhere; it’s you have two mid seasons and a hot disconnected thermal mass. season, which is unbelievably hot. And Moving the energy around the building then in the middle of the hot season you in the form is much more efficient rather I don’t know how it will work, get these 40°C winds that come of the than moving it in the form of air. but the theory stacks up.

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Eco: Do you think in Australia we in still water. The price of land in mechanical services can do ourselves the middle of the city is ridiculous. out of jobs? In Holland they have four or five MP: First of all I think the whole design thousand houses that float. They’re going processes of engineering and architecture for it in a very big way – they’re going to must mesh into a whole. That’s why I put cities on water. And there you have like to work directly with engineers right a very stable regime at sea level. You’re from the beginning, at the conceptual using the sea as a heat sink. You can use stage, so we get it together. the tidal range as what I call a moon-sea pump, so the whole city can go up and I also think that buildings should be down and pump energy. better zoos for people. And I say zoos, because zookeepers know a lot more Eco: What are your thoughts about how about animal physiology, animal welfare, cities should adapt for climate change? animal diets and animal genetic origins MP: The city needs to densify along than architects and engineers know about the routes formed by transport. The the human animal. architecture of movement must be Eco: What do you find frustrating? much more central. We actually aren’t building what I term a solar city: one that MP: There’s a mismatch from having encourages people to walk. too many people around the table. We tried something at CH2, which was to My city would be one that has a very incorporate everybody. We had a huge long-lasting framework, an infrastructure table, about 20 people, and it sounds that is literally a concrete frame that can ® wonderful and very democratic. But take services. That would stand up for HyBlade it’s a nightmare. It did work, but I was 200 years and it could take anything – exhausted. I think it’s better to have a offices, housing, it doesn’t matter what it core of two, three or four people, and is. It’s on a grid, and in it you slot IKEA then pull in others as needed – that – type houses or anything. They can be works. I know it’s not as inclusive, but you something that expresses the current can take inclusivity too far. culture and is less long-lasting. It’s in order to get away from this ridiculous business The next Eco: You’ve said that night flushing of building these phallic forms, which works in Melbourne. Have you had a represent riches and things like that. look into any other Australian climate zones to see what solutions might work? Our whole economy has no relation to the availability of natural resources. You MP: I went up to Cairns, and it was good ask an economist about natural resources . there because it was very familiar to me step and he hasn’t factored it in; they’re just because I really am very tropical. And I commodities to him. But they’re running saw them having many of the problems out. I think there’s 15 years of copper left we have in England. In England you on the planet – that’s all. New composite blade worry about vapour barriers, because The city is an anomaly. We don’t like to things are damp inside the building, and live in cities; we like to live with trees and technology, lower noise, cold outside. In Cairns its cold inside and plants. I see the battle for the planet being hot outside, and the air is full of water one between the plants and the animals, higher efficiency. and gets in and buggers up everything, and at the moment the animals are including door frames. destroying the plants. Our souls are outside They’d never heard of vapour barriers the cities, and that’s why we have to have up there. There was one engineer I found plants around us. We need to get that right, who was using a fan, and that was good. and bring nature back into the city. You don’t need thermal mass up there. Our relationship with nature needs to be The best thing is timber housing, and right. It’s not right at the moment. ❚ lightweight. I haven’t had a chance to build up there, but it’s very much more familiar. Because there’s no thermal mass, you’ve Mick Pearce is the keynote The engineer’s choice. got to use wind if you can and sea breezes. speaker at AIRAH’s Pre-Loved You usually get an onshore/offshore. I’m Buildings conference to be held in very keen on putting buildings on water, Melbourne from November 19–20. and that’s what they should do here [in For more information go to www.ebmpapst.com.au Melbourne]. They’ve got a wonderful www.airah.org.au/preloved2009 chance to build on the Bay, which is very Ph: 1800 764 440 Or (03) 9360 6400