Smart Architecture
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010 Smart Ar Sma Architecture chitectur Ed van Hinte r Marc Neelen t Jacques Vink Piet Vollaard Consider the notions time, efficiency planning, building and construction and interactivity in the context of ar- and the application of intelligent sys- chitecture and instantly you may find tems, all in aid of sustainability. your head clouded with images of Analysing the challenges and oppor- e technocratic modernism. Think of tunities with the help of numerous ecology and environmental issues in inspiring examples, it presents a relation to buildings and what you get smart way to fulfil user demands now is either a vision of Arcadian green and in three hundred years time. landscapes sparsely populated with reed-roofed cottages or horrific www.smartarchitecture.org projects with environmentally re- sponsible add-ons. The smart thing to do is think in terms of interaction, minimum use of materials and en- ergy, and careful planning over longer periods of time, to reduce the environmental impact of this major human activity called building. What you then get is smart architecture. Smart Architecture is a gloriously il- lustrated light-hearted book based on the outcome of the research project presented by SLA Foundation on its smartarch website. It consists mainly of examples involving new ideas on ISBN 90-6450-490-3 Piet Jacques Mar Ed van c Smart V Neelen ollaar Hinte V ink d Architecture 2 Smart Architecture Ed van Hinte Marc Neelen Jacques Vink Piet Vollaard 010 Publishers, Rotterdam 2003 Preface: The green challenge 007 01. Time Future dynamics 009 02. System Cycles and systems 047 03. Efficiency Efficient building 091 04. Process Practice 129 Where next? 161 Project index 166 Credits 171 building presents itself as an interface The green between its users and the surround- ings. It mediates between the demands challenge and desires of users and environment. In doing so it is behaving intelligently; it uses its sensors to build up a ‘memo- ry’ and to learn. Smart architecture is efficient, it does more with less. Light We could have been happier, to say the and ephemeral may be the most effi- least, five years ago after our search for cient point of departure, or maybe inspiring examples of green sustain- heavy and enduring; it depends on able, ecological architecture. We were what the use and purpose are. Smart dismayed by the pessimism that had in architecture is always time-based, it re- fact marked ‘traditional’ ecological acts in differing time cycles to chang- architecture ever since its emergence ing user exigencies, climatological in the 1960s. Global disaster was on conditions, changes of function and the way, it proclaimed, thanks to the social developments. Smart architec- wastage of fossil fuels and materials ture is system-based, it relates back, it and the irreversible pollution of land, is evolutionary, it is network-minded air and water. Out of that doom-mon- and exhibits swarm behaviour. Smart gering grew a defensive, conservative architecture is ‘natural’,it speaks for it- architecture with a deep distrust of self, learns from nature, uses it when technological innovation. We could necessary. Smart architecture sees draw little inspiration from this quar- technology not as an enemy of nature ter. Surely there had to be an architec- but as a natural ally. ture that despite all the major When we looked round again, clutch- problems brought by our dealings ing this new definition, we were all at with the environment, was still opti- once confronted with a great many mistic? An architecture that would examples of this smart architecture. take up the ‘green challenge’ as the You can check out the results of our basis for innovation? stock-take, begun in 1998, of concepts, We decided to muster this alternative designers, techniques and projects on architecture under another slogan: the website Smart Architecture. Smart, we rea- www.smartarchitecture.org. This book soned, is always good and never pessi- is the next phase. In it, three themed mistic. Smart is airy and graceful. As a chapters based on the key words Time, concept it is broader than just sustain- System and Efficiency, chart the great ability or ecology. Smart architecture diversity of departure-points, direc- obviously is environmentally aware, tions of advancement and concrete an- not just in terms of protecting our swers we encountered. The book ends environment but because energy and with a number of examples by architec- material efficiency is always smart. But tural practices which, armed with these there’s more to smart architecture themes, are blazing new trails in search than that. It is interactive, a smart of a ‘green’ architecture. 9 Underlying our inventory is the sup- position that environmental issues will radically change architecture. The 01. environment is unquestionably one of the key social issues of our day and Time thus of seminal influence on the Future dynamics course architecture is to take. It is not so much the built projects, perhaps, that tell us that something 1.01. Never-ending architecture has changed fundamentally. Rather, it 1.02. Future shrinkage is the many enthusiastic architects, 1.03. Constructed time designers and clients who continue to 1.04. Changing speeds amaze us with their ideas. This book 1.05. Flexible concrete describes a few of these inspiring pro- 1.06. From now to eternity jects and thoughts. Not that they are necessarily the best of the batch, an 1.07. Crystal skin eco-architecture top ten. The many 1.08. Changing flexibility ideas, projects and concepts, large and 1.09. Wrong place, wrong time small, included in these pages are 1.10. Miele space station most of all intended as eye-openers 1.11. Rethink recycling and as sources of inspiration. This 1.12. Feed car book asks more questions than it pro- 1.13. Old New College vides answers. We hope it will inspire architects to formulate new questions 1.14. Virtual living and new answers and thereby further 1.15. Sound building the cause of a new, smart and vibrant 1.16. Sly glass architecture. Stichting Slimme Architectuur / Foundation for Smart Architecture 10 11 01. human challenge of all times: do more with less. What is Future dynamics meant by ‘more’ and ‘less’ needs to be redefined over and over again. In some cases this may lead to flexibility and even throwaway buildings or maybe even degradable cities, in others the message is durability. The common factor is sustainability If people would waste more time they wouldn’t get themselves achieved by tuning quality to the foreseeable future. into so much trouble. The difficulty probably is in determin- ing whether or not time is spent meaningfully, which in turn In order to find out what has to be done to create this strangely depends on the definition of time itself. Time is one of those new dynamic efficiency – an open-ended condition to start things that everybody intuitively knows the meaning of, but from rather than a final condition to arrive at – a brief critical that still is not really understood, not even by physicists. It can description of current Western planning practice is the obvious be considered some kind of absolute measure that indicates way to begin. The most important observation is that the plan- what happens after what, but it is also the opportunity re- ning and design of buildings tends to drift away gradually from maining to a person to do all kinds of things before an ap- actual needs and developments once the building is in place. It pointment, and ultimately before he or she dies. Most of what usually takes a few years to materialize designs and it is not un- mankind does can be considered to be driven by the fear not to common for programmatic demands to already begin changing have taken care of everything before the inevitable occurs. slightly during that period. When a building is finished, differ- In architecture time usually is a human criterion to describe ent kinds of developments gradually put it under severe func- plans for the building process and what happens thereafter. tional stress and not just because of the usual mistakes, like The community that devotes itself to building is quite good at hospital beds not fitting through hospital doors. Design con- planning the process. Deadlines are not always met, but by straints for factories, office buildings and schools change every and large buildings are finished within a reasonable time span ten years. Office facades are replaced within an average of 20 around the projected date. What happens after that is a differ- years. Part of this is due to fashion change. In architecture one ent story altogether. Some buildings succeed in surviving gen- could already imagine some ‘Style of the Year Award’. erations of people without anyone having arranged this Fashion, however, is hardly recognized as a legitimate param- beforehand. Others are demolished way before they were eter by architects, which is strange since architectural style is meant to be. It is clear that in this respect time is more often subject to the same phenomena as fashion, except that its de- than not overlooked. velopment is one-sided compared to that of clothing because The ultimate architectural plan so far has been an illusion. The of traditions of style and building. Installations usually have only successful utopias are the ones in books. Slowly, very had it after 15 years, with the exception of computer systems slowly, designers are beginning to realize that the future has that take only a couple of months to become obsolete, if no final stasis in store for mankind and that people will have they’re lucky.