November 1999
You sometimes hear an architect say the profession is by definition environmentally unsound and the only real way to tackle the problems of the environment is to give up building. That’s questioning the justification of his own profession’s existence! After muttering these remarks, the architect will usually shrug his shoulders and get back to the drawing board with a temporarily troubled air.
The idea of not building is not all that absurd. Many of the structures erected nowadays are wholly unnecessary. The rip-roaring economy must have more of everything to survive. In Western Europe, with its shrinking population, a market is created for more offices and more housing. A second home, a home working area, a flexi-office and a real office for good measure: any self-respecting manager must have at least these.
If clients and architects were to refrain from being so diligent, the accommodation problem could be solved in a much simpler and less material-intensive way. Organizing the activities to be housed differently could make many new buildings quite unnecessary. There are several ways to go about this.
Double useA familiar example is a school that can be used as a youth centre in the evening and at weekends. Another typically Dutch double use is for meadows to be used for grazing cows in summer and for ice-skating in the winter. Teleworking is on the increase, and the problems of mobility will probably force us to devise many more novel solutions.
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Skaters in winter, cows in summertime. In the Netherlands water is sprayed
on grasslands to create icerinks.
Cars were tested on the roofs of this Fiat car-factory in Turino, Italia. Built
between 1917-1920 and designed by engineer Giacome Matté Trucco.
Why don’t we use parking lots for other purposes, like skate-rings, sports fields or grasslands, design Wim Poppinga (NL).
Mutual profit
A good example of symbiosis between two apparently opposite functions is to combine a swimming pool with an ice skating rink. They benefit from each other’s proximity. The swimming pool water can be warmed by the excess heat produced in freezing the water for the skating rink. The combined facility will attract a larger public making the whole thing more profitable to run. There are advantages for the visitor too; there’s nothing like following up a strenuous hour of skating with a dip in a tropical swimming pool.
The advantages of dwellings near greenhouses are energy exchange and a green living environment.
Intensification
Many of our buildings are now used extensively. In a typical cellular office building, only 25% of the space is used during the day and none at all in the evening and through the night. Using an architecture office for evening classes wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Properly organized, both functions could profit from a cross-fertilization of ideas and the relatively low rent.
Solutions for the more intensive use of existing facilities always presuppose changes in the way we organize the programme of activities for residence and work. They call for a different attitude on the part of the architect - a working approach that addresses the design of services - the software rather than the built hardware. To take this analogy further, the architect must become a programmer.
Pool on top of sky-scraper is an example of efficient use of space. At the same time the pool is always in the sun.
Jacques Vink, Smart Architecture Foundation