Designers are grappling with the challenges of designing regenerative buildings, but it is difficult to know where to start.
As Sobek states: ‘We lack even basic things like data calculation methods and basic knowledge about sustainable building design…
We have no methods for the design and construction of truly recyclable buildings… The list of missing knowledge is long’ [1].
Nevertheless, some offices are treating these challenges as creative opportunities. Three examples by the Danish architecture office 3XN and their research and design team GXN are presented:
first, a full-scale demonstration project, Circular House, which uses data and digital design tools to enable building components to be more easily recycled; second, examples of early-stage design simulation work on Swedbank office headquarters, which provided feedback about the performance of spaces before its construction; and third, the ongoing environmental monitoring project at Green Solution House, which collects and visualizes data about the building in use to offer insights about how people use space.
BETTER USE OF DATA – DESIGN FOR DISASSEMBLY
Regenerative design can be defined as enabling social and ecological systems to maintain a healthy state and evolve [2], and within this approach, designers must not only search for the potential to minimise the adverse impacts of designs but must also focus on positive impacts that buildings can have on the well- being of people and the natural environment. These requirements mean that better software tools and digital workflows are needed to simulate and evaluate early stage design decisions to enable feedback into the design process. There is also a creative possibility: the development of new digital tools and methods of simulating can lead to new and improved kinds of architecture that can be longer lasting. For example, Danish architecture office 3XN and their research and design team GXN have developed a full-scale demonstration project using data and digital design tools to enable building components to be more easily recycled, thereby providing designers with a greater range of options and facilitating the move towards a circular economy for buildings [3].
Their Circular House project, in close collaboration with concrete fabricator Consolis, uses prefabricated concrete elements that are embedded with electronic chips that contain data about their production specifications, use, and maintenance (see Figure 1).
It is hoped that this information will enable the components to be more easily and accurately maintained and reused [4]. The goal of the project is to more effectively share and use building design data beyond construction, making it useful at later stages of the product lifecycle. This kind of thinking is needed in the construction industry, and proof of concept projects like this could convince other designers to also adopt this method.
SIMULATING EXPERIENCE
Simulation is not new in architecture. Brunelleschi invented a linear perspective to simulate the perception of space, Antoni Gaudí used graphic statics to simulate structural performance, and Pierre Patte used ray diagrams to simulate sound [5]. Architects have long been interested in simulating the experiences of their designs, but digital simulation tools offer more sophisticated and precise options for computing performance, including sound, light and airflow [5].
Figure 1
Prefabricated Concrete for Design for Disassembly, Circular House 2018, GXN/3XN. The particular components are embedded with trackers that provide information about the component’s fabrication specifications, use, and maintenance for future reuse. Photo credit Consolis. Courtesy GXN.
Figure 2
Visualisation of Smart Room Collective monitoring, Green Solution House, Denmark, 2013, 3XN/GXN.
The dashboard shows real-time monitoring of the building’s resource use so that occupants can gain feedback about how their behaviours impact resource use. Courtesy GXN.
The tools are designed to make these calculations and feedback possible, but these workflows remain outside mainstream practice. ‘We live in an era where data is abundant, yet very little of this data is used to effectively inform the early design of buildings…
early geometries are rarely compared for energy use, daylighting, shading, or airflow potential, since there are many other issues for architects to consider’ [6]. In the last five years, there has been an explosion in digital tools that designers can use, and many offices, including 3XN have developed in-house research teams that provide ongoing support and advanced simulation to design teams. Anderson’s comment above from 2014 remains valid, but things are changing rapidly. How long until it does become standard practice for designers to routinely compare early geometries for energy use, daylighting, airflow? How can the profession make this shift?
VISUALISING DESIGN IMPACTS: NEW WAYS OF MONITORING PERFORMANCE
A concept that needs further exploration in the design of regenerative buildings is the monitoring of on-site conditions and comparison to design intentions. Collecting data about the building in use over time is not an industry standard, but some forward-thinking practices are engaging with this process. GXN (the research group of 3XN) and Autodesk Research are carrying out ongoing monitoring of the 3XN-designed Green Solution House project in Bornholm, Denmark [7]. Their Smart Room Collective monitoring (see Figure 2) is designed to allow guests to visualise the impacts of their use of the building and to see real- time building performance data relating to energy, light, air and water use. This idea of visualising resource use is key to helping people understand their impact, and for designers to use this as feedback in the design process.
Visualising and making design decisions easier to understand is critical for communication between designers and clients, and parametric tools are proving useful in the design process.
Rather than relying on spreadsheets of data, 3XN is one of many design offices that routinely simulates daylight performance, and that has found ways to visualise and use the visualisations of metrics that are difficult to understand (see Figure 3 and Figure 4). For example, when presented with a spreadsheet, clients and designers will rarely know what numbers would be appropriate for annual calculations of annual solar radiation on a façade. It is difficult for designers to gain an intuition of what these might be like, and also challenging to resolve daylight at the unit level versus the overall geometry without graphic visualisation.
NEW WORKFLOWS FOR REGENERATIVE DESIGN
Reflecting on Werner Sobek’s statement that a large part of the problem with sustainable architecture is the lack of information and tools, it is easy to understand that the challenges are complex and cross disciplinary boundaries. Sobek’s office designed the House B10, a fully recyclable home that was industrially fabricated within a few months and assembled on site in one day [8]. It has predictive self-learning building controls, generates double the energy that it uses, and the surplus energy powers two electric cars and the neighbouring house (incidentally designed by Le Corbusier and now in the Weissenhof Museum). House B10 is the link between the user, the building and the smart grid. Sobek figured out how to build it despite the ‘missing knowledge’, and yet somehow this prototype has not been replicated.
Figure 4
Swedbank office building, 2014, 3XN. A leading architectural and environmental feature of the building is the ample daylight in all workspaces.
Courtesy GXN.
Figure 3
Daylight Factor Analysis of Swedbank office building. GXN/3XN. This feedback about the predicted performance of the spaces was useful in the early stage design process. Courtesy GXN.
5.0 daylight factor
4.4 3.8 3.1 2.5 1.9 1.2
0.6 33.1 meter 32.7 meter
32.6 me ter
21.3 me ter
5.0 daylight factor
4.4 3.8 3.1 2.5 1.9 1.2
0.6 33.1 meter 32.7 meter
32.6 me ter
21.3 me ter
Why are there not more houses like this? The issue of how to advance building methods and cultures is not just related to architects and designers but also to the larger building industry and its culture. Marketing sustainability needs to go beyond ‘green’
and consider how regenerative approaches will improve people’s experiences and quality of life. Regenerative approaches should emphasise ‘a co-evolutionary, partnered relationship between humans and the natural environment, rather than a managerial one that builds, rather than diminishes, social and natural capitals’ [9].
Advances in regenerative design require more than just new tools and better workflows, but these are a good start. To productively
‘compute the environment’, there needs to be a way for designers to better interpret building performance data, to harvest collective intelligence and to share insights across projects. A better understanding of the relationships between design intent and building performance in use would be highly beneficial in order to make better predictions on the journey towards more regenerative buildings that will last generations.
REFERENCES
[1] W. Sobek, ‘‘Architecture Isn’t Here to Stay: Toward a Reversibility of Construction’, in Ilka Ruby and Andreas Ruby (eds), Re-Inventing Construction, Ruby Press (Berlin), 2010, pp 34–45.
[2] M. Brown, E. Haselsteiner, D. Apro, et al. Eds. Ibid.
[3] 3XN_GXN. Building a Circular Future, Issue, (Copenhagen), 2016. Available https://issuu.
com/3xnarchitects/docs/buildingacircularfuture
[4] Consolis. ‘Digitized Traceability For A Circular Economy for Buildings.’ Available http://
connect.consolis.com/references/digitized-traceability/
[5] B. Peters, T. Peters Computing the Environment: Digital Design Tools for the Simulation and Visualization of Sustainable Architecture, John Wiley and Sons (Chichester), 2018, p.107.
[6] Kjell Anderson, Design Energy Simulation for Architects: Guide to 3D Graphics, Routledge (London), 2014, p.1.
[7] T. Peters, ‘Data buildings: Sensor feedback in sustainable design workflows.’ Architectural Design, 2018, 88(1): 92-101.
[8] B. Peters, T. Peters Computing the Environment: Digital Design Tools for the Simulation and Visualization of Sustainable Architecture, John Wiley and Sons (Chichester), 2018, p.221- 223.
[9] R.J. Cole, ‘Transitioning from green to regenerative design’. Building Research &
Information, 2012, 40(1), 39-53.