1.

Skip to 0 minutes and 8 secondsAre buildings evil? Hello, and thank

you for watching this lecture. What I'd like to do today is to change
the way you look at buildings. I would like your eyes to be drawn
automatically towards the overglazed facades, the uninsulated
walls, the unnecessary heating systems, the incomprehensible
controls, and the gaps around external doors that are all around
you. If you start to recognise these elements of poor architecture
and engineering, I will have been partly successful. However, if you
start to see these as morally unacceptable and ugly, then I will have
truly succeeded. In short, I want to change your aesthetic values. I
probably need to be a bit clearer about the title of the lecture.

0:45Skip to 0 minutes and 45 secondsI looked up the definition of evil,

and found this.

0:51Skip to 0 minutes and 51 secondsBeing inanimate objects, it

would be impossible for a building to be seen as conscious, or
capable of deliberate action. So, maybe a better title would be "Are
we who commission, purchase, design, build, operate, or occupy
buildings evil?" Being that we all carry at least one of these
functions, this is clearly an unsettling question, particularly as we as
individuals tend to each believe ourselves to be reasonably good
people and our actions logical, even if others aren't. The words in
the definition that I would like you to pay attention to are conscious
and harm. It is against these that I suggest we test ourselves.

1:26Skip to 1 minute and 26 secondsI only plan to talk about one

aspect of buildings, their energy consumption, and the implications
this has for the planet's climate. There are other environmental
issues for the built environment, including water use, the use of
harmful chemicals, indoor air quality, damp, mould growth,
hypothermia, and fuel poverty. However, I believe climate change
trumps all of these as a global concern. How much will the climate
change? This is unknown. But even if we rapidly rectify our
behaviour, almost all estimates point to at least a two degrees
centigrade rise in mean global air temperature, and at least four
degrees if we do little. Being that we are doing next to nothing, it
might be best to make four degrees the working assumption.
2:09Skip to 2 minutes and 9 secondsSo, how much difference will four
degrees make? Well, the difference in annual temperature between
Nice and London is only five degrees centigrade. And, as the
warming will be greater over land than oceans, we might like to plan
for at least such a rise. This is going to be a considerable challenge
to the developed world. But what about those already on the edge?
The graphic shows in yellow and brown those parts of the planet
that will not be able to support their populations because the
conditions will mean that they will not be able to grow enough food,
or they will simply be under water if we allow a four degrees rise in
temperature. There is little controversial in the image.

2:47Skip to 2 minutes and 47 secondsThe science is sound, and the

assumptions that went into producing it are extremely conservative.
So, what is the plan for those living in the yellow and brown areas? I
can only see three possibilities. One, encourage mass migration
into the green areas, like the UK, Canada, and Siberia. We might
be talking about a billion people, so we need to ask if this is likely to
be politically acceptable. Two, we force people to stay in the yellow
areas, and feed them through a massive permanent Berlin-style
airlift. Three, we let them die. I can't see any other options.

3:23Skip to 3 minutes and 23 secondsIt is worth reflecting that many

of the countries that will suffer the most are those with the lowest
per capita carbon emissions, whilst those with the highest are likely
to suffer the least, in part because they will be able to import food if
necessary, or build sea defences. So, it would be true to say our
carbon emissions will harm the poor and the already hungry in
Africa and Asia far more than those in North America and northern
Europe. Hence, any organisation that is in a state of buildings and
therefore emits carbon, yet cannot show sustained measured
progress towards greatly reduced emissions, might be accused by
future generations of something akin to institutional racism.

4:02Skip to 4 minutes and 2 secondsThe same accusation could be

made of countries that do not show considerable progress, either.
Racism is a strong word to be using, but it's hard to escape it. So,
to what degree are buildings implicated in climate change? If we
look at where in an industrial society carbon emissions come from,
we find that half are associated with heating, cooling, lighting, and
other non-industrial activities in our buildings. This makes the
building sector the largest single emitter of carbon, not, as many
people assume, industry, aircraft, or 4x4s. If we could zero-carbon
the built environment, we would have gone a long way to solving
the problem of climate change.

4:42Skip to 4 minutes and 42 secondsThe sad truth is that, unlike

other sectors, we do know how to do this, and in a cost-effective
way. This is our first hint that we might be evil, as we are clearly
consciously not doing so. There is another relevant characteristic
that buildings have - they last a long time. A new, energy inefficient
building built today will continue to be inefficient long after its
occupants have bought new efficient cars or computers. It is
interesting to compare the difference in energy efficiency between a
fuel-efficient car and a non-fuel-efficient one, and that of an efficient
and an inefficient house. A highly efficient car might do 75 miles to
the gallon. A 4x4, 20 miles to the gallon.

5:23Skip to 5 minutes and 23 secondsA difference of less than a

factor of four. An inefficient house however, might cost £1,500 a
year to heat, yet an efficient one only £50. This is a factor of 30. So,
why is there an increasing criticism of the gas-guzzling car and its
owner, but little of the owner of the gas-guzzling house or office?
I'm not sure that we've got into the position where we see the
energy-related issues of buildings in any kind of visceral way. We
need a new way of thinking, a new language to relate the form of
such buildings to the harm they are starting to do to those around
the world less fortunate than ourselves.

6:01Skip to 6 minutes and 1 secondWe need to be able to spot the

difference between an efficient and an inefficient building as we
walk around town or across campus, or view a set of plans. Once
we can do this, we then need to react to poor architecture not just
intellectually, but emotionally, much as we have learned to do over
issues of slavery, famine, racism, and gender. Only then will we be
able to bring enough passion to the issue and create enough
momentum to force those designing or purchasing buildings to
apply technologies that reduce this harm. Interestingly, the problem
isn't, in many ways, the building.

6:36Skip to 6 minutes and 36 secondsA simple house built of little

more than stone, mud, and straw 200 years ago would have been
heated and lit by an open fire and a few candles, and hence used
very little energy. And none of it would have come from fossil fuels.
The problem is that now we wish to cut ourselves completely off
from the seasons around us, and experience much higher
temperatures in the winter and cooler ones in summer, and to have
lots of lights, and to do this with total disregard to the planet's well-
being, or much of its population. Most of us don't live or work in
mud cottages.

7:06Skip to 7 minutes and 6 secondsSurely, with the invention of

modern materials and techniques, we must be using a lot less
energy per building. After all, we have loft insulation, cavity walls,
and double glazing. Unfortunately, the evidence doesn't look good.
The graph shows the current mean energy use of a large number of
schools in England as a function of the date of their construction.
So, in general, a new school uses no less energy today than an old
Victorian school does today. This doesn't look good if our
philosophy towards future low-energy buildings is just to add a bit
more insulation every few years. We've had a bit more luck with
domestic properties. But even here, the suppression of energy use
has been modest, and only recent.

7:48Skip to 7 minutes and 48 secondsA 1980s house uses no less

energy today than a Victorian one does today. We urgently need to
have a totally different philosophy, and to make the jump to
buildings that use almost no energy. In commercial properties, the
story is much the same. Here's one example from the university
sector. This very recent, well-insulated triple-glazed university office
building uses the same amount of energy per square metre as this
old single-glazed uninsulated 1950s office block on the same
campus. No one would accept the same level of performance from
a car or airplane built today as one built 60 years ago. Yet in
construction, this is seen as fine.

8:27Skip to 8 minutes and 27 secondsSome of you are possibly

wondering why we have so dramatically failed to reduce energy
consumption in our buildings. The really embarrassing thing is that
we don't know why.

Are buildings evil? Part 1

11 comments

With different lenses, Professor David Coley’s presentation

asks the audience to change the way they look at buildings, by
placing emphasis on the over-glazed façades, un-insulated
walls, unnecessary radiators, incomprehensible controls, gaps
around external doors, etc.

By paying attention to these elements of poor design and

engineering, David questions the morality and aesthetic qualities of
current design, and the issue of accountability for bad design and
construction amongst construction professionals.

He also draws attention to the pernicious relationship between

those that live in wealthy energy profligate societies and who will be
safe from the worst impacts of climate change, and those that don’t
and who will suffer the most.

As we have seen so far in David’s presentation, we have

struggled to reduce energy consumption, and we don’t really
know why. However we have a list of possibilities. Here are
just a few which we would like you to reflect on as you look at
buildings.

1. Given better insulation people simply heat their buildings to

higher temperatures. In 1980 the mean internal wintertime
temperature in UK houses was 14 degrees centigrade (this is
the whole-house mean, not the temperature of the sitting
room). Now it is 20 degrees and rising. In Sweden it is already
22 degrees. In air conditioned offices we see the same, with
people wearing jumpers in summer. We need to be aware of
these desires when designing low-energy buildings: we need
to provide sensible temperatures, but without using energy.
2. New buildings have many more lights and they normally don’t
get turned off during daylight hours.

3. Fossil fuels are cheap and easy to use, so we leave doors and
windows open with the heating system on because the boiler
can make up the difference. In an old under-heated property
we are less likely do this, because it would take much longer
to reheat the building.

4. Architects love glass. Even a modern triple glazed window

loses more heat per metre-squared than a simple cavity brick
wall with a little insulation in it, and ten times that of a well
insulated wall. Over-glazing is also one of the main reasons
for buildings needing air conditioning.

5. Sticky out bits: the heat loss from a building is not just a
function of what it is built from, but of its shape. In general,
simple shapes have a lower surface area for a given floor
area.

6. IT: the newer the building, the more complex the IT system is
likely to be, and it is unlikely that energy efficiency was a
priority in its selection.

7. Thermal mass: lightweight buildings tend to overheat more

easily. This can increase air conditioning loads.

8. Inappropriate heating and cooling systems: we have lots of

new options: for example heat pumps and under floor heating.
However unless these are designed correctly by people with a
proven track record, and only used on buildings of the right
type, they can lead to very high energy use.

9. Controls: a building can simply be out of control, with no-one

understanding how it is meant to work.

10. Poor build quality, with insulation missing or gaps that

allow heat to escape.
 11. Lack of post occupancy evaluation: by this we mean
checking that the building operates as it was meant to.

It is very easy to produce such a list, but we simply do not know the
relative importance of the items. This is very strange. In the UK we
spend £90 billion a year within the construction industry, much of it
on new buildings; by this measure, we aren’t getting good value.

Hello everyone. My name is Pesce Giovanni. I am an architect, and after my

master's, I studied materials engineering applied to the construction materials. Today
I want to talk to you about innovation in construction materials. This is because we
live in a time called Anthropocene. This is a epoch characterised by the significant
global impact of human activities on earth's ecosystems. Because of these, all our
activities, behaviours, and also materials are now evaluated under the magnifying
lens of sustainability. This means that we must now embrace a development that
meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs.

1:00Skip to 1 minute and 0 secondsUnder such magnifying lens, some of the

construction materials that have been used for decades, or even centuries, appear
no longer usable because they are not sustainable. Some of the materials we
currently use are, in fact, produced using highly polluting processes. Others are
produced using non-renewable resources. Others are produced from resources that
are not rapidly renewable. We often tend to forget that many of the materials
currently used in our houses, offices, or infrastructures were developed several
decades, or even centuries, ago, when the world was different compared to now. For
instance, one of the most widely used materials is reinforced concrete, which was
first used in 1853.
1:58Skip to 1 minute and 58 secondsThere was a time when the world population was
about 1 billion whereas today's world population counts about 7 billion individuals.
Reinforced concrete is a great material. It can be produced almost everywhere at a
reasonable cost, and has remarkable chemical and mechanical properties. It's made
of a number of materials that integrate each other, such as steel, sand, and various
additives kept together by another amazing material, cement. Unfortunately, the
cement production is currently accounting for 6 to 8% of the total carbon dioxide
emissions per year. This is mainly due to the amount of cement currently produced
that represents a substantial contribution to the greenhouse gas emission, and to the
global warming.
2:57Skip to 2 minutes and 57 secondsFor this reason, it's important to optimise its use,
and also to develop alternative materials that fit as well as cement in the reinforced
concrete but with a lower carbon footprint, and here is where research is needed.
We do need research to move on. We need research to innovate. Innovation in the
construction industry is as important as in other industries. We do need innovation
because innovation is what moves us forward. But innovation doesn't necessarily
mean new, innovation can also mean modernisation, optimisation and improvement.
So that we don't necessarily need to produce a brand new material every year in
order to innovate. In fact, it's possible to create innovative construction materials
starting from the traditional ones.
3:59Skip to 3 minutes and 59 secondsLime, for instance, is a binder and has been
used for centuries in the construction, with similar functions to the use of cement in
concrete. Compared to cement however, lime is considered more sustainable
because it's produced at a lower temperature, and also because it re-absorbs part of
the CO2 emitted during the production. Despite its limited use in the modern
construction industry, and the fact that most people look at it as a old material, lime,
too, can be innovated. Using nanotechnologies, it's possible to produce a new
material called nanolime. This is made of tiny crystals of lime suspended in alcohol.
These particles are so small, they can't be seen with naked eyes, not even with
optical microscopes.
4:57Skip to 4 minutes and 57 secondsOnly the most powerful microscopes currently
available, such as a transmission electron microscope and the atomic force
microscope, can actually be used to see and analyse these crystals. To give you any
idea of their size, we should consider that each individual crystal is about 500 times
smaller than the diameter of human hair. These particles are so small - and in this
bottle containing about a litre of nanolime, there are about three billion crystals of
lime. And it's because of such high number of particles, and the fact that these float
in alcohol, that the nanolime looks more like milk, rather than the lime we used to
knowing.
5:49Skip to 5 minutes and 49 secondsHowever, despite its appearance, and the size of
the crystals, this lime too has the power of binding materials together. And that's why
the nanolime is currently used to develop new, smart coatings for buildings. But at
the scale of these crystals, the matter behaves differently compared to its behaviour
at much larger scale and that's why it's important to investigate the characteristics
and behaviour of these materials. Small lime crystals react quickly compared to big
crystals and these help in reducing the setting time during on site work and, of
course, to save some money. Small crystals, however, tend to agglomerate, forming
big clusters that, of course, reduce the benefit of having small particles.
6:42Skip to 6 minutes and 42 secondsWhat we currently do is to investigate the best
way of using this innovative material, and the way to tweak it in order to make it more
sustainable for the modern construction industry. That's why, here, at the University
of Bath, we use state of the art equipment, and we work together with chemists,
physicists, and material scientists. We want to develop innovative construction
materials that suit better than the traditional ones, the need of the current
construction industry, and of course, of our society.

Welcome to Extraordinary Possibilities for Concrete. My name is Tim Ibell. I am

Professor of Structural Engineering at the University of Bath. Why is this area of
research important to me and to the planet? Well, that's a very typical construction
site, producing a concrete building. So you might ask yourself, why on earth do we
need to have an extraordinary change in the way that we deal with concrete
structures, such as that one? The answer is all to do with carbon emissions. By
2025, countries like the UK will have had to reduce their carbon emissions by 50%,
compared with 1990 levels - and by 2050, by 80%, compared with 1990 levels.

0:53Skip to 0 minutes and 53 secondsAnd you might still be wondering, well, what's
this got to do with concrete structures? Well, here are a couple of statistics which I
think might astound you. The first one is that cement, which is only one ingredient in
concrete, accounts for over 5% of the planet's carbon dioxide emissions - 5%. We
make 4,000 kilogrammes of concrete every year, per person, across the entire
planet. I really hope that those two little bits of information astound you. But the most
terrifying statistic of the lot is that 60% of this concrete serves absolutely no
structural purpose. So if we look at the concrete building that we have in front of us,
have a look at the suspended concrete slab on the left-hand side.
1:37Skip to 1 minute and 37 secondsThat's just one example of slabs which we see all
over construction sites, all over buildings, all over the world. Now, in most of those
concrete slabs that we see, the concrete is flat. It's a flat slab construction, which
means that we have the same amount of concrete everywhere. But we know, of
course, through common sense that some parts of those concrete slabs will be
heavily stressed, and some parts will be very lightly stressed. So by definition, we
are wasting concrete, because we're not putting concrete in varying amounts where
the stresses vary, and that's terribly important to us.
2:11Skip to 2 minutes and 11 secondsAnd if we're wasting 60% of our concrete, and
we have this amount of carbon emission coming from our concrete structures, we
have to do something about it. We have to have a transformation in the way that we
design concrete structures. So where do we start? Well, we need to start with two
obvious comments. The first one is, we need to put material where we need it, and
we need to remember that concrete's a fluid. We can shape it into any shape that we
want. So why is it that almost every time we use concrete, we place it as a rectangle
- in a rectangular mould? Why do we do that?
2:45Skip to 2 minutes and 45 secondsWhy don't we remember that we can make any
shape we want? Well, there's an example. Why don't we do this? This is a concrete
beam, supported at those two points, and it might carry some load across the top of
it. Now that, as it turns out, structurally, is the perfect shape for that concrete beam.
And you might ask why. The answer is, because the stresses are high where we
have large amounts of concrete. And where the stresses are low, we don't have very
much concrete at all. And that gives us that perfect structural shape. It also turns out
that it's rather beautiful, and that's natural. That's how things work in life.
3:20Skip to 3 minutes and 20 secondsWe know that airplanes are beautiful because
they're very efficient. Well, that's a very efficient concrete structure, and therefore is
also rather beautiful. And if you're wondering, at this point, well, yeah. Fair enough,
but how do you make such a concrete beam, which will save material compared with
a rectangular beam? That's the correct question to be asking, because what we use
is we use fabric. So this is an image of fabric which we use, which is being held by a
hand and that hand belongs to Professor Mark West, who is an architect at MIT, with
whom we collaborate significantly at the University of Bath. Mark is the modern
father of fabric form work for concrete structures.
3:58Skip to 3 minutes and 58 secondsSo what do we do with this fabric? Well, we
place it in a mould, which looks a bit like that. And you can imagine that we can
stretch this fabric longitudinally, or we can release it. And we can stretch it or release
it transversely, along its length, to produce any shapes that we want for architectural
and/or structural reasons. So that's what we do, and then we pour concrete into that
mould. And we can end up with structures which look a bit like this. This is a
wonderful example of a fabric-formed concrete structure. So it's got all the attributes
which we require.
4:31Skip to 4 minutes and 31 secondsIt saves concrete, because if you look carefully,
it's tapering towards its ends, where the stresses are low, and it's nice and deep in
the middle, where the stresses are high. But in addition, it also has those ribs along
its length, which are really rather beautiful. And remember that this is made with one
piece of fabric. So with that one piece of fabric, we're creating those ribs. They're
beautiful. But in addition, they're also serving a very good, intuitive structural reason
for their existence.
4:59Skip to 4 minutes and 59 secondsAnd I like to believe that when you were a child,
you might have thought that if we had to hold up a beam with a slab on top, with
some loading on top of that - as in any building, where the load would move - you
might've thought that it was a good idea to put ribs onto the beams, in the same way
that your spine has ribs to hold things in position, where we're not sure where the
loads will be. We can do this, and we can do this with one piece of fabric. It's not
something which is done at present, but we should be doing it. Why not?
5:30Skip to 5 minutes and 30 secondsAnother place in a concrete structure where we
can remove material is in the centre. Actually, stresses are really rather low in the
centre of a concrete structure - along the centre like, I should say. And so we can
remove holes. We can take great big chunks of concrete out of a concrete structure,
without affecting the strength whatsoever, using a single piece of fabric. And this is a
good example of that. And what you're looking at here is concrete. Be careful. You're
looking at concrete. You're not looking at fabric. The fabric has been removed, and
that's the texture which you get at the end of casting concrete into fabric.
6:06Skip to 6 minutes and 6 secondsAnd when we cast these sorts of structures in our
labs, which we do often, visitors to the lab will always walk up to these concrete
structures and feel the concrete. It is a texturally attractive thing to want to do. And
you need to ask yourself, how many times have you ever walked up to a concrete
structure and felt it? Take my word for it. You do, with these sorts of structures,
because they offer that texture. And we can play further. We can make those holes
bigger, and we can create architectural and structural shapes which are entirely
appropriate, which save enormous amounts of concrete, and which are very simple
to build, using a single piece of fabric.
6:46Skip to 6 minutes and 46 secondsHow do we make columns? Equally easy - we
take the fabric, as shown in this image, and we drape the fabric, and we clamp the
fabric - in this particular case, using two pieces of timber. And then we pour wet
concrete into the resulting tube. And that tube is formed, and as the wet concrete
rises up that tube, it's formed into a circular shape by the forces of nature. So the
forces of nature - those hydrostatic forces - give us that circular shape, which we
require.
7:15Skip to 7 minutes and 15 secondsNow, I want you to compare, in your mind, that
philosophy with the philosophy of very heavy steel formwork which we see on any
other construction site, where that heavy steel formwork is there to prevent the
concrete warping out of shape from a rectangular shape, under hydrostatic force. So
in normal construction, we are fighting the forces of nature. In fabric formwork
construction, we are using the forces of nature. And philosophically, that's a really
important point. And we can play further.
7:44Skip to 7 minutes and 44 secondsWe can make concrete columns which taper,
which splay out, which do all kinds of things, by playing around with the amount of
fabric that we either release or constrain at certain parts of these sorts of structure,
by using, again, a single piece of fabric. And the final aspect of fabric formwork,
which I think is really rather exciting, deals with durability. So this we discovered
entirely by chance. When we cast wet concrete into fabric, air and water escapes
through the fabric, and that's a perfectly natural process.
8:19Skip to 8 minutes and 19 secondsAnd the benefit which that has is that the
concrete which is close to the surface becomes cement-rich and a very durable and
powerful concrete - usually about a centimetre deep - in exactly the correct position
to protect the reinforcement. And we have discovered, through research which we've
conducted, that that improves the carbonation characteristics. It improves the
resistance to chloride ingress, in other words, through salts. And it also makes the
concrete harder by about 20%. So these are wonderful attributes, discovered
completely by chance in using fabric formwork. So what it means, in the end, is that
we have a form of construction using fabric, which enhances architecture. It
enhances structural engineering. It enhances durability.
9:06Skip to 9 minutes and 6 secondsAnd most important of all, it is an efficient use of
concrete, which prevents the needless waste which we see at present.

0:09Skip to 0 minutes and 9 secondsI'm Kemi Adeyeye. I'm a lecturer at the University
of Bath. I'll be talking about water sensitive architecture to mitigate urban floods. So,
some definitions to start with. The overarching principle of what we're going to be
talking about is integrated design, which looks at a holistic approach to design and
building challenges. Integrated design is generally used to find combined solutions to
things, and by combining necessary expertise such as architecture, engineering,
planning. And what we're trying to do is to tackle building and environmental issues.
Resilient architecture - or water system design, is probably a term that you've heard
before - promotes an integrated approach to managing the impact of water in nature
on the built environment or the natural environment.
1:06Skip to 1 minute and 6 secondsStrategies for water system design - or resilient
architecture - includes spatial and tectonic design of buildings, effective landscaping,
and combined sustainable urban drainage solutions. So there are four key areas I'll
be looking at - engineering, design, planning, and tectonics. So why do we need
water system design? Well, most people would have seen quite a lot about the
unprecedented water events - weather events, in general - that's been happening
around the world. So this is generally a global issue. And it demands a rethink of
current building and planning practices, not just in the UK, but globally as well.
1:47Skip to 1 minute and 47 secondsThe Munich Reinsurance Company based in
Germany published some recent data in 2015, which basically said that in 2014 and
2015, there were 900 weather-related loss events globally. And this resulted in 6,900
fatalities worldwide. The overall losses were valued at over US $97 billion, of which
insured losses were about $7 billion.
2:18Skip to 2 minutes and 18 secondsThe UK floods from the end of December 2013
to February 2014 resulted in about $1,500 million worth of losses. Only about $1,100
million of that were insured. So there were uninsured losses as part of that as well.
The UK storm floods of December 2015 - Storm Desmond, Eva, and the like - are so
far estimated at £400 to £500 million with insured losses of between £250 and £325
million as well. So metrological and ideological events - such as floods and storm
surges - tend to account for quite a lot of damage, loss events, and fatalities.
Fortunately, we've not had many fatalities as a result of recent floods in the UK.
3:13Skip to 3 minutes and 13 secondsSo a significant percentage of losses were to
buildings and infrastructural assets, rather than to lives. There is also significant
social impact in terms of loss of shelter, livelihood, health, welfare and security. So in
essence, water sensitive design is an important integrated consideration and
approach to reduce these vulnerabilities and mitigate social, economic and
environmental impact of these weather events. So what strategies can we use?
Living with water requires innovative architecture and planning solutions. It also
needs a culture shift, primarily by the professionals - engineers, architects, and the
like - as well as members of the public. So strategies that can be used include
effective architectural and tectonic design.
4:06Skip to 4 minutes and 6 secondsWe need to essentially learn to live better with
water, using robust materials - materials that are more likely to sustain less damage
due to water ingress and have better water resistivity to them, effective land
waterscaping - depending on the context - ecosensitive infrastructure, without
obviously affecting too much visual or aesthetic impacts of the built environment. So
this presentation will briefly outline each of these strategies starting with spatial and
tectonic design. This strategy involves effective positioning of spaces within the
building such that minimum loss or damage is incurred if buildings are flooded. The
visuals that you can see are examples from the Netherlands.
5:02Skip to 5 minutes and 2 secondsThe one below shows the floating buildings in in
Ijburg, close to Amsterdam. And the one at the top is Idenburg, close to Den Haag in
the Netherlands. And they basically show how buildings are positioned relative to the
physical environment, but also some of the positioning of spaces within the building
itself. Positioning such as non-critical functions on the ground floor. For example,
garages or raising the floors, or putting non-essential functions into the basement
levels as well. You can also have sealed or channelled flow of water through the
building, and there's been examples of this. Or you can raise the building, or raise
the ground floor, or have amphibian ground floors as well, or have amphibian
buildings as well.
5:49Skip to 5 minutes and 49 secondsEffective positioning of the building relative to the
site and hazard source is also very, very important. But these examples also show
that you shouldn't necessarily avoid building near water or on water, but that there
are innovative ways of delivering buildings in this environment whilst minimising the
risks or hazards as a result of that. We can also use robust materials. Again, it's
important that the materials used to finish off buildings are very robust and resilient
against water itself - so water ingress, moisture, and the like. Materials that are
porous should definitely be avoided and replaced with non-permeable materials.
6:34Skip to 6 minutes and 34 secondsBut in some of the examples that you can see,
they use non-permeable materials at the lower levels and they have a bit more
flexibility on the upper levels. So there's a little bit of creativity in how this is
approached. So materials can be effectively combined to deliver protection whilst
maintaining aesthetic and architectural interests. So again, you can have interesting
stuff. You can have good materials, use of colours - new modern, innovative
materials - or traditional materials - and still achieve a nice, resilient building.
Landscaping is also very important.
7:13Skip to 7 minutes and 13 secondsSo effective landscaping and drainage
infrastructure is very, very important, but this probably needs to be slightly subtle so
that you can better integrate the built and the natural environment and create
interesting yet humane spaces so you don't want too much hard landscaping, but
you'll probably want to balance your hard and soft landscaping to achieve a very
interesting effect whilst managing the water effectively as well. So techniques that
can be used include effective use of porous bricks - commonly known as sods -
raised cambers to building entrances, use of lawns, hedges, and other forms of
vegetation.
7:53Skip to 7 minutes and 53 secondsVarying the site levels, again, to achieve very
interesting visual impact, creative places, and spaces whilst making sure that water
drains effectively away from the building, rather than towards the building. And there
are some examples as well, where you can have super ponds or communal sumps
or things like that as temporary storage for water whilst the event is taking place.
8:23Skip to 8 minutes and 23 secondsThere's also been lots of interesting examples
about how these communal spaces, communal sumps, can work as joint spaces for
people on water. And there are now lots of examples in Europe and other places that
use water plazas to provide interesting and engaging solutions for managing water in
urban environments. So this example here is in Rotterdam - again, in the
Netherlands but there are examples of this in Hamburg - in Germany - and other
places where you have communal spaces that are used by general community when
it's dry but also serve as a communal sump if there's a flood event. It's important,
obviously, to communicate the purpose of these spaces to people and engage
people as part of this process.
9:11Skip to 9 minutes and 11 secondsSo use of signs, lots of other information
materials, within the spaces can be quite a positive way to communicate that. That
this space is also integrated right within the built environment, and not away from the
built environment, serves as a visual cue to engage with people and communicate
how people and spaces can respond to the changing nature of water in the
environment. So to summarise, with water sensitive design, it is important to deliver
weather and climate-adaptable buildings, reduce exposure and vulnerability, and
promote safe and healthy and resilient communities. So it's not just about the
buildings or the environment, but it's also about people.
10:00Skip to 10 minutes and 0 secondsSo a couple of further reading to look at
because this was quite a brief presentation and I hope you've enjoyed it