Sustainable Building
Posted: March 30th, 2013, 11:06 am
The word "sustainable" is a little too buzzwordy/empty for me, but it beats "green". Anywho, I thought we should have a thread for the topic. There's a pretty interesting article over at The Atlantic Cities about whether it's possible/worth it to save a lot of mid-20th century buildings if you're concerned with maximizing energy efficiency. It has a really good comment section, too, with folks rehashing some of the same things (brutalism, etc) we've talked about in other threads here.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/design ... ings/5126/
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/design ... ings/5126/
The Case Against Saving Midcentury Office Buildings
Anthony Flint
Mar 29, 2013
Back in the day at the Harvard Design School, I had the pleasure of auditing a course called "Green Modern," a history of environmental consciousness through the 20th century in architecture. The instructor, Hashim Sarkis, explored the alleged green roots of modern architecture: at one with nature, of nature, planet-friendly.
Yet hermetically sealed office towers and concrete downtown parking garages don’t conjure thoughts of meadows and flowers. And in fact, the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s didn’t give us a lot of energy efficiency. Quite the opposite. Whatever you think of the avant-garde form of the era, its strong suit, and its essential motivation, was never conservation. Heat leaked wholesale from atriums; floor plates required the steady blast of air conditioning, sucking up power all the way up to the heavens.
A new report chronicles just how un-green mid-century buildings are. Midcentury (Un)Modern: An Environmental Analysis of the 1953-1978 Manhattan Office Building, by the firm Terrapin Bright Green, suggests that it would be on the whole better for the environment to tear down energy-inefficient buildings, rather than trying to retrofit them — or even compared to letting them continue to function, as is.
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