ENERGY AND WATER
There is a need to monitor the usage of building energy and water..
The major contribution to greenhouse gases that cause the global warming is from the infrastructure of the expanding cities. Hence, need for designing the buildings in coherence with the systems that can monitor or lower the energy and water consumption has become a necessity for buildings to not increase the harm to earth.
The strategies that a designer uses in the project needs monitoring as well. One of the examples in Cowichan Campus at the Vancouver Island University. It is a highly efficient, centralized mechanical system that makes it a high performance building envelope and lighting design. This project experienced discrepancies between the total consumption of energy during first year of the project, but designer’s intervention and knowledge, solved the issue, and resulted in a LEED Canada Gold Certification. Such examples prove that it has become imperative to improve the standards of designing spaces, to incorporate the needs for future.
AIA’s guidelines to integrating Energy modeling in the design process states that energy is a design problem.
We, need to design high performance spaces to not only meet the programmatic needs, but budgets, client’s requirements and most importantly survival of future generations. A buildings orientation, building envelope/ faces, massing all govern the energy and water consumption throughout the lifespan of the building. Hence there is a need to incorporate the building’s efficiency at project’s inception, which would result in being less expensive. A simple addition of shading device to openings could improve the HVAC system, and result in low running cost for lifetime.
This incorporation and consideration of energy consumption need to be addressed in architectural practice, independent of the size of the firm or client, an easy way to implement this is to incorporate guidelines in the bylaws, which forces people to design efficiently. In a lot of states, there are some guidelines, but is insufficient given the climate change rate, that we are all aware of.
“..Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink..”
- Excerpt from 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Living in the times of global warming - rise of sea level, the increase in water levels is flooding the land slowly, trying to regain the imbalance implemented by us as humans on earth. Now it is not just something that we need to start thinking about, or do our bit to save the planet earth, but it is the time to implement it on wider scales to preserve the resources for our future generation.
While designing the buildings, even if the priority is to design for energy consumption, water needs to be given as much priority. It would not only solve a growing challenge that a lot of cities face, but it can reduce the cost of functioning the building, and provide a long term solution as well.
It need to be addressed by designers and city regulations and guidelines, which lacks in a lot of countries right now. The article on vision 2020 water preservation by Paula and Sarah state that, “it would be all green-building certifications could require projects to obtain points for the collection, treatment, and use of alternate water sources. Currently LEED only includes 11 water efficiency points but has 37 energy efficiency points.” Even the fixtures that use water need to be according to optimum water consumption, that could reduce the use of water, like showers and use as much as recycled water as possible.
Sources:
1. AIA-Architect's Guide to Integrating Energy Modeling in the Design Process
2. ASHRAE-Stratergies for Sustainability by Smith
3. Sustainable Urbanism
4. Article on Vision 2020 Water Efficiency