The 49th International Conference of the Architectural Science Association (ASA)

ASA’s most recent conference themed ‘Living and Learning: Research for a better built environment’, was held at the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne School of Design from 2 to 4 Dec 2015.

With parallel sessions and keynote speakers on each day, topics explored the need to retrofit existing housing stock for heatwave resilience, the SAMBA IEQ monitoring system, performative guidelines for the 21st century park and policy consideration of the increasing impact of embodied energy on a building’s life cycle energy demand.

The Chair, Chris Jensen, opened the conference by posing to ‘look across the globe to Paris and ask are we doing enough?’ Regenerative design, climate change resilience, new technologies and a call for improved standards for building and urban performance featured as themes throughout.

Keynote: Professor Brian Dunbar

Professor Brian Dunbar, Executive Director of the Institute for the Built Environment (IBE), Colorado State University, outlined IBE’s philosophy of taking research to practice, elaborating upon the multi-disciplinary nature of the faculty which includes sociologists, landscape architects and construction managers. IBE’s mission is ‘to advance the development of healthy thriving built environments’. Professor Dunbar shared projects that related to five focal areas (the respective linked resources are publicly available documents):

• Buildings that teach – Example: Red Hawk Elementary (LEED Gold certified)
• Integrative Design Process – The Social Network of Integrative Design outlines steps for the optimisation of collaborative team work in building design and construction
• Regenerative Design – LENSES Application Guide, described as not another rating tool, but a process framework to get to regenerative strategies and ideas. Also refer Designing for Hope: Pathways to Regenerative Sustainability by Dominique Hes and Chrisna du Plessis
• Healthy built environments – Examples: Children’s Discovery Village, Cheyenne Wyoming Botanic Gardens (LEED Platinum certified) and Ecodistrict, Portland, Oregon.
• Organisational sustainability – Whole school sustainability framework ‘A building can be an intentional teaching tool by engaging student curiosity through thoughtful design and utilization by educators’.

Keynote: Professor Donald Bates

Professor Donald Bates, LAB Architecture Studio, presented two case studies illustrating the concept of ‘multiple benefits out of solving multiple issues’.

A sustainable whole-of-precinct approach (SWOPA) guided the unsolicited idea of the Birrarung Pools project in Batman Park, Melbourne. The proposed pool draws upon the precinct’s resource opportunities to meet some of the operational needs of a new pool. Discussion with the neighbouring Casino and Aquarium identified the need to discharge excess heat and hot water from these respective buildings and rainwater collection was identified from the roofs of the adjoining Crowne Plaza hotel and North Bank. Replacing the existing European style garden bank with indigenous planting provides an on-site filter bed. Birrarung Pools offers a design response that draws upon concepts of industrial ecology in meeting the identified facility gap of a public pool in the south of the CBD.

In revisiting design solutions incorporated at Melbourne’s Federation Square, Bates described how ‘every decision is a set of multiple decisions’. Key to the cooling strategy was the labyrinth – a passive cooling system comprised of a maze of corrugated concrete walls situated beneath the plaza in an otherwise unused sloping space. Cool air from the Yarra River on the south of the site passes through and is absorbed by the articulated wall surfaces of the labyrinth. The concrete walls also act as a structural device to support the plaza above the railway deck. This dual function eliminated the need to introduce steel and also reduced consultant costs resulting from the reduced scope of mechanical services. Combined with a displacement system to deliver the cooled air at floor level, a significant reduction in energy is achieved for the complex.

Drivers and barriers to heatwave-resilient building retrofitting in the Australian context

Gertrud Hatvani-Kovacs shared analysis of a survey into perception of, adaptation to and retrofitting against heatwaves in Adelaide. Given one of three heatwave-related deaths occurs indoors (Coates et al., 2014) and a relatively slow building stock turnover rate, retrofitting of existing housing stock for population resilience against heatwaves was proposed as essential. The results indicated that the majority of the existing residential building stock was not heatwave-resilient and the occupants were not willing to retrofit. Key barriers included the expense of retrofitting measures, being a tenant and a lack of knowledge. The most prevalent retrofitting measure was air-conditioning, followed by improved shading of the house. Increased garden vegetation and changing the roof colour were underrepresented retrofitting measures, suggesting future retrofit programs should promote these less popular, highly efficient retrofitting interventions.

Introducing the SAMBA indoor environmental quality monitoring system

A shift in focus from crude energy metrics to a more nuanced indoor environment quality (IEQ) performance has given rise to the evolution of technology to measure IEQ. Richard de Dear presented SAMBA – small, low-cost, desk-based monitors with sensors for thermal comfort (air and radiant temperatures, air speed and humidity), acoustics (SPL), lighting (lux) and air quality (CO2, CO, TVOC, Formaldehyde and PM10). Acknowledging that expense has been a bottleneck to a more widespread use of IEQ performance ratings such as NABERS IE, SAMBA can deploy multiple devices across multiple floors to provide a very clear picture in real time of a building’s IEQ, autonomous of an organisation’s wi-fi system. SAMBA provides a welcome evolution in IEQ measurement.

Designing the 21st century urban park: design strategies for a warming climate

Jillian Walliss presented an explorative comparison of Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay and Taiwan’s Phase Shifts Park as contemporary open space designs with performative attributes. A shift towards performative attributes for open space is identified as an emerging trend. For instance New York introduced High Performance Landscape Guidelines: 21st Century Parks for NYC in 2011. Catherine Mosbach and Phillip Rahm’s Phase Shifts Park, due for completion in 2016, aims to provide a comfortable and healthy outdoor environment by creating a diversity of conditions including cooling climatic devices, planting regimes and ultrasonic speakers to keep mosquitos away. This approach represents a merging of technological and biological performance in response to climate conditions such as high humidity and poor air quality. As it becomes increasingly hard to inhabit external space under adverse climate conditions and a changing climate, a shift towards improving the performance of parks and open space is predicted to become more common, as demonstrated in these Asian examples.

Does current policy on building energy efficiency reduce a building’s life cycle energy demand?

Robert Crawford questioned a current policy focus on thermal performance in light of the increasing proportional impact of embodied energy on building energy efficiency. Referencing COAG’s National Strategy on Energy Efficiency statement that ‘six, seven and eight star buildings, or equivalent, will become the norm in Australia, not the exception’, Crawford posits that a ‘business as usual focus on thermal improvements may be at its limit’. The paper investigated the life cycle primary energy repercussions of increasing building energy efficiency levels over 50 years for a case study house in Melbourne and Brisbane. Energy efficiency is improved by material or design changes as well as a combination of both. The results revealed that ‘design changes result in the greatest benefit’ – reducing both operational and embodied energy requirements simultaneously. Material changes alone resulted in an increased life cycle energy demand in Brisbane and negligible life cycle energy benefits in Melbourne. The paper calls for a more comprehensive approach in policy on housing energy efficiency that considers embodied energy and encourages a design approach to energy performance.

For further information on embodied energy in buildings, refer to the free EDG note Life Cycle Energy Analysis by Robert Crawford.

All 2015 papers can be viewed here.
Abstracts are currently being sought for the 2016 ASA conference here.