I just finished reading the
humorous, direct, and in my opinion - very accurate assessment by Dr. Joseph
Lstiburek of the dysfunctional separation of good building science and the current state of building design.
You can always count on Dr.
Lstiburek to tell it the way it is and this article tells it straight.
Having recently completed both the BuildGreen and LEED AP training courses, I
cannot agree more with Joe's points of view. When things like 'day-lighting'
are given more points and priority in a building design than ensuring a bullet
proof and energy efficient building envelop, then the system has somehow been
turned on its head and all the change is falling out of the pockets in terms of
heat loss or gain through a poorly performing envelope.
Part of my journey through the
'sustainable neighbourhood' has been down flashy roads that promise all manner
of wonderful things for me if I just use this particular flooring, or use
ground up glass for my counter-tops. Oh and how healthy I will be if I
can just design a dwelling where I can see every leaf on every tree from every
spot within that dwelling.
Now do not get me wrong, these
are all important aspects of a good and sustainable building design. But
on scale of importance they are nearer the bottom. If the basics like
shedding water, keeping heat in or out, and ensuring the transfer of air is
only through the holes YOU want, are not thought out and well executed, then
what have you really achieved? You end up with a building that is much more
expensive to build (putting in all the premium non-VOC finishing products, huge
volumes of glazing, LED lighting, etc.) but will not pay you back with
substantial and measurable energy savings. And unless you are reducing
your energy needs you are not fixing the planet no matter how many gallons of
Volo paint you use on your project.
I have now realized that the
roads I should travel on in the 'sustainable neighbourhood' are the narrow,
darker lanes that talk about building science, continuous insulation, air
barrier strategies, glazing ratios, building compactness, dew-point potentials,
drying potentials, ... While these roads are not as flashy as the others,
they do provide the promise of a payback of my investment and the ability to
make a real change to my impact on the planet. The vendors along these
roads all provide real-word methods for measuring their products performance
and therefore payback.
I have come to see the beauty of
these lanes. They are narrow because that allows the most efficient use
of land. They are darker because they are conserving electricity and do
not have flashy neon signs. Just billboards providing defendable
promises. I recently had a discussion with a colleague over the aesthetics
of a particular roof design on a high-rise we were driving past. He has
more of an artistic aptitude than I and was trying to get me to see the nice
lines of the design and how it 'flowed' and was different than the traditional
box look. All I could see was that it had a butterfly design that would
not adequately shed water and to me that was 'ugly'.
I believe this is the point that
Dr. Lstiburek is is trying to make; until the design community, and population
as a whole, start seeing bad building envelope design as ugly, we will all just
be standing on our heads with the money pouring out of our pockets!
