The Hydra Pier Pavilion
SUSTAINABILITY FRAMEWORK
How is it possible to keep the immense deposits of raw materials in buildings "active" and realise environmentally sustainable buildings in the long term? Besides "sufficiency, consistency and efficiency", this goal implies the intelligent use of resources, the recyclability of structures, circular construction methods that reuse decommissioned materials, in short "urban mining". This requires a rethink in planning and execution, thus posing a great challenge for architects and engineers.
At the programmatic planning level , sufficiency means minimising area per person while providing communal areas( shared spaces ).
At the policy level , measures that combat vacant commercial spaces , weak demand for housing ( in economically underdeveloped areas ) and emprty luxury housingthat is only used as an investment ( in major cities) would all be desirable .A prescribed minimum number of users per m2 of plot area would be another helpful instrument in planning new buildings to achieve the required urban density .
Architects and planners can play a huge role in climate change as we think about the built environment and how to design for the future .But that question should have been asked and answered 20 years ago.Unfortunately we are now on a quite steep trajectory with the impacts of climate change .That’s why we should not only think about changing the build environment but also adapting to the changing natural environment …There are countless settlements build around and on the water that work well .The easiest solution is to learn from them .We also need to reduce our reliance on concrete and use nature – based building materials instead, like wood,bamboo ,and stone .They are great materials that are used where they grow.It doesn’t make sense to transport building materials around the world.
Human ingenuity is usually so abundant that it hardly seems remarkable. It is evident in the practical solutions to the countless mundane difficulties we face as a species. On a daily basis, for instance, an average city receives an uninterrupted and seemingly coordinated supply of thousands of tons of food and fuel, tens of millions of liters of water, and hundreds of thousands of kilowatt hours of electricity. Huge quantities of wastes are removed; hospitals provide health services; knowledge is transmitted from adults to children in schools; police forces protect property and personal safety; and hundreds of committees and councils from the community to the city level deal with matters of governance. Of course, the amount of ingenuity needed to run such a system is not the same as the amount required to create it, because at any one time a vast array of routines and standard operating procedures guides people's actions. But the system and its countless elements are the products of the incremental accretion of human ingenuity. They have been created, over time, by millions of small ideas and a few big ones.
The opposite of a culture of selfishness is a culture of good will, civicmindedness, and trust. Social theorists acknowledge the importance of these virtues to economic wellbeing."5 A culture with strong norms of civicmindedness can impede the rise of narrow coalitions as scarcity worsens. In fact, scarcity can sometimes lead to greater unity and commitment to the common good, rather than to fragmentation.
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Sustainable cities and communities along with sustainable infrastructure, life on land , energy and clean water amongst others is at the center of the UN SDG’s.Architectural design interacts with each one of the Sustainable Goals. The two serious crises, the climate change and the biodiversity loss call city leaders and residents to action demanding architecture’s commitment to trees, biodiversity, recyclability and innovative creative attitudes in dealing with issues like water collection in ways whereas “conventional engineering techniques would have relied on pipes and infrastructure to flush the water away “(GSD,2024). The roof of the Hydra Pier Pavilion will fulfil a different purpose in 2024 than it did in 2002. Since “the first six months of 2024 were the wettest on record in the Netherlands, with 75% more rain than average” (Dutch News,2024) its water collecting ability would seem even more impressive than its aesthetic presence.
RIBA has set the 2030 Climate Challenge targets around health nd well-being, the use of potable water, the embodied carbon and operational energy (RIBA,2024). It is important to distinguish between the linear and circular economies and the role of mature architectural design that goes optimization and linearity ,is rethinking materials and building life cycles and functions as a “solution provider ” (Dokter, Thuvander, Rahe ,2021) A circular sustainable economy is based on the notion that the natural , the built environment and economic activities are interconnected and re-thinking their values adapting their prespective “by shifting toward a cyclical view of the lives of materiality and building products…”(GSD,2020).
Carbon emissions and dependence on fossil fuels contribute to global warming through the emissions associated with their extraction and use (Pelsmakers, 2015).Architectural design addresses energy efficiency issues and urban carbon emissions as a by-product of construction activities and building usage along with waste management issues (Kim & Chae, 2016). Poor material usage and poor waste disposal methods during construction are known ways in which the environment is damaged, and proper environmental management systems can deal with it (Hawkes, et al., 2007) . The use of renewable energy technologies, solar panels, hydroelectric power generation technology and the use of green building certifications like BREEAM and LEED (BRE, 2023) state that “circularity offers the potential to ‘build back better’”. (WRAP, 2024).
Concrete being “the most widely used substance on Earth after water”( Willmer,2022) in the built environment production draws the attention of researches and designers .We are aware that buildings cause environmental damage worsening the climate crisis “through enormous annual CO2 emissions “(Gonzalez,2022). Bio-based materials functioning as sustainable alternatives to traditional materials in the construction industry as architecture rethinks its material choices (GSD,2024). Bacterial bio-cement transforms our interaction with buildings over their lifespan (MIT,2024). Biology-inspired approaches like self-healing sustainable construction materials created with tailored -to-the project recipes or biocementation help the built environment creation navigate through the tough times of energy transition and climate crises.( EU,2022)
SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT
In the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, sustainable transport is mainstreamed across several SDGs and targets, especially those related to food security, health, energy, economic growth, infrastructure, and cities and human settlements. The importance of transport for climate action is further recognized under the UNFCCC - the transport sector will be playing a particularly important role in the achievement of the Paris Agreement, given the fact close to a quarter of energy-related global greenhouse gas emissions come from transport and that these emissions are projected to grow substantially in the years to come.
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Community Involvement: Engaging the community in the construction process to ensure the architecture serves its true purpose.
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Sustainability: Utilizing local, sustainable materials and techniques to minimize environmental impact.
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Education: Designing spaces that educate and elevate the community, transforming everyday interactions with architecture into learning opportunities.
Robust architecture is designed to meet needs; its structures are sufficient, resilient and suited to the location. It embraces the potential of simplicity, traditional building methods and alternative ways of building sustainable architecture, with an emphasis on local building materials, solid craftsmanship, proven construction methods and user participation. Its design strategies, combined with state-of-the-art planning tools and research findings, look ahead to a climate-positive future.
The energy transition today can olnly succed with some measure of technology .The hope that technology represents the sole solution for the climate crisis ,relegates the responsibility to future generations.Thanks to globalisation,industrialisation and rationalisation of building production ,traditional building culture and associated knowledge and craftmanship have gradually been lost.
….As glass high – rises in dessert regions , specialised high-tech façades in salt-laden sea air ans oversized villas in the sprawling developments outside metropolitan centers arise, gobbling fossil fuels for airconditioning, paving over large tracts of land and leading to exploding maintenance costs , the question to ask is whether this building approach is really sensible in the long term.
How is it possible that all all the energy-saving measures implemented over the last few decades have led to the consumption of more energy ? And in these days of climate and energy crises , is it not high time to return to locally adapted and need-oriented building methods in order to arrive , if possible , at a new robust architecture ? An architecture that meets today’s requirements and demands for comfort , but that once again guarantees long-lived ,intrinsically valuable buildings -or better yet : restores the value of existing buildings -by taking into account simple low-tech parameters.
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The only way to exit from the spiral of energy dependence is via a sweeping paradigm shift .We need robust architecture that lasts a long time ,consumes few resources and is need-oriented and resilient.
