Architect Notebook .... WILL IT BE COMFORTABLE?

Just as a designer’s attitudes towards structure and how that structure is clad may profoundly affect the form-making process, so may our stance regarding environmental comfort have a powerful bearing upon that formal outcome. And just as architects harnessed new technologies of structure and construction to liberate the plan, so did an artificially controlled internal environment remove traditional planning limitations; the option now existed for creating deep-planned buildings freed from the organizational constraints of natural ventilation and lighting.

Active v passive

Therefore, the designer may decide that comfort will be achieved totally by artificial means where heating, ventilation and lighting standards are met by the installation of sophisticated mechanical and electrical plant. This may be considered to be one ‘type’ where the internal environment is subjected entirely to artificial control. At the other extreme, the designer may wish to harness the building’s inherent characteristics in a passive way to control levels of comfort.

Clearly, the selection by the designer of an‘environmental’ type has consequences upon the development and outcome of the design as profound as considerations of type when applied to ‘structure’ and ‘plan’. All such types must be considered simultaneously and are inherently interactive. Therefore at one extreme we arrive at a type entirely dependent upon the mechanical control of heating, cooling and ventilation for thermal comfort and upon permanent artificial lighting. At the other, a type emerges which embraces purely passive measures in achieving acceptable levels of comfort, not only harnessing the building fabric to achieve natural ventilation and lighting, but also potentially using the building as a collector of available solar and wind energy; in extreme cases such buildings may exceed in energy generation their energy consumption.

Architectural expression

The outcome of such concerns for energy consumption has been a profound modification of established parts for a range of building types as diverse as offices, hospitals, health centers, housing and schools. Presciently per-dating the energy crisis by several years, St. George’s School, Wallasey, Cheshire, by E.A. Morgan, 1961, was a pioneering example of harnessing solar energy. Central to the environmental functioning of the building was the ‘solar wall’ whose height and length to a large extent predetermined the form and orientation of the building.

The expression of these massive piers and the barrel-vaulted floor slabs which they support help us to ‘read’ the building but also provide a repetitive rhythm and ‘scale’ to the elevations. Moreover, the light shelves which reflect daylight deep into the plan and the low-level louvres which prevent the penetration of winter sun are also used to impart an intensity to the scale of the building. Cylindrical thermal chimneys extract air from the offices, accommodate the stairs, and offer an external ‘marker’ to the points of entry. The result is a satisfying correspondence of plan type, structural and environmental types, formal outcome and detailed architectural expression.