Green architecture for the future!

Green architecture is already high on the agenda of the current climate and
financial crises. For a long time, it was only non-profit organisations and
governments who were interested in ecologically sustainable construction.
Interest is now increasing dramatically across the whole of society.

Tomorrow’s skyscrapers will have moss-coveredfaçades that clean city air, integrated solar-powered heating, colours that change according to the season and time of day, entire floors of trees and bushes which produce energy and create micro-climates supporting birds and animals.

This was the vision of the future on show at the Green Architecture for the Future exhibition that has been held over the summer at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, close to Copenhagen, Denmark.

“How do we relate to the question of climate change when judgement day and miracles seem to be two sides of the same coin?” asked Poul Erik Tøjner, Director of the Museum, and Kjeld Kjeldsen, Museum Curator, at the launch of the exhibition at Louisiana.

“As a museum, we cannot produce complete  answers and solutions. But we can pose questions and leave the stage open for a diverse range of innovators and specialists.”

The exhibition’s perspective extends decades into the future. Architecture is seen as living machinery, towns as new structures, buildings as ‘intelligent’ so that they are not merely self-sufficient energy-wise, but can also contribute to their surroundings in the form of biological diversity and cleaner air.

Architects are already able to design buildings so that future generations can ‘re-programme’ them, both technically and functionally. Industrialism’s architects coined the phrase ‘form follows function’. “Maybe we should now coin the phrase ‘form must follow evolution’,” say Tøjner and Kjeldsen. Interest in green construction has also exploded in  everyday life, while innovative technical solutions are becoming more accessible. The construction sector is also significant. The U.S. Green Building Council has stated that buildings account for more than one third of total carbon dioxide emissions and 70% of electricity consumption in the USA. Figures that are also relevant for the rest of the world.

“The U.S. Green Building Council has stated that buildings account for more than one third of total carbon dioxide emissions and 70% of electricity consumption in the USA. Figures that are also relevant for the rest of the world.”

The world’s greenest house
IUCN’s Conservation Centre in Gland, Switzerland, is a realistic project with high ambitions, with completion scheduled for March 2010.The new head office for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN – one of the oldest and most prominent networks for environmental issues and active at government level in 160 countries - will be one of the world’s greenest buildings according to the plans. (Kinnarps Magazine reported on the project in issue 10.) Among other things, around 85% of the energy consumption will come from renewable energy sources, primarily geothermal heating and solar power.

IUCN has chosen Kinnarps to supply the furniture and interior fittings for the building. “We want to create an international showcase,” explained Julia Marton-Lefèvre, Director General of the IUCN, when the decision was announced last spring, “and only by working with partners who are engaged in the question of ecological sustainability can we fully achieve our goals.”

In line with the IUCN project ambitions, Kinnarps are also leading their own campaign with the slogan ‘Think green. Save money.’, which concentrates on four main areas: room planning, lighting and energy, meeting planning and quality. Kinnarps wants to help customers create greener and more efficient workplaces, find lighting solutions that do not lose natural light and generally aim for low-energy alternatives, provide greener and tailored ideas for meetings, and also explain how high quality and flexibility from the start can contribute to durable interior solutions that can be used for longer.

The city, the climate and the materials
In Louisiana’s Green Architecture for the Future, architecture is meshed with science, politics, ethics and social visions. Four international, innovative architectural firms, Ecosistema Urbano, Foster + Partners, R & Sie(n) and Philippe Rahm are among those who were invited, as guest curators, to give a visionary perspective on problems such as the city, the climate and the materials.

The same themes are also present in the IUCN building in Gland, Switzerland, although at a more pragmatic level.For example,cooling a building is oftenmore problematic in terms of energy consumption than heating the same building. IUCN’s new Conservation Centre will use balconies and adjustable blinds to help keep the heat out during the summer and contribute to passive solar heating during the winter. The need for artificial light indoors is reduced in proportion to the amount of natural light that can be used. Keeping costs down is also a high priority.

“The budget is the same as when we built our current offices twenty years ago,” noted Merja Murdoch, Head of HQ Administration at IUCN, when the building plans were presented. “We are not only lowering our future energy costs.We are also doing so at a cost-level for the actual construction that hasn’t changed in two decades.”

INGRID SOMMAR