Article taken from A&B 06|2023 issue
Energy-active solutions in architecture
In a nutshell, energy-active solutions in architecture are all the elements and strategies applied to a building and its surroundings to ensure its comfort at minimal economic and environmental cost throughout its life cycle. The first step toward the energy regeneration of cities is to realize how energy-intensive our lives are within and between buildings. The second step should be a rediscovery of all design methods based on natural processes, and only the third step should be the use of mechanical means.
I first used the term "energy-aware architecture" in the name of a competition for students' engineering and master's theses at the Faculty of Architecture at Wroclaw University of Technology in 2013. We announced the competition for three years, six editions were held, and a total of sixty-five students participated. On average, less than 5 percent of the defended works took part in the competition - those were the times when few people competed in such competitions, and the issues of sustainability and energy efficiency may have been widespread, but little explored. Therefore, as a next step, I decided to publish a book with the same title. With the cooperation of colleagues from different disciplines and industries, practitioners, designers and didacticians, we created a kind of interdisciplinary handbook on energy-active architecture. There was a two-volume study on the concept itself, energy activity in terms of architecture, construction, installation, BIM, simulation tools, economic efficiency and the so-called life cycle in 2020. I am very pleased that now the topic has found its way to the pages of "A&B"!
I took the term "energy efficient" itself directly from an article by Krystyna Januszkiewicz and Henryk Katowicz-Kowalewski published in "Archivolt" in 2013. It meant individual buildings or cities equipped with a variety of mechanical solutions using RES or modeled after nature, such as solar panels, photovoltaic cells or more sophisticated energy-active sunshades, façade systems or shutter systems for regulating interior insolation.
In contrast, for me, the concept of energy-active architecture means any solution or strategy to reduce the environmental, economic and social costs spent on energy associated with the operation of buildings throughout their life cycle. The responsibility for these falls mainly on the architect working with other designers in an integrated design process. In such an approach, the primary selection criterion becomes the reduction of demand for usable, electrical and embedded energy. It is not about strictly active solutions (although the name may suggest so), but precisely specifically about so-called passive and natural (passive) solutions, that is, architectural and building-installation solutions, the use of which in any way contributes to reducing the consumption of said energy. All other so-called active solutions (mechanical: HVAC or lighting) should be supportive in order to improve and regulate occupant comfort. Their environmental and economic costs must be kept reasonably low.
An example of the simplest energy-active solution is all kinds of ways of sun sh ading, and ideally they should be at the same time the clou of the facility's architecture. It's all the same whether they be building elements such as canopies or loggias, balconies or various louvers, buffer zones, double facade systems or, finally, greenery. Their essence should be to protect the interior from overheating without the use of electricity. If the current, for example, to rotate large-scale blinds, will come from electricity produced on site - on the building, then I accept the solution as legitimate. These can also be shields in the form of canopies with photovoltaics, the better. Another very simple energy-active solution, in my opinion, is ventilation over space, especially efficient at night - hence its name free-cooling. Then I would list elements that accumulate cold and heat, from classic solid reinforced concrete or stone elements, compacted earth or clay, to modern solutions of phase-change materials, PCM. This is followed by working elements like solar chimneys and wind towers. Solutions based on the basic principles of convection, accumulation or the use of wind blows or aerodynamic corridors in the city, the use of local materials are used with great success as strategies in large-scale buildings designed by top architects.
In terms of saving electricity, the most energy-aware "solution" is a conscious user who turns off lights wherever they are unnecessary. A good solution is to zone lighting according to its position in relation to windows, so as to illuminate only the darkest zones of deep tracts. On a city scale, an energy-active solution would be to regulate the degree of illumination of spaces at night, with the necessary minimum lux late at night. An architectural element of providing natural light in interiors is solar shelves.
Finally, the simplest way to achieve reduced embedded energy is to use local, minimally processed, recycled and recyclable materials.
In the context of the energy regeneration of cities, energy-active architecture solutions are becoming very relevant, and are the subject of my classes at WA PWr. The conclusion is: it is not difficult to design a spectacular, fully or largely glazed building (which is cliché nowadays, by the way), the key is how you manage to ensure the comfort of its users. Of the twelve master's degrees defended in the 2023 graduation committees I conducted, four had just such large glazing, and future designers were convinced that reasonable summer temperatures could be provided by designing... air conditioning. This, in turn, as is known, for the time being generates huge economic and at the same time environmental costs of operating such a building. So, as I mentioned earlier, the key to urban regeneration is to pay attention to the simplest solutions, to understand and use the basic processes and mechanisms that enable the reduction of usable, electrical and embedded energy of buildings. I believe that as architects we have, as it were, a duty to use just such architectural solutions to improve urban life.
Anna Bać
Anna Bać - Architect and professor at the Faculty of Architecture, Wroclaw University of Technology, popularizer of eneregoactive architecture and regenerative design. Among other things, she is involved in advising on the sustainability of investments. She is a member of the Scientific Council of the Center for Sustainable Development and Climate Change at PWr, the Sustainable Development Group at ZG SARP and the Climate Council at UN GCNP, is active in KAiU PAN, is the founder of the Academy of Architecture by Bać, co-founder of the Scientific Center for Sustainable Built Environment at PWr. She has completed more than fifty projects in the integrated design process in the synergy group. She is the author of nearly ninety scientific publications and the book "Sustainability in Architecture. From Ideas to Implementation against the Background of Canadian Achievements" and editor of two volumes entitled "Energy-Efficient Architecture after 2021".
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