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Submission 1
Architecture as Adapted Environment:
Ecological Theory in the design of
Council House 2, Melbourne
Abstract
Biological analogies are commonplace in architectural theory. Concepts of
morphology and function, so central to Modernism, were brought to
architecture by Gottfried Semper, whose writings on style were influenced by
the work of biologist Georges Cuvier. Cuvier’s ideas were further developed
by D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, whose work is frequently cited by Le
Corbusier. Thompson’s theories, combined with other studies of dynamic
systems, have also formed the basis of a ‘new biology’, interpreted through the
writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, by architects such as Greg Lynn
and Lars Spuybroek. Recent interest in the temporal aspects of architecture by
authors such as Stewart Brand originates in the ‘hierarchical’ model of
ecosystems by O’Neill et al.i The idea of a building as an ‘ecosystem’ has
gained relevance with the increasing interest in ‘Ecologically Sustainable
Development’ (ESD). Ironically, the term ‘ecology’ originates in the Greek
oikos (house), suggesting that nature be regarded as a house in which
organisms dwell. This idea is further developed in ecological models by
Richard Lewontinii, J. Scott Turneriii and F. John Odling-Smee et al,iv that
describe the mutual adaptation between organisms and environment as ‘niche
construction’.
Concepts of ‘limit’ are often invoked in ecological theory, alerting us to the
earth’s capacity to support population and consumption levels, or to the lack of
technological solutions to environmental problems. This paper will explore
the way architecture redefines limits by helping to establish a two way
relationship between people and the environment. The paper will focus on the
work of architect Mick Pearce, and in particular, ‘Council House 2’, the new
premises for the City of Melbourne, due for completion in 2005. Pearce uses
the concept of ‘niche construction’ as a model for the environmental systems
of a building in order to promote the possibility of mutual adaptation between
inhabitants and the built environment.
Introduction
The recent interest in ecologically sustainable design (ESD) can be seen as the
latest instance of the use of a variety of scientific metaphors to generate
architecture. Yet while ecologists investigate biogeochemical cycles, trophic
layers, and population dynamics, architects address such issues as passive
lighting, ventilation, and thermal performance, and energy and water
embodiment, collection, and reuse. Are these principles compatible with an
‘ecological’ view of a building and its inhabitants? Alternatively, can ecology
offer new ways of thinking about architecture and its environmental systems?
Exchanges between the two ought to be fruitful, especially since the term
‘ecology’ originates in the Greek oikos (house), suggesting that nature be
regarded as a house in which organisms dwell.
Ecology is a relatively recent science, but the idea of ‘healthy’ buildings can
be found in architecture from the writings of Vitruvius through to the hygienic
obsessions of Modernism.v Biological analogies are also commonplace in
architectural theory. Concepts of morphology and function were brought to
architecture by Gottfried Semper, whose writings on style were influenced by
the work of biologist Georges Cuvier. Cuvier’s ideas were further developed
by D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, whose work is frequently cited by Le
Corbusier. Thompson’s theories, combined with other studies of dynamic
systems, have also formed the basis of a ‘new biology’, interpreted through the
writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, by architects such as Greg Lynn
and Lars Spuybroek. Meanwhile, organic analogies used in the nineteenth
century by Eugène Emmanuel Viollet le Duc were influential for Louis
Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright in America,vi and for Hugo Häring and Hans
Scharoun in Germany.vii For these architects, organic concepts are
predominantly formal, to do with structure, composition, or detail. Systemic
metaphors are less prevalent, but certainly do occur. The idea of circulation,
for example, borrowed from William Harvey’s description of the movement of
the blood, was to prove highly influential in the planning and design of
cities.viii
Office Ecology
One of the greatest advances in ecological architecture has come not from the
biomorphic tradition, but from office design. As new forms of technology
have affected modes of work and workplace inhabitation, architects have
responded by developing dynamic models of space provision. By
acknowledging different levels of worker autonomy and interaction, office
design can accommodate temporal change as workers move between
workstations, meeting areas, and other formal and informal spaces. Pioneering
in this area is British firm DEGW, and founding partner Francis Duffy.ix
Duffy has explored workplace design in terms of both different activity types
and different rates of change of building elements. Based upon a hierarchical
model of ecosystems developed by R.V. O'Neill et al,x Duffy describes various
‘layers of longevity’ of a building that are renewed at different rates,
consisting of site, structure, skin, services, space plan, and ‘stuff’. This
hierarchic model has also been used by Stewart Brand to develop ideas of
building adaptation that are fundamental to ecological principles of reuse and
recycling.xi
The work of DEGW attempts to provide a greater correspondence between
office space and organisational structure. The metaphor of an ecosystem has
recently been applied within organisational theory by Hannan and Freeman to
describe those arrangements between the members of the organisation that
allow it to function – its structure, its modes of operation and communication.
Yet while the principal concern of Hannan and Freeman appears to be
‘mortality’ rates of organisations, the possibility exists for architects to work
towards a reasonable or even harmonious relation between the ‘ecology’ of an
organisation and the ‘ecology’ of the building that it inhabits. In other words,
the purpose of a ‘building’ in ecological terms is to facilitate organisational
operation in terms of its spatial and environmental requirements. The
importance of spatial provision for workers links back to both early industrial
philanthropy and to negotiations between worker groups and employees since
the eighteenth century. The idea of providing a greater connection to nature
was at the heart of the garden city movement, evident at its beginnings in the
New Lanark Mills outside Edinburgh.xii
The history of the workplace can in large part be seen as a balance between
improvements to worker conditions and the economics of profit maximisation,
and between the amenity of an urban location and the benefits of bucolic
isolation. Office design also suffered from its original connection to industrial
production. Buildings such as the 1906 Larkin Building in Buffalo, New
York, by Frank Lloyd Wright, an administrative centre within a soap factory,
sought to create a clean environment isolated from the adjacent plant. Even
when freed from their industrial context and able to move to the inner city, the
need for protection continued, with air and noise pollution a characteristic
feature of urban environments. Today, one of the principal reasons for sealed
offices is to protect workers from the noise and exhaust generated by city
traffic. This isolation led to the use of active environmental systems of
fluorescent lighting and airconditioning. Ironically, the introduction of these
systems was driven by the same sort of arguments that are today being used to
encourage their removal, with promises of increased productivity, safety, and
efficiency that were originally used to promote the hermetically sealed office.
The promise of a more natural environment emerged briefly in the 1960’s with
the bürolandschaft, or office-landscape, derived from studies of workplace
communication in Hamburg, Germany. This proved extremely popular,
especially in the US, although predominantly for cost reasons – they were
cheaper to build and easier to arrange than walled offices, and, deemed as
furniture, were more rapidly tax deductible. The idea of a landscape became
somewhat diluted when transformed into a loosely planned series of cubicles
arrayed on a large floor plate, with most workers sandwiched between carpeted
floors and suspended ceilings arrayed with fluorescent lights and air
conditioning registers. A few indoor plants did not make up for the fact that
most workers ended up far removed from windows and the connection they
provide to the outside world. Reaction against these conditions led to much of
the current European legislation mandating access to operable windows and
views.
The ‘landscape’ idea was generally interpreted as a horizontal array, but the
emergence of the atrium as a feature of office design opened up the vertical
dimension. With daylight from above and planting below, atria provide a
protected version of nature for office workers to look onto or walk through.
Protected from above, such spaces allowed a greater degree of interconnection
between offices and common space. This allowed innovative office
arrangements, such as the tower and pod arrangement used by Herman
Herzberger in the Central Beheer Insurance Company offices in Apeldorn,
Holland (1972). Along with planting at the edge of pods that open into the
atrium space, this gives a forest-like feel to the building as a whole, a series of
separate spaces with a sense of visual and physical connection. More recently,
buildings such as Norman Foster’s Commerzbank in Frankfurt, Germany
(1997) and Swiss Re headquarters in London (2004) have employed building
edge atria and ‘double skin’ technology to achieve similar connections both
between inhabitants and out to the external environment.
Such offices may well be pleasant places to work, but can they fruitfully be
considered as ‘ecological’ systems? What kind of ecology – coastal, forest,
grassland, etc. – would a building, or even a city, most closely approximate?
And would that ecology provide for the physiological needs of its inhabitants?
Throughout the extensive comfort studies undertaken in the last
several decades, the predominant aim has been to minimise
dissatisfaction by predicting preference data for indoor
environments.xiii Some researchers even consider the issue of thermal
comfort as behavioural rather than physiological,xiv while others have noted
that comfort is socially constructed.xv In terms of diet and exercise, concepts
of evolutionary physiology are frequently used to promote a healthy lifestyle
as one to which our bodies are adapted. In terms of environmental quality,
prescriptions for daylight and fresh air do occur, but, because of their
variability, are usually subsumed within those for mechanical systems. And
while the effect of excessive consumption and lack of exercise soon becomes
apparent through ill-health, the adverse effects of artificial environments are
less directly evident, unless arising from sick-building-syndrome as a result of
chemical exposure. However, instead of being measured in terms of complaint
or sickness, the quality of indoor environments is now being correlated to
worker productivity, that is, linked to the output of the organisation as a
whole.xvi This strategy, while potentially offsetting the costs of sustainable
development, also necessitates the need for a better understanding of the
evolutionary fit between people and the built environment.
Niche Construction
The idea of an office as an ecological system has been used by Zimbabwean
architect Mick Pearce in his design for Eastgate Harare (1991-96) and in his
design for Council House 2, the new offices for the City of Melbourne
currently under construction. Pearce describes both of these buildings through
the analogy of the termitarium. Termites have ‘adapted’ to survive severe
desert conditions by constructing large mounds or nests that modify the
external environment, making it cool and humid enough for the colony to
survive. But rather than literally adapting to the desert environment, the
termites in fact change the environment into one to which they are already
adapted.
In traditional Darwinian theory, the idea of adaptive evolution is a one way
process. Through genetic variation across generations, organisms are seen to
adapt to environmental conditions in a way that improves their chances for
reproduction. The environment to which these organisms adapt, in contrast, is
seen as a passive or inert setting within which evolution takes place. This
view has recently been countered by biological models that acknowledge the
mutual adaptation between organisms and environment.xvii F. John OdlingSmee et al describe this process as ‘niche construction’.xviii This process
describes the ability of organisms to extend the ‘niche’ to which they are
adapted out into the surrounding environment. Animal built structures are a
well known phenomenon, and are often used as inspiration for design.xix But
in linking the evolutionary function of these structures, and their role in
adaptation, Pearce provides new possibilities for ecological architecture.
Of course, it is easy to interpret human culture as niche construction in its most
advanced form. Language and technology extend both our reach and our
impact, with the use of fossil fuels enabling us to reproduce the climate to
which we are adapted almost anywhere on earth. However, it also possible to
reduce our reliance on these fuels by designing buildings that more effectively
reproduce the kind of ‘niche’ to which we are adapted. Architectural myths of
origin often invoke the importance of the forest clearing, and the use of the
felled timber for both the construction of shelter and the making of fire.xx
Because of the tendency to make clearings in a forest or to plant trees in open
space, ecologist Tim Low describes humans as ‘forest edge dwellers’.xxi This
position connects us to our simian ancestors, providing a view over the plane
to watch for predators or prey, allowing shelter from the rain and sun, and
moderating the wind. This may explain the willingness to sit high above the
ground in multi-storey buildings, as well as the general preference for operable
windows. The activities within the office, however, are far removed that of a
hunter/gatherer existence, requiring sedentary activity and greater levels of
cleanliness. With a predominance of symbolic work in both paper and digital
forms, office work is largely devoid of physical activity that characterise other
types of employment, thereby requiring precise levels of temperature control.
This type of work thus constitutes a refinement of a much broader range of
conditions; think, for example, of a chef, who might move from a freezer at
below 0ºC to a cooktop with radiant temperatures of several hundred degrees.
Physiologically, we are able to tolerate a wide range of variation in
temperature and humidity, depending upon activity and duration.
An understanding of physiology is central to the concept of niche construction.
According to Turner, niches are an outward extension of the physiology of an
organism.xxii Thus buildings conceived of as a ‘niche’ need not necessarily
connect to external conditions, but should moderate those conditions to create
an environment to which we are adapted. This requires a better understanding
of that environment in terms of fluctuations in temperature, wind speed, an so
on, as well as a better understanding of the activities undertaken within it. The
environmental variation experienced by our ancestors, resulting from both
natural fluctuations and changing activity types, is poorly replicated in most
offices. Innovative designs, such as those by DEGW, have provided for
various activities, such as recreation, relaxation, and food preparation, as
alternatives for staff interaction. Variety can also emerge from movement
between spaces, or from a degree of user control over environmental
systems.xxiii
Our body temperature of around 37ºC is at the upper level of the range
normally encountered in temperate climates. With most temperatures just
below this, excess heat generated by metabolism can be readily expelled. The
rate of heat loss can be varied, depending upon the ambient temperature, by
‘conductance adjustment,’ changing blood flow rates to the skin, for example,
or by changing clothing levels. At lower temperatures, metabolism can
increase, or at higher temperatures, heat loss achieved through evaporative
cooling (sweating), both of which require greater levels of energy use.
‘Comfort’ in this sense consists of a state of minimal energy expenditure,
which occurs when operating at the base metabolic rate. Using energy for
environmental control allows us to maintain our internal temperature with
minimal effort. This extrasomatic energy use began with the use of fire,
providing warmth and assisting digestion through cooking. In primitive
cultures, the amount of energy used for fire was about equal to the amount
needed for metabolism – what Stephen Boyden describes as ‘Human Energy
Equivalents’ (HEE).xxiv Yet since that time, fire has proven to be so useful for
a range of agricultural, industrial and cultural tasks that we now use many
times this amount of energy – in Australia, around 65 HEE per person.xxv
In evolutionary terms, our disposition toward energy use may result from our
metabolism. Unlike reptiles, who are able to use ambient energy to alter their
body temperature, mammals must harvest a regular supply of energy to
maintain a constant internal temperature. Although inefficient, this high
energy metabolism is likely to have given evolutionary advantage in the
competition for survival.xxvi Agriculture and animal husbandry improve this
harvesting in calorific terms, allowing a regular supply of foodstuffs that
overcome diurnal and seasonal variation. Yet this harvesting also occurs with
energy used extrasomatically, originally with wood and eventually with fossil
fuels. The use of these fuels to maintain constant conditions within buildings
may simply be a projection of our own metabolism, used to counter the
fluctuations of the natural environment.
To describe an office as a ‘house’ of nature is of course to ignore the
separation between work and kinship structures that gives organisations an
inherent flexibility necessary for survival. It is also to ignore the separation
between the workplace and the ecologies that support it, with food, water, and
energy transported via the various types of infrastructure that make cities
possible. In these terms, the ecological model needs to apply to cities as a
whole as well as the buildings they contain. In this sense, humans are the
ultimate niche builders, able to maintain complex social structures through the
creation of ecological aberrations such as modern organisations and
institutions.
Architecture is in a sense a transgression of a natural ecology, part of our
adaptation of a broad range of environments into one that suits our own
adapted physiology. Yet the use of fossil fuels to bring about this adaptation is
now causing changes to the natural environment (most notably global
warming) that threaten our physiology. The adaptive response necessary to
survive these changes will need to occur at a rate faster than that of genetic
evolution. Instead, we need to adjust our processes of environmental
adaptation so that they can more effectively alter the natural environment
without causing damage to it.
Pearce speaks of his buildings as a means of ‘harvesting’ the weather, of using
available energy and air movement to create an internal environment suitable
for human habitation. The design for CH2 uses a range of environmental
systems, including displacement ventilation, chilled ceilings, shower towers,
wind turbines, and the linking of ventilation with thermal mass through night
purging. Yet what is innovative here is not so much the systems themselves,
but their connection to an overall ‘organisational ecology’. As well as
providing new office space for the City of Melbourne, the building is intended
to promote the City’s commitment to sustainability, and to demonstrate the
feasibility of sustainable technology in office design. This approach helps to
connect the operation of the building and its environmental systems with the
behaviour and comfort expectations of the inhabitants, within an organisational
framework. Whether this approach is effective will depend not only on the
success of the building, but on the extent to which its systems influence future
development in Melbourne.
i
R.V. O'Neill et al, A Hierarchical concept of ecosystems, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1986.
ii Richard Lewontin, The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment, Cambridge
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000.
iii J. Scott Turner, The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal Built Structures,
Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002.
iv F. John Odling-Smee, Kevin N. Laland, and Marcus W. Feldman, Niche
Construction: the neglected process in evolution, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2003.
v Vitruvius Pollio, De Architectura, translated by F. Granger, London: Loeb Library,
1931; 1.1.10. “[The Architect] should know the science of medicine, as this depends
on those inclinations of the heavens which the Greeks call climates, and know about
airs, and about which places are healthful and which disease ridden, and about the
different applications of water, for without these studies no dwelling can possibly be
healthful.” On more recent applications of medicine, see Beatriz Colomina, “The
Medical Body in Modern Architecture,” In Davidson, Cynthia (ed). Anybody, New
York; Cambridge, Mass.: Anyone Corp.; MIT Press, 1997, pp. 228-239.
vi Deborah Gans and Zehra Kuz, The organic approach to architecture, New York;
Chichester: Wiley, 2003; see also Frank Lloyd Wright and Viollet-le Duc: organic
architecture and design from 1850 to 1950, Chicago, Ill.: Kelmscott Gallery, 1986.
Peter Blundell Jones, Hugo Häring: the organic versus the geometric, Stuttgart;
London: Edition Axel Menges, 1999; Peter Blundell Jones, Hans Scharoun, London:
Phaidon Press, 1995.
viii Richard Sennett, Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization,
London: Faber and Faber. 1994, Chapter 8.
ix Francis Duffy, Design for change: the architecture of DEGW, Basel: Birkhäuser;
Haslemere: Watermark, 1998; Francis Duffy, The new office, London: Conrad
Octopus, 1997; Francis Duffy, Andrew Laing, and Vic Crisp, The responsible
workplace: the redesign of work and offices, Oxford; Boston: Butterworth
Architecture in association with Estates Gazette, 1993; Francis Duffy, The changing
workplace, London: Phaidon, 1992.
x R.V. O'Neill, D.L. DeAngelis, J.B. Wade, and T.F.H. Allen, A Hierarchical Concept
of Ecosystems, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986.
xi
Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn: what happens after they're built, New York:
Viking, 1994.
xii Ian Donnachie and George Hewitt, Historic New Lanark: the Dale and Owen
industrial community since 1785, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993.
xiii See especially P. O. Fanger, Thermal comfort: analysis and applications in
environmental engineering, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1970.
xiv Fergus Nicol, et al (eds). Standards for thermal comfort: indoor air temperature
standards for the 21st century, London; New York: Chapman & Hall, 1995; Michael
Humphries, “Thermal Comfort Temperatures and the Habits of Hobbits,” in Fergus
Nicol, et al (eds). Standards for thermal comfort, pp. 3-13.
xv Shove, Elizabeth. Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization
of Normality. Oxford: Berg, 2003; See also Tomás Maldonado, “The Idea of
Comfort,” in Victor Margolin, and Richard Buchanan, (eds.) The Idea of Design: A
Design Issues Reader, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995, pp 248-256.
xvi Jacqueline C. Vischer, Environmental quality in offices, New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold, 1989; Derek Clements-Croome (ed.), Creating the Productive Workplace,
London; New York: E & FN Spon, 2000.
xvii See, for example, Richard Lewontin, The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and
Environment, Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000.
xviii F. John Odling-Smee, Kevin N. Laland, and Marcus W. Feldman, Niche
construction: the neglected process in evolution, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2003.
xix George Hersey, The Monumental Impulse: architecture's biological roots,
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999; Eugene Tsui, Evolutionary architecture: nature
as a basis for design, New York: John Wiley, 1999.
xx Luis Fernandez-Galiano, Fire and Memory: On Architecture and Energy, translated
by Gina Cariño, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000; Joseph Rykwert, On Adam's
house in Paradise: the idea of the primitive hut in architectural history, Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1981.
xxi Tim Low, The New Nature, Camberwell, Vic.: Penguin, 2002.
xxii J. Scott Turner, The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal Built
Structures, Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002.
xxiii G.R. Newsham, “Occupant movement and the thermal modelling of buildings,”
Energy and Buildings 18, 1992, pp. 57-64; Dean Hawkes, “The User’s Role in
Environmental Control,” in Derek Clements-Croome (ed.) Naturally ventilated
buildings: buildings for the senses, economy and society, London; New York: E & FN
Spon, 1997, pp. 93-103.
xxiv Stephen Boyden, The Biology of Civilisation, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2004.
Boyden defines one HEE as 10 Megajoules, “ which is about the average amount of
somatic energy used per capita in a human group living under natural conditions.” p.
170.
vii
xxv
Boyden, The Biology of Civilisation, p. 139. On the use of fire, see Stephen J.
Pyne, Vestal Fire: an environmental history, told through fire, of Europe and
Europe's encounter with the world, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997;
Johan Goudsblom, Fire and Civilization, London: Allen Lane, 1992.
xxvi
Chris Lavers, Why elephants have big ears: nature's engines and the
order of life, London: Gollancz; 2000.