LagomArchitecture

Lilla Essingen:



On a bus trip from the airport back into Stockholm one evening, I saw a gleaming new neighborhood right on the Stockholm waterfront that I hadn’t seen before. It turned out to be on the island of Lilla Essingen, which is within the center city limits, and one dreary afternoon we went out there to get a closer look. I hadn’t heard about this project before or come across it in terms of sustainability, so my guess is that it hasn’t necessarily gone above and beyond the standards that the city imposes for energy efficiency, material use, etc. I assume that the buildings are tied into the district heating grid, and peered into a waste/utility room where there were vacuum tube waste separation and disposal systems. This is a pretty typical Stockholm waste/ garbage room, and includes bins for things like batteries and other hazardous waste:



This neighborhood reclaims an Electrolux industrial site, and some of the original buildings have been saved and re-used or added onto either as commercial or residential space.



The big difference between this neighborhood and some of the surrounding residential buildings: this place is much more dense, which makes the character of the whole neighborhood quite different. This image shows how they are packing in the people:



One of the benefits of the site is that it occupies a convex semicircular water front, right on Lake Mälaren, that faces almost due south. Lake Mälaren, which is huge and empties into the Baltic at old town in the center of the city, differs from the type of waterfront that characterizes most cities in that it is insanely clean; it is also the reservoir for the city, everyone swims in it all summer, and it is crystal clear. This makes it a pretty ideal place for living, and there are all sorts of access points for swimming or boating from a waterfront promenade that lines the whole site (note the glazed-in balconies, which use a very slick system so the glazing can be folded away- in winter this glazing provides additional thermal benefits):





The big negative to the site is a freeway bridge that runs along the western edge of the property, and so the design of the neighborhood includes a Ralph Erskine-esque mid-rise wall building to shield the rest of the neighborhood from the noise and unsightliness. This doesn’t entirely work, as the large open body of water in front of the freeway and the site doesn’t exactly provide a barrier to the freeway noise. There was an open house for an apartment in this building, so we went in to see what the unit layouts were. I was pretty disappointed, because while the building materials seemed to be of high quality and daylighting was well considered, the spaces were poorly proportioned, and it included a too common design flaw: a bedroom directly off the living room. Here is a view of the 'wall' building:



Interestingly, the neighborhood looks something like a squished version of Hammarby Sjostad, and a friend here who studies architectural history said that Hammarby has spawned a lot of copies.



Yet, while there is definitely an aesthetic similar to that of Hammarby for some of the buildings, much of the overall design of the buildings seems largely based upon the older building stock that surrounds it. It made me wonder if they have just not been able to create a better model than what exists from the 30’s and 40’s, when living amenity was carefully considered. Here are some of the older buildings directly adjacent to the site, and maybe its not completely obvious, but the building in the above picture is actually very similar to the older one below- just some subtle differences in materials:



Some of the remaining old factory buildings that have been reconditioned form a new, small retail core, which ends at a little amphitheater that lines a small bay at the southern edge. The building in the background is the 'wall' building, and the buildings on the right have ground-floor cafes and retail that seemed to be busy while I was there, and this cove is probably a lively gathering place in the summer:



While this will never be a destination neighborhood for retail, it does seem to follow some of the strange form of retail logic that happens here in Stockholm; if small retail and office spaces are provided for in residential areas, they will be rented by small home-grown businesses that will be sustained by the neighborhood or by internet-based business. In our neighborhood, built in the 30's, the whole ground level of buildings are often little retail shops or live/work spaces, that get taken over by hairdressers, pizzerias, cafes, small random businesses, etc. So while nobody would ever consider coming here to just shop or look around, these spaces seem to fill some in between need for retail/ commercial space. Maybe this model can compare to the new live/work loft buildings that went up in the past 5-10 years in San Francisco, far south of Market Street in older industrial areas. The good thing about it is that I'm sure these ground floor units rent for less than typical commercial spaces, and you can have a business, live nearby, and have your children close by in daycare.

Which leads me to another quick tangent: the daycares themselves. This city is very child friendly, largely due to the inclusion of day care centers on the ground floor of residential buildings, coupled with the integration into the city planning of little play parks and structures everywhere. People open up daycares in these residential buildings, then take the kids out to the nearest local play spot. This probably works better in Sweden because kids are probably much more safe here than in other cities, but I think that the integration of spaces for children everywhere really encourages a greater cultural awareness of their importance and their right to occupy urban space- so maybe it helps to create a safer environment for them. This photo shows one of the ground floor daycares intgrated into a residential building, with a small play yard to the side:



Gårdsten: adding efficiency to existing building stock
I've been looking into renovation projects for IVL. The highest percentage of buildings in the world are existing rather than new (obvious statement); and IVL wants to determine a set of standards for renovating existing buildings to higher efficiency standards.

The housing area of Gårdsten, in Göteborg Sweden was built in the early 1970’s. It soon fell into decline due to the poor initial building construction and a lack of services to the area. In 1997, a public corporation called Gårdstenbostäder was formed, to purchase the buildings and refurbish them. Funding from the EU as well as Gårdstenbostäder’s and resident’s initiatives defined the renovation project in terms of energy efficiency. An architect with experience in solar systems, Christer Nordström Arkitektkontor AB, was hired and worked with both the building company and the residents groups to create solutions that would both increase efficiency and raise the quality of living within the development. These photos are from Gårdstenbostäder, and show the buildings after renovation:





Two types of buildings make up the 4 -building blocks that characterize the district of Gårdsten; 4-6 story balcony access buildings with external staircases, and conventional 3-story slab buildings with internal staircases. Buildings are connected to the district heating system. With the renovation being approached as an opportunity to save energy, the following solutions were applied:

1. In the balcony-access buildings, exhaust-air ventlation was introduced, and in the lower slab buildings, Heat Recovery Ventilation was provided.

2. Existing balconies were enclosed with operable glazed panels. This was done in conjunction with the repair of the balconies, which were in disrepair. This layer of glazing protects the original facades and reduces heat loss in the cold months, while pre-heating the ventilation air when the sun is shining in the spring and fall months. Residents can move the glazing out of the way during the warmer months.

3. Balcony-access buildings received solar panels, placed at an optimal solar aspect and integrated into the roof, to pre-heat water used within the 4 buildings that make up a block. This pre-heated solution is used to heat the water in large tanks in the basement level, which is then distributed to the 4 buildings that define a block. On the ground level of these buildings, a greenhouse was added along most of their length, similarly protecting the ground floor from the outdoor enviornment while providing indoor gardening and gathering space for the tenants. This diagram from the architect shows this strategy, which seems pretty brilliant, especially because the new laundry facilities and common spaces are adjacent to the greenhouse and people really do use the space:



here's a photo of the renovated building ground floor with added greenhouse, and laundry and common spaces in the background:



In the lower slab buildings, solar air collectors mounted vertically on the south facades provide warmed air that is circulated within the cavity created by the original building facades and the new insulated facades that were added on the north, east, and west sides. Here is the architect's diagram for the solution to the low-rise buildings:



4. The inner pane of the existing double-paned windows was replaced with low-e glazing.

5. Roof insulation was added when the roofs were renovated.

6. Insulation was added in the gables of building roofs when the facades were re-built.

7. The base slabs were insulated when new drainage systems were installed.

8. Energy efficient washing and drying machines were connected to the solar hot water system.

9. Energy-labeled electrical appliances for the units were part of the renovation.

10. Efficient occupancy- sensor lighting was installed for common areas in the buildings.

11. A central control and supervisory system was installed to monitor energy and water use within the buildings. This system also involves individual meters for each unit, so residents can monitor their own use of energy and water. While a basic level of heat, 21C, is provided for in the rent of the units, residents can get a rebate for using less or must pay more for an increase in temperature. This also empowers residents to choose whether to spend their money on greater thermal comfort or to save it by living with a slightly lower indoor air temperature. This system also applies to water useage. Individual Metering for energy and water consumption for tenants is turning out to be a powerful tool for reducing consumption. When people can visualize their consumption and associate that with cost, the initiative to cut their use is pretty clear. This diagram shows the initial drop in energy and water use that occurred from the building modifications, and then the yearly improvements resulting from individual metering and the awareness of tenants:



Community Involvement

Tenants were seen as a key to the project’s success. This was difficult initially, as most of the residents did not believe that their opinions would influence the outcome. To create interest in the project, an information apartment was created where tenants could meet with project representatives and discuss issues both more informally and in more depth than at the larger community meetings. A ’graffiti’ wall was set aside in the living room of the information apartment where residents could write comments under the categories of ”We Want” and We DO NOT Want”. This wall became an important reference for Gårdestenbostäder and the design team.

Advisory working groups were seen as a real way for community participation to achieve some results. Out of a possible 150 households, 54 people actively became involved in the various workgroups. Workgroups were created to respond to security issues, create apartment renovation proposals, look at ways of making the utility spaces more useful, propose ways of improving the exterior environment, planning better car parking strategies, and developing a system for IT, satellite dishes, and aerials that would serve the apartments.

The Working Group for the 'New Ground Floor, Utility Rooms, and The Environment ”rejected the architect’s first proposal and instead, in consultation with the architect, formulated a further proposal for how the new ground floor should be designed.” This led to the utility rooms being located on the ground floor with the other public rooms, with access and windows onto the new indoor greenhouses. This also led to a re-organization of the waste handling system, with composting that provides rich soil for the indoor greenhouse beds. The resident's involvement has clearly led to this being a more successful renovation project.

Low- Rise Housing at Bo01

While Bo01 was a popular exhibition site made more famous by the Turning Torso, the exhibition buildings only comprise a portion of the development that continues to fill in the site. There is a lot to look at, but this grouping of single-family houses around private and semi-public courtyards stands out and appears to be very successful:





A long bar of buildings running north/south contains 3 story houses, and the large inner open space is framed on the north and south sides by 2 story houses. I think the way the 3rd stories are broken up is a great way to give privacy to the 3rd story terraces as well as breaking up the wall effect of the long bar of houses. Every house has its own backyard which is quite private, that opens out onto a larger public/ private common and utility area. Each house also has its own garden shed, which is also used to create privacy boundaries.







Here's a sketch of the site layout:



And finally, Understenshöjden

A website called Ekoby led me to an eco village/ cohousing site caled Understenshöjden, just outside of the city in Bjorkvagen. This is also the suburb where Lewerentz's St. Mark's church is. The Ekoby website was created by Fullbright Scholar Martha Norbeck, and it contains 9 case studies of eco-villages in Sweden. Understenshöjden is an interesting example of a group of people fed up with the typical and monotonous housing choices offered to them, and what they were able to create as an alternative. What i learned of the project was from the Ekoby website, and the specific case study about Understenshöjden can be gotten to here: http://www.ekoby.org/cs/un.pdf

some photos:







and the common rooms:

If you just want to see some photos (I understand), click here or on sidebar photo:

http://my.opera.com/LagomArchitecture/albums/show.dml?id=150941

There is a man who retired from IVL recently but still spends quite a bit of time there; every once in a while he stops by my desk to say hello and muse about things that he finds fantastic or interesting, such as an incredibly lush golf course he saw in the Nevada Desert. While at home we tend to just shake our heads at such things like you would at a cousin who has no money or work but charges an expensive satellite dish on his credit card, things such as a golf course in Nevada are true phenomena to people over here who work with water management and other ecological issues. I was telling him what I was working on, and he looked at me and asked me “do you really believe in these eco-communities, do you really think it can work?” I didn’t know if he was testing my commitment or really just unsure himself about the reality of creating actually sustainable communities. It was the first time anyone asked me this directly, and I answered that it absolutely can work without a doubt, but I wouldn’t have said this quite as convincingly a few months ago.

I’ve read in many articles over here that buildings (both their construction and the use of them over their lifespan) consume 40% of all of our resources, and the construction industry is referred to as the 40% sector for this reason. If anyone had just told me that at school, I think I would have paid even more attention to sustainability because it’s a pretty easy way to understand the impact that architecture has on our ecology. One article says that “whereas buildings consume half of all environmental resources, they either house the space where the other half is consumed or form the destination for the essential journeys required for human connection”. If our built environment alone is contributing to 40% or more of our resource use, then our profession really can do something to affect change. Obviously the majority of people in the profession are on board with sustainability as a general principle at this point in time, but I think part of the confusion over sustainable issues has been all of the arguments and counter-arguments regarding what it truly means to be sustainable.

The three communities I’ve looked at to this point have different ideas of how to reduce their impact and move towards sustainability. In Kronsberg, a new development in Hannover, Germany, the goal was to reduce carbon emissions of the new neighborhood by 60% compared to traditional city living. This goal was achieved through a combination of renewable sustainable energy supply such as wind power and bio-fuels, more efficient use of non-renewables such as CHP or combined heat and power, and adherence of all buildings to the LEH or Low-Energy House standard. (Tor, my connection in Malmo, gave me a video done by Greenpeace concerning de-centralized combined heat and power, which the Dutch are using everywhere; small coal and natural gas energy plants which are currently only about 30% efficient can achieve 85-95% efficiency this way- these plants can be more locally placed since they are smaller and very clean, so that power doesn’t get lost to long transmission lines. This also has the added benefit of not tying everyone throughout huge regions to the same tenuous grid system. For a quick link to a CHP website see here:

http://www.aceee.org/energy/chp.htm

Back to architecture/ planning:

LEH construction is something that everyone is working on in Europe, because it is a remarkably simple way to reduce the energy consumption of buildings. Part of the push to develop this relates to legislation by the EU to reduce carbon emissions in all EU cities. Similar ideas are the passive house and the zero-energy house. They all focus on the elimination of thermal bridges in construction, high insulation values including triple-paned windows (triple-paned glazing is now the standard in new construction in Sweden), and forced ventilation with recovery of previously heated air. I’ve been skeptical of super tight building shell construction because it has been my understanding that this leads to ‘sick house’ syndrome as well as problems with materials and mold, but the idea is that the forced ventilation provides really fresh air exchange for a healthy indoor environment without the loss of all the heat energy of a typical building shell; also, this construction is coupled with methods to prevent mold and mildew problems from occurring.

Kronsberg was part of a World Exhibition, and so extra incentives, funding, and a necessity to complete the project on time that allowed codes to change quickly and bureaucratic difficulties to be dealt with efficiently allowed this project to happen successfully. Bo01 was also part of an expo, this one all about housing, in Malmo Sweden. Bo01’s idea of how to achieve sustainability was different. Their goal was “100% locally renewable energy”, but they wanted to do this in a way that the residents of the community didn’t feel like they had to give anything up in achieving this goal. Deadline issues won out over standards for efficient building construction, and architects were determined to design fashionable buildings with huge glass facades regardless of energy efficiency goals. A lower energy consumption goal was set for Bo01 than for typical residential developments, but then no controls were in place to insure that these goals were achieved. The overriding idea was that as long as the development produced all of its own energy, it didn’t ultimately matter how much energy the buildings or residents used. Bo01 is attached to the city power grid and district heating system, so they don’t have to store the energy they create or worry if they are under-producing for periods of time; they make up for it over the course of the year. Here are some photos of Bo01- it is still a massive construction site:









Another development I looked at was outside of Helsinki, called Viikki. Their approach was to determine a set amount of energy use for all units, and make certain that between the LEH building details, energy produced on site, and active participation of the residents, energy use of the community would be around 30% less than that of similar developments. They didn’t actually achieve this, but did achieve around 20% less consumption than a typical development. Viikki didn’t have the luxury of being a high-profile expo project, although the EU and the city government did chip in funds to develop certain projects. A photo of Viikki here:



What is really developing between projects like these are the codes, types of cooperation, and integrated design and planning strategies and experience that are necessary to making communities have significantly less environmental impact.

For my project here, I’ve been mostly concerned with the urban planning issues and larger-scaled applications of sustainable design; but being something of an architecture snob in the midst of building systems and efficiency people, I’ve been looking pretty carefully at what’s been produced from an architectural standpoint as well. I can’t say I’ve seen anything that has blown me away first from an architectural perspective and then impressed me with its energy efficiency as well (Hammarby Sjostad has been the most exciting, but underperfoms) and I think this may be the next really big challenge for architects- which when you think about it is an exciting prospect. In the article “Snakes in Utopia” that we read in Brian’s 560 class, the authors make the point that “in our multicultural society meaning in its broader sense has to have wider appeal… sustainability offers the chance to unify values around common environmental goals, bringing shared agendas back onto the architectural stage.” (This statement also has a lot to with cultural sustainability and once again creating architecture connected to place and memory…but that’s a topic for another discussion).

The big issue from an architectural standpoint with Low Energy House design is that it means limiting to some extent the amount of glazing, watching where you put your glazing, as well as using relatively thick walls with high insulation values. So the fear from an architect’s standpoint is that the reduction of materials and open facades that began with modernism and are still in vogue are not compatible with energy efficient construction. I’ve been on the hunt for buildings that match the passive house standards as well as show some signs of ‘modernist’ leanings, and one firm that I’ve discovered that has a few hits along with a few misses produced this house: (link below to their site)



http://www.architekt-wamsler.de/index_startseite.htm

Roofing and drainage systems have been catching my eye quite a bit lately, and I've been appreciating how the course of water is traced out over the roof, down the building, and into the street. Roofs are designed drainage first, it seems, and then whatever field is left is barrel tiled or standing seam or shingled.