8 C O N T E X T 1 3 1 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 3 surprising what can be achieved through dedicated voluntary effort, well-planned training and awareness-raising initiatives. In my recent abstraction fromNatural Stone Specialist for Context, I noted the overview of limestone by Barry Hunt. He has now followed this up (June 2013) with a similar article exploring the characteristic of sandstone. As before, this concentrates on this stone’s general applications; fitness for purpose; and durability. It provides a table of some standard tests for its classification. Can there be ‘Young’Victorians? The Victorian (No 43, July 2013) thinks so. It highlights five young members whose interest in the period has shaped their lives in different ways. All of them have found Victorian and Edwardian architecture a boundless source of inspiration and delight.The five, a gallery curator, a ceramic tile maker, an English Heritage listing advisor, an architect and a ceramicist, demonstrate the diversity of the heritage sector. Bob Kindred MBE From an article by Peter Buchanan (‘The big rethink: farewell to modernism − and modernity too’, Architectural Review, 30 January 2012) comparing two houses by the same architect in different phases of his career: Villa Fallet (1906–07) by Charles-Édouard Jeanneret and Villa Savoye (1928–31) by Le Corbusier, as he by then styled himself. What accounts for the differences between these villas? Specifically, what new material facilitated the profound shift in forms and sensibility? What do the history books say? Reinforced concrete? Plate glass? The answer is neither of these, nor any of the other usual explanations, but abundant and cheap fossil fuels. These powered the weekend commute to the house and kept warm in winter the large, flowing spaces enclosed in thin un-insulated concrete walls and slabs, with vast expanses of single glazing. It was also a related material − and later, oil derivatives − which waterproofed Villa Savoye’s and all other flat roofs and terraces. Later too, petrochemicals provided the neoprene gaskets, epoxies, mastics and sealants, as well as the synthetic carpets and fabrics. And it was fossil fuel-derived electricity that lit and air-conditioned modern buildings, which often spurned natural light and ventilation. Modern architecture is thus an energyprofligate, petrochemical architecture, only possible when fossil fuels are abundant and affordable. Like the sprawling cities it spawned, it belongs to that waning era historians are already calling ‘the oil interval’. Although histories of modern architecture still overlook this critical fact − failing to note what is, literally, blindingly obvious − any future history must surely begin by noting this relationship, which is axiomatically unsustainable. With its disconnect from nature and neighbours, its material fragility and the frieze of people partying or doing calisthenics displacing the statues of gods on the classical entablature, Villa Savoye emphasises a related flaw at the core of modern architecture and modernity in general: the hubris, turbocharged by fossil-fuelled technological power, and a corresponding lack of acknowledgement, even denial, of our ultimate dependency on nature, its cycles and regenerative capacities. Archetypal modern man and woman preferred − and still prefer − not to be rooted in place or community nor to be concerned with the longer cycles of time and the obligations they inevitably incur... Total life-cycle costing, a key discipline in sustainable design, requires that we understand efficiency and ecological impacts in a very different way to modernity. This dismissed much of its negative impacts (particularly those of industry and corporations) as mere externalities or collateral damage. Now we understand that what is critical is not the efficiency, lightness and strength of a material or component when in place: it is the total amount of material extracted from the Earth and the disruption caused by this, as well as the energy and pollution from transport and manufacture, and then the costs and impacts of eventual recycling or return to the Earth. Thus what were once seen as highly efficient high-tech materials or components are now seen to be very inefficient − indeed, with building, it is almost the rule that the more efficient the product when in place, the less efficient it is in process terms. For real efficiency, as the concept is now understood, nothing can beat mud and thatch, although Walter Segal’s timber self-build system scores highly as do traditional tropical construction techniques in materials, such as bamboo and palm-frond matting − which might be lightweight but are natural, local and renewable. Design for sustainability will thus inevitably be centred on the shaping of processes, such as flows of material and energy, as much as on the eventual products. This requires vastly expanding the temporal and spatial range of the designers’ concerns to include the total life-cycle costs mentioned above, which would typically span decades, and the global impacts of, say, using a material in short supply, which might have profound consequences on the other side of the planet. What are now dismissed as mere externalities for others, usually the taxpayers, to deal with, must now all be factored into the design process. Miniaturisation and ephemerality can be very destructive, as evidenced by the horrendous and too little publicised consequences of mining for rare earth metals used in computers, cell phones (of which Americans discard 130 million a year) and other electronic equipment, such as that used in monitoring and adjusting conditions within buildings. All this will profoundly influence the design and making of architecture. And just as green design has already elevated the status of the services engineer as a key creative member of the design team, so too will it lead to the inclusion, as another key creative discipline, of production engineers, who are devising more efficient and benign ways of manufacturing materials and components.
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