Green building and ecological design have become buzzwords in the new century. As the public becomes more tuned in to the alarming numbers of potentially dangerous chemicals used in house-building, suddenly any building practice or material labelled "green" or "ecologically sound" is de rigeur. Many people are also becoming aware of the missed energy opportunities in their homes. A few solar panels strategically placed on the roof can serve both the current aesthetic in house design and practical energy needs.
The question is how much of this new interest in green architecture and eco-building is filtering into the design and building of homes that follow genuine ecological principles. Are such worthy green schemes as straw bale walls or the grass turf roof just the latest oddball ideas dreamed up by self-builders living on the margins of society? Will builders, contractors and, more importantly, private developers take on the green mantle in house design in the future decades of the 21st century?
Tom Woolley, professor of architecture at Queen's University, Belfast and co-author of the Green Building handbooks is somewhat sceptical of the surge in interest in green building.
"There are two developments," he says. "There is an interest in green building coming from private householders who are concerned about health and energy. These people want a more environmentally friendly lifestyle. The second area of interest is coming from local authorities and public sector bodies who want to put together a sustainable building strategy." Noticeably, private developers and builders are showing little interest in green building and ecological design.
Designing and constructing a building following ecological principles is complex. And what Woolley cautions against is such complexity deterring serious efforts to promote sustainable building and design.
"It is relatively straightforward to recycle paper and use chlorine-free paper, but there is a range of barriers to green building," he says. "For instance, it can be difficult to find an architect who understands green building. It can be difficult to find a builder, and many environmentally-friendly materials are double the price of other conventional materials."
Woolley takes a purist approach. He says anyone seriously interested in green building should beware of conventional materials being marketed as green.
"For instance, mineral fibre used in insulation is a natural material, but it uses a lot of energy to produce it," he says. "In the US, it is considered carcinogenic, yet here it is marketed as an energy-saving product. Also, timber is marketed as a 'good' material, yet most people don't know where their timber comes from and whether it is from a properly managed forest or not."
Woolley believes the only way forward is to aim for a zero-energy, zero-emissions policy for green buildings. The current EU directive on construction products goes nowhere towards such an aim, he says.
In volumes one and two of the Green Building handbooks, Woolley, Sam Kimmins, Paul Harrison and Rob Harrison group the necessary measures to achieve a green building into four categories. These categories - when applied to the entire building process from design to finished structure - clearly encapsulate many eco principles.
The categories are: reducing energy in use (by using low-energy lighting, low-pollution heating and natural ventilation); minimising external pollution and environmental damage (by avoiding destruction of natural habitats, designing in harmonious relationship with the surroundings, treating and recycling waste water and re-using waste materials on site); reducing embodied energy and resource depletion (by using locally ourced or recycled materials, and materials from sustainably managed sources); and, finally, minimising internal pollution and damage to health (by involving users in building and evaluating environmental choices and using non-toxic or low emission materials).
Brian O'Brien runs Solearth Ecological Architecture, a Dublin-based architectural practice which provides consultancy in ecological design, sustainable urban design and green and low-impact buildings. O'Brien believes that a green building must try to mimic an ecosystem or habitat.
"It must be built to power itself as directly as possible from renewable energy. It must cycle materials as ecosystems do - using natural materials and allowing them to be re-used as raw materials or cycled back to nature afterwards," he writes in an essay on green building and ecological design in the Source Book 2000.
O'Brien sees designing a use for all available space as central to the concept of eco design: the roof as a garden and a water receptacle (for storing and filtering water), the walls as a growing area with trellises. These principles and many others have been incorporated into the design of the Daintree Building, a multi-purpose building on Pleasants Place, off Camden Street, Dublin 8, which will have six apartments, a craft workshop, office space and a cafΘ.
The Daintree Building (which has been designed by Solearth Ecological Architecture) is scheduled for completion in mid-2002. It will be timber-framed with a grass-covered roof, solar panels, hanging gardens, rainwater harvesting system and its own sewage treatment plant.
Considering how many green buildings are far from the sleek modern look of contemporary design, O'Brien argues that sometimes we are over-concerned about how things look.
"Sometimes, we should also consider how a building feels, smells and sounds and whether the wildlife enjoys it and it produces food," he says. "We should view buildings as our third skin (our clothes being our second skin), which should be able to breathe, sweat, create energy and react to the seasons (with large panels of glass which can be opened in the summer and closed in the winter). I would like to see many more buildings meeting a lot of their energy, water and material needs as well as treating their own waste water.
"There are examples of networks of buildings which share energy resources - for example, one producing wind energy and another solar energy - and charging each other for the use of it."
The idea of reducing the ecological footprint (the space required by each building to supply its energy needs and take care of its waste) of a building is one appreciated by eco-architects.
The Republic still lags behind many other European countries in terms of the percentage of buildings which incorporate green principles (less than 1 per cent). Yet we are moving in the right direction. "We have come a long way. People can now get good engineers. There are a number of green architects and university research groups which will tell you the best way to do things (for example, improved solar panel technology). The biggest problem here is that there are very few buildings to show domestic and commercial clients," says O'Brien.
Internationally, there are numerous green buildings of merit, and countries such as Denmark and Holland are way ahead in terms of incorporating green principles into domestic and commercial buildings. Two examples of note are The Groundworks office building with composting toilets in Newcastle, England, which commands top rents from clients who have no difficulty using such green waterworks, and the NMB Bank in Amsterdam, of which the most notable feature is the water flowing down the centre of the handrails of the internal stairs to add moisture to the air.
In the Republic, apart from the six-year old Green Building in Temple Bar, Dublin (no longer radical in its greenness), there are very few green buildings known to the general public. The Earthlab project, the proposed environmental education centre in Tolka Valley on Dublin's northside, aims to showcase green principles.
Designed by a team which includes the Energy Research Group, Solearth Ecological Architecture and sustainable services engineers Buro Happold, it will have demonstration green apartments stacked over offices for groups such as Eco-Unesco, the youth environmental organisation. It will make use of alternatives to cement, such as lime, flyash and calcium carbonates, and alternatives to harmful plastics such as PVC, industrial glues and oil-based compounds. The pavilions within the building will showcase sustainable construction materials such as lime renders, sheepswool insulation, solar glazing and seasonal shading. Outside, landscaped gardens and reed-bed wetland system (a sewerage system) will show off green principles outside the Earthlab.
Prof Tom Woolley, professor of architecture at Queen's University, Belfast, and editor/author of the Green Building Handbook will give a lecture, "Green Building - Are zero impact buildings possible?" in the Irish Film Centre, Temple Bar, Dublin, on Wednesday at 7.30 p.m.
Further reading: the two Green Building handbooks by Tom Woolley, Sam Kimmins and others are a comprehensive guide to green building materials. Sustainable Ireland's Sourcebook 2000 - Ireland's social, environmental and holistic directory - is useful for green architects, engineers and builders.
The Organic Centre, Rossinver, Co Leitrim, hosts day-long green building seminars throughout the year, one of which takes place today. Tel: 072-54338.
E-mail: organiccentre@tinet.ie
Website: www.ecobuildnetwork.org