By Signe Kierkegaard Cain

“An energy efficient building can be unsustainable, if noone wants to live in it. It can be hostile. Sustainable architecture can’t be judged on just energy performance, we have to look at ‘environmental quality’”, said David H. Cook, Architect and Partner at Behnisch Architekten, when giving his presentation at the Active House symposium in Brussels on 24 March. Here, among architects, engineers and other professionals the people who will be living and working in the houses of tomorrow were very much present in spirit. In his presentation and during the debate, David H. Cook talked at great length about getting ordinary people involved in creating more sustainable housing: “It is very difficult to prove that people get sick when living in a poor indoor climate. People don’t change their habits unless there are really good incentives to do so”, he said.

His fellow panellist Dr. Philomena M. Bluyssen said she sees a tendency to look more closely at the needs of the end user, when designing a building, but also mentioned some of the challenges: “It is hard to measure how comfortable people are. It is easy to measure energy consumption, but comfort can’t be measured in the same way, and it is difficult to show policy makers that people will get ill in 20 years. To make a comparison: Even though we have heard about climate change, we don’t necessarily consume less energy”, she said. Although the public debate often focuses on mental problems, obesity, and an increase in the number of people suffering from asthma, people’s emotions are generally not taken into account, when measuring the performance of a building, Bluyssen said. CMO at Velux, Michael Rasmussen, said that putting people first is one of the key elements of the Active House strategy: “What we add with the Active House concept compared to the way passive houses were planned, are the people, who will be living in the houses”. While social factors have become a concern in building and architecture, health and buildings are still mostly viewed separately, said Renate Hammer, who is Head of Special Field of Architecture and Building Services at the Department for Building and Environment at Danube University Krems. She gave this anecdote: “In connection with a project, I once went to the Ministry of Health, and me and my colleagues presented ourselves as advisers to the building industry. The response was that we must be in the wrong ministry”. The future could bring a more holistic approach that makes it more natural for building industry advisers, architects and engineers to talk to European ministries of health. David H. Cook says: “The way forward is to create more beneficial relationships between building and occupant. We should try not to talk about sustainability so much in the way we have done until now. It is really more of a humanistic issue than a political one”.