By Signe Kierkegaard Cain

“There is a reason why most people don’t have a picture of their office at home”, said David H. Cook, Architect and Partner at Behnisch Architekten, at the Active House symposium. Offices generally suffer from low quality indoor air, but David H. Cook stressed that since staff costs per square metre is among the highest expenses when running a business, it makes good sense to look after your workforce. As an example he mentioned the Unilever Headquarters in Hamburg designed by Behnisch Architekten. Here, different measures have been employed in order to secure a better indoor climate for the staff. For example, the office area is cooled by thermally activated concrete ceilings. “Sustainability should not be an add on, but integrated in the design of a building from the outset. In the same spirit we should start treating sustainability concerns as opportunities rather than limitations”, he said.

“Even though architects and engineers have looked at indoor climate for centuries, that are still many problems”, said Dr. Philomena M. Bluyssen, who also spoke at the symposium. “In our part of the world, we spend 90 percent of our time inside, and we are not actually built for it. I just spent two months inside because of an operation and that made me realise again how dependant we are on a good indoor environment”, she said and elaborated: “There has been a tendency to measure the quality of lighting, air, acoustics, and thermal comfort separately. I think we need an approach, where we acknowledge that indoor climate is about a lot more than the sum of different particle values. We have to start with the human being rather than benchmarks”. Henrik Sørensen, Director for Business Development at Esbensen Consulting Engineers in Denmark, had this to say on the subject: “We often focus on eliminating certain components, formaldehyde for example. But we should also be considering ‘Cradle to Cradle’-aspects such as how a building is cleaned, how materials can be recycled, and how to handle garbage. Also, efficiency of a component should be measured in how it interacts with the building”.

The importance of sunlight

When Renate Hammer from Danube University Krems in Austria entered the stage, she brought the audience way back in time and talked about the importance of sunlight in the making of ancient cave paintings. They were placed only where sunbeams hit the inside of caves, she explained. “Today, considerations of sunlight are often not part of our design. We live in an indoor society and are disconnected to the movements of the sun”, she said and stressed how considerations of sunlight, and demands for cooling and heating have to be incorporated when building sustainably and creating a better indoor climate. “The three factors have to be harmonised from the beginning of the design process”, she said. 

Christian Cardonnel also talked at great length about the importance of sunlight for the indoor climate and mentioned another advantage of inviting in the sun: “If you equip a building with large windows, you allow for a lot of sunlight to enter, and that also means that the building consumes less energy”. Much like the ‘Cradle to Cradle’-authors Michael Braungart and William McDonough, several of the panellists at the symposium agreed that getting people to demand more sustainable houses with a better indoor climate is generally about showing them all the benefits rather than scaring them into making changes. Moderator Jacki Davis asked how it is possible to convince people that Active Houses are what they want. Henrik Sørensen replied: “We have to show people what they can get. Now, investment and running costs are not connected, so people don’t see that investing in sustainable solutions will save them money in the long run. Also, the building industry is very dependant on demonstration projects, and the EU should provide more tools for people, who want to be first movers”. In his concluding remarks Kurt Emil Eriksen, a manager at VKR Holding, said on the issue of making benefits more visible to the general public: “What if we could change the discussion on indoor climate and sustainability in general, so that it was primarily about living conditions. When people build a new bathroom they don’t talk about the repayment period. But when they change their windows, they immediately ask when they will have paid for themselves in smaller energy bills. Couldn’t it be more about quality of life?”