Good design cannot be independent of the environment; it must build on and be responsive to climate. Buildings in their settings must shelter, nurture the well being of their inhabitants, feel comfortable, inspire and enhance the enjoyment of life, as well as being environmentally sustainable and accessible for all. Therefore the architect’s vision of the future needs to include an appreciation of environmental principles, cultural and natural heritage and the use of locally available resources to address local needs and life styles.

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_dubai_2008_open_session_summaries_and_biographies.pdf

https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=46&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CDsQFjAFOCg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.johnsoncontrols.in%2Fcontent%2Fdam%2FWWW%2Fjci%2Fbe%2Fcase_studies%2FEmiratestowers.pdf&ei=ipJlVYnVLMSxuASf0IPIBw&usg=AFQjCNHrNhrQqFjT__8QW2YdCj6XS6LD8A

Dear Stephen,

you might have a look at materials from The Environmental Performance Index (http://epi.yale.edu/) and Environmental performance reporting(http://www.environment.gov.au/about-us/accountability-reporting/environmental-performance)

That's just my two cents.

Regards

Thanks Wayne and Krishnan.

Nice to see an old acquaintance, Louise Cox, authoring some of the material you sent me, Krishnan.

These are both good overviews as i am approaching this from a basic quantitative standpoint in which materials, construction, design, and operation have implications for analysis.

Must go see Masdar City one day.  SF

Stephen, the structural synthesis to make a building part efficient and independent from the design process; First, the orientation to the sun (stations) for maximum use of natural light, adequate ventilation; important energy saving from LED system; use of materials that capture heat or prevent the facades; covered with photovoltaic panels, natural systems refiregarción from concpeto of a green building. Fundamentally, the location, orientation, materials and the will of the owners bet on the construction of a sustainable building. Hits. 

Hi Marco

Thanks for your response.

As an architect i am aware of the process of design in response to an owner's brief.  But post-construction (including refurbishment and eventual demolition), the question remains:  how best to assess the performance of tall office buildings from the standpoint of  the environment?  Am trying to discover if there are more inherently efficient typologies for accommodating dense (i.e., ~300people/hectare) workplace once real estate economics is discounted.

Increased competition among producers forces further efficiency.

• On the supplier side, access to more competing suppliers helps fi rms procure more efficient, cheaper and more appropriate inputs. Competition encourages efficiency and survival of the fittest firms.

• On the consumer side, better access to potential consumers can mean more exposure to a fi rm’s products or services within a commutable radius of their trade, increasing the efficiency of their sales and marketing.

http://www.ctbuh.org/Portals/0/People/WorkingGroups/Legal/LegalWG_BPF_Report.pdf

HI Krishnan

Thanks for your response.

However, these are not environmental issues per se, although they are in conformance with the phenomenon of urban agglomeration in response to globalised finance as outlined by Castells and Sassen as early as the 1990s.  

I am less interested in the commercial side of tall building performance, which can vary according to economic conditions, conditions of occupancy, and geographic locality, and more interested in how they perform with respect to the otherwise natural environment, insofar as the word 'natural' can apply to cities or other kinds of tall building sites.

This may involve more a materials flow analysis or systems analysis or a combination of both.

It is often difficult to anticipate indoor environmental quality problems since prevailing materials and construction practices change faster than scientists are able to evaluate their potential health impacts. Health and comfort can also be affected by physical factors, such as lighting and heat, and by the physical organization of the space. The air-handling systems can affect the amount of moisture in a building and thereby prevalence of upper respiratory tract symptoms. Building design, operation, and maintenance can all have critical impacts on worker health and well-being, and some interventions have been found to improve health. Thermal comfort is influenced by factors that affect the way the body loses and gains heat. Other than the critical component of temperature are - Air movement (breezes or draughts); Humidity; Radiant heat sources (e.g. direct sunshine) heat sinks (e.g.cool surfaces). Thermal comfort can be considered generally as a range of temperatures that is influence by these factors. For example, a higher temperature may still be comfortable. If cross-ventilation is present, while high humidity will reduce evaporative cooling and lower the upper temperature limit.

The building fabric must balance requirements for ventilation and daylight while providing thermal and moisture protection appropriate to the climatic conditions of the site. Fabric design is a major factor in determining the amount of energy a building will use in its operation. Also, the overall environmental life-cycle impacts and energy costs associated with the production and transportation of different envelope materials vary greatly. fabric design is what occurs inside the building. If the activity and equipment inside the building generate a significant amount of heat, the thermal loads may be primarily internal (from people and equipment) rather than external (from the sun). This affects the rate at which a building gains or loses heat.

http://www.seedengr.com/Blog/

HI Krishnan

The environmental cost of maintaining a suitable interior climate for workplace is of course important, and it is part of the over all environmental responsive for which i am seeking in this question.  Climatisation of a building of say 50 storeys with no operable windows will have a very different cost than climatisation of a building of say, 6 storeys furnished with natural ventilation.

Related to this is the embodied energy in building materials and construction configurations required by tall buildings vs building of < = 6 storeys, and if the cost of such embodied energy is ever offset by 'green' building initiatives both structured in rating format  (such as NABERS) and unstructured such as incorporation of external vegetation, solar shading measures, 'smart' building optimisational infrastructure such as rain water recycling, grey and brown water recycling, auto generation of power and so forth, 'passive' solar, low usage tap ware and LED lighting, etc.

Other environmental cost issues include the extent to which the internal population of a building needs to be conveyed mechanically (usually by lifts in tall buildings), what stresses on existing municipal or regional water and power infrastructure are placed by a working population concentrated in a tall building, what additional costs are incurred by building over say 6 storeys with respect to security, power supply, construction, engineering, materials staging etc.  

Then there is the question of journey to work distances, the cost incurred in time and money for long duration long distance commuting for a given number of workers occupying concentrated workplace, whether infrastructure investment in public transportation always offsets these costs if taken up by a certain percentage of workers, and at what point or at what percent is such take-up is (if ever) cost-effective.

This may ultimately involve advanced MFA analysis.

There is a saying that if architects spent more time in their buildings after they were built there would be far less mistakes, better buildings, happier tenants more content investors and more successful architects

It would be interesting to see some up to date data on heating and cooling cycles of medium and high rise office buildings here in Western and Central Europe. It was quite some time since my team at Davis Langdon did.

My question is why would anyone want to build tall towers?

We studied a 40 floor building, we wanted to know comparative data kWh/m2/year comparison between high, medium and low rise. 40 floor building we looked at was in Warsaw having less than 80% occupancy but was in cooling mode all year. Our initial reaction was to advise to remove insulation from the facade and of course improve maintenance and to check air tightness in regular maintenance.

We carefully checked the maintenance log for restarting of the air conditioning to rule out poor maintenance.and racing 

Tall buildings move [especially steel ones, but curtain wall in RC structures impact each panel it means that any monitoring of air tightness  must be sampled on a 24 hour and more basis. We learned a lot from another much older 40 floor building nearby. 40 floor buildings simply do not perform 

A few years later and the question and having seen a lived in Dubai, if we truly want to be sustainable why are we building up and when investors money could be better spent on building better?

I also still do not understand that if Architects want to be green why the pointed end of the building is not South? Direct sunlight in our buildings is not value added yet look at the building we design 

Hi Steve 

There is also the saying 'don t shoot the piano player, he is doing the best he can'.  but seriously, you said 'we studied' who is 'we' and for what purpose was the study conducted?  I am very interested in this.  Are more details available?

Hello Stephen 

I would never shoot the piano player

A couple of the team members here and I at SOLIDEA spent much of our time in Technical Due Diligence for investors and lenders. Looking at projects from design but mainly as built assets with income with a view to purchase or lend. These designs and assets were across Europe and mainly top tier. Those that engage us are large portfolio owners

Having moved on as a developer and now in renewable energy we are from time to time engaged by real estate asset owners through EVE to look at assets [rarely projects] and we bench mark them in kWh/m2 providing detailed reports on immediate, mid term and life cycle defects expressed as energy consumption. We allocate cost and savings per kWh for each asset built area and pitch them against other assets performance in similar class to review performance 

In the asset market with savvy investors poor performance is a deal breaker. For example we recently looked at a Gold Certified retail asset with twice the benchmark consumption as best in class. Its a shame for the industry that the certification is there but no performance.

At EVE we moved on we developed a drone capable of 3D IR mapping assets, for the moment we are using it on cookie cutter projects like chicken farms where maybe 20 or more sheds have the same specification. The drone produces a 3D IR heat loss image for us to check efficiency and identify defects.

Early days for complicated shopping centres and high rise buildings. Eventually we hope to map our City Business Districts to track down the worst of the heat loss offenders.

We have no experience in Western Australia but as we can imaging cooling and air tightness is the most critical for buildings owners. Simple shading devices and good engineering to ensure air tightness in design and [maintained] through the life cycle are as important even here in cold countries    

Take a look at www.energyvalueengineering.com or look us up at SOLIDEA Group on Facebook. Sorry we do not get time to look more at EVE because we are very busy with offset energy devices right now 

Steve  

There is the book from Professor Joana Carla Soares Gonçalves, from FAU USP and AA.

Have a look at the following article:

https://www.google.at/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/213316/files/2_SHAHABIAN.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjgnaGdicjdAhWLtosKHTRdDD8QFjAGegQIBBAB&usg=AOvVaw28pj9IZmNTebiMtVTowSQc

Integration of solar-climatic vision and structural design in architecture of tall buildings