If you're a high school student interested in architecture and the environment, you probably realize that good design is about so much more than aesthetics, it's about impact. Architects today face a multitude of challenges, like reducing carbon footprints and preserving ecosystems, while also creating buildings for people to occupy. These challenges aren’t just for professionals in the field: as a student, you can begin to see them in action! Below are 10 real-world architecture challenges that reflect an understanding of environmental ethics and that provide important insights for anybody interested in sustainable design.
1. Sustainable Material Selection
It is difficult to make a responsible ethical decision for materials that have environmental consequences and are strong and cost effective. Many common materials, such as plastic insulation, steel or tropical hardwood all have large carbon footprints or are destructive to the environment. An ethically responsible architect seeks out sustainable alternatives, such as recycled metal, bamboo, compressed earth blocks or reclaimed wood. These alternatives can reduce the material demands for new raw resources and minimize construction waste. While these settings and sustainable materials may not fit into your design or model project for high school's your ethical perspective is diminished through practice. Exploring sustainable materials will help you conceptualize how your small set of decisions reflect larger sets of ethical value in the field of architecture.
2. Energy Efficiency and Design
Energy efficient design is one of the biggest continuous challenges in the practice of environmentally ethical architecture. Buildings use a lot of electricity for heating, cooling, lighting and the way a building will use electricity can be extended through a competent design - bad design only compounds this challenge. To put it concisely, sustainable ethics would consider the use of passive designs where it is possible to, such as the placement of windows for effective natural lighting, cross-ventilation for air movement to replace mechanical cooling, use of ethically desirable insulation to meet heating and cooling needs, and uses of varying levels and types of waste terms like recycled solar panels and LED light fixtures, smart energy systems and more. You can explore these types of thinking in your day model or model designing for homes or a school building; using sunlight tee or limiting artificial lighting can extend these principles.
3. Water Conservation Systems
Water scarcity is becoming an increasingly important global issue, so designers need to consider water use and conservation when planning buildings. It is our environmental ethics that lead us to design systems such as rainwater harvesting, greywater recycling, and low-flow fixtures to help conserve and reduce waste. Poor city adaptations, such as inappropriate use or overuse, are responsible for flooding water-logging and ultimately water-shortage incidents. To that end, architects need to balance purpose and sustainability for water uses, particularly in extensive processes like apartments or malls. A prime example would be for high school students to incorporate specific water-saving concepts in your school project or community centres.
4. Urban Heat Island Reduction
Urban heat islands need 5 to 6 degrees more temperature than adjacent rural areas when you have hard surfaces (concrete), too many black roofs, very little planting, and not much sweating occurring. It makes urban places intolerable and encourages the use of air conditioners, and increases pollution and energy use. Many architects can do something about this using greener roofs, tree planting, reflective surfaces and shade in outdoor spaces. What ethical architecture should mean is that a design not only looks better, but an architect could create a beneficial effect on the local climate and healthier community living. If you're an undergraduate student designing a city block or creating a model of your campus, you could start thinking about how surfaces work together with greenspace to mitigate heat and energy consumption.
5. Climate-Responsive Architecture
Buildings must respond to their environments rather than resist them. A house in a desert is fundamentally different from a house in a coastal or snow region. Ethical architects study local weather, temperature ranges, and angles of the sun to develop buildings that cooperate with nature. Walls can be thick in hot, dry areas because minimizing windows works well with thermal mass, and large south-facing windows help to keep buildings warm during the cold months of the year. As a high school student, you can practice regional design for homes so you may better learn how climate-responsive architecture can reduce environmental impact and encourage comfort.
6. Waste Management in Construction
The construction industry creates some of the most waste, producing tons of concrete, drywall, and wood or timber that displace on site during construction. A more environmentally ethical architecture explores ways to eliminate that waste through material reuse, easily disassembled design, or prefabricated components. With some forethought, waste can effectively be reduced. For example, using modular walls that make up a building or recycled materials as the main structure allows the architect to cut not only waste, but also costs. Another example of waste aware design could be reusing cardboard or paper, or some scrap material for your models, reflecting and shifting your paradigms to realize "junk" can include material for building.
7. Preservation of Local Ecosystems
All construction sites are part of a broader ecosystem and bad construction can destroy habitat, pollute water sources, or remove native plants. Ethical architects work with environmental scientists and local communities to design buildings to protect or even improve ecosystems. Structures may be designed around trees, or the natural contours of the land are used to minimize site disturbance. Green corridors, windows that are friendly to birds, rain gardens can be parts of an environmentally ethical approach. Students in school projects could map the natural aspects of a space and try to design around them rather than clear-cut everything.
8. Transportation and Accessibility Planning
Buildings do not exist in a vacuum. People need to get to buildings. If a building is car-centered, then it adds to the pollution and traffic, and noise. A building that is environmentally ethical will address walkability, access to public transport and bicycle infrastructure, and other transportation modes. Architects might remember to include electric car chargers or offer an effective design that encourages carpools. In your design projects at school consider how people of all ages and abilities could access your building, as well as what transportation could your design promote.
9. Community-Centered Sustainable Design
True environmental ethics is about designing for humans and the planet. If a building is sustainable but is too expensive or uncomfortable for a person to use, that building is not fulfilling its purpose. Ethical architecture is about inclusive design, about buildings for people that are affordable, accessible, and culturally relevant. If a project has sufficient community input and uses human-centered design, and has flexible spaces, then sustainability is not simply a technical concept, but can be a meaningful change in the built environment. When designing, students may consider who the future occupants of their buildings will be, and at the same time consider how human comfort impacts eco-design objectives or human social impact.
10. Resilience to Climate Change
When architects design for buildings in the year 2020 and beyond, they are no longer just thinking about how to build, but also thinking about how to survive and help others survive from climate change's consequences: floods, wildfires, rising sea levels and extreme storms. The design profession, indeed the profession of architecture, should now incorporate resilience into their designs: for example, elevated buildings, flexible and adaptive interiors, access to back-up systems (for example, power) and the use of fire resistant materials. We have an ethical obligation to our buildings and their inhabitants to protect them for today, and provide protection of that building for decades into the future. High school students would be able to take these ideas, and simulate them in their projects by designing homes in flood-prone areas, or designing shelter concepts relevant to climate change emergencies.
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