READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on
Reading Passage 2 below.
Back to the future of skyscraper design
Answers to the problem of excessive electricity use by skyscrapers
and large public buildings can be found in ingenious but forgotten
architectural designs of the 19th and early-20th centuries
A The Recovery of Natural Environments in Architecture by Professor Alan
Short is the culmination of 30 years of research and award-winning green
building design by Short and colleagues in Architecture, Engineering, Applied
Maths and Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge.
’The crisis in building design is already here.’ said Short. ‘Policy makers
think you can solve Energy and building problems with gadgets. You can’t. As
global temperatures continue to rise, we are going to continue to squander more
and more energy on keeping our buildings mechanically cool until we have run out
of capacity.’
B Short is calling for a sweeping reinvention of how skyscrapers and major
public buildings are designed – to end the reliance on sealed buildings which
exist solely via the ‘life support’ system of vast air conditioning units.
Instead, he shows it is entirely possible to accommodate natural
ventilation and cooling in large buildings by looking into the past, before the
widespread introduction of air conditioning systems, which were ‘relentlessly
and aggressively marketed’ by their inventors.
C Short points out that to make most contemporary buildings habitable, they
have to be sealed and air conditioned. The energy use and carbon emissions this
generates is spectacular and largely unnecessary. Buildings in the West account
for 40-50% of electricity usage, generating substantial carbon emissions, and
the rest of the world is catching up at a frightening rate. Short regards glass,
steel and air-conditioned skyscrapers as symbols of status, rather than
practical ways of meeting our requirements.
D Short’s book highlights a developing and sophisticated art and science of
ventilating buildings through the 19th and earlier-20th centuries, including the
design of ingeniously ventilated hospitals. Of particular interest were those
built to the designs of John Shaw Billings, including the first Johns Hopkins
Hospital in the US city of Baltimore (1873-1889).
’We spent three years digitally modelling Billings’ final designs,’ says
Short. ‘We put pathogens* in the airstreams, modelled for someone with
tuberculosis (TB) coughing in the wards and we found the ventilation systems in
the room would have kept other patients safe from harm.
* pathogens: microorganisms that can cause disease
E ‘We discovered that 19th-century hospital wards could generate up to 24
air changes an hour – that’s similar to the performance of a modern-day,
computer-controlled operating theatre. We believe you could build wards based on
these principles now.
Single rooms are not appropriate for all patients. Communal wards
appropriate for certain patients – older people with dementia, for example –
would work just as well in today’s hospitals, at a fraction of the energy
cost.’
Professor Short contends the mindset and skill-sets behind these designs
have been completely lost, lamenting the disappearance of expertly designed
theatres, opera houses, and other buildings where up to half the volume of the
building was given over to ensuring everyone got fresh air.
F Much of the ingenuity present in 19th-century hospital and building
design was driven by a panicked public clamouring for buildings that could
protect against what was thought to be the lethal threat of miasmas – toxic air
that spread disease. Miasmas were feared as the principal agents of disease and
epidemics for centuries, and were used to explain the spread of infection from
the Middle Ages right through to the cholera outbreaks in London and Paris
during the 1850s. Foul air, rather than germs, was believed to be the main
driver of ‘hospital fever’, leading to disease and frequent death. The
prosperous steered clear of hospitals.
While miasma theory has been long since disproved, Short has for the last
30 years advocated a return to some of the building design principles produced
in its wake.
G Today, huge amounts of a building’s space and construction cost are given
over to air conditioning. ‘But I have designed and built a series of buildings
over the past three decades which have tried to reinvent some of these ideas and
then measure what happens.
’To go forward into our new low-energy, low-carbon future, we would be well
advised to look back at design before our high-energy, high-carbon present
appeared. What is surprising is what a rich legacy we have abandoned.’
H Successful examples of Short’s approach include the Queen’s Building at
De Montfort University in Leicester. Containing as many as 2,000 staff and
students, the entire building is naturally ventilated, passively cooled and
naturally lit, including the two largest auditoria, each seating more than 150
people. The award-winning building uses a fraction of the electricity of
comparable buildings in the UK.
Short contends that glass skyscrapers in London and around the world will
become a liability over the next 20 or 30 years if climate modelling predictions
and energy price rises come to pass as expected.
I He is convinced that sufficiently cooled skyscrapers using the natural
environment can be produced in almost any climate. He and his team have worked
on hybrid buildings in the harsh climates of Beijing and Chicago – built with
natural ventilation assisted by back-up air conditioning – which, surprisingly
perhaps, can be switched off more than half the time on milder days and during
the spring and autumn.
Short looks at how we might reimagine the cities, offices and homes of the
future. Maybe it’s time we changed our outlook.
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