In the first of a two part series article, Jacob Deva Racusin explains the differences in monitors for your walls. This is “must know” information for every builder and owner.
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By Kyle Holzhueter
Editors Note – This article is a feature length pictorial look at the various aspects of natural building in Korea. The full-length article will be in the upcoming issue of The Last Straw and is available in its entirety right here on the website for subscribers. Make sure you have a subscription soon so you won’t miss this stunning array of natural building techniques.
Traditional Korean Architecture
Traditional Building in Korea relied primarily on natural and local materials. Buildings were traditionally designed according to the 間 (Korean: ka, Japanese: ken) module, a common measurement found in east Asia.
East Asian Module
Traditional Korean homes generally have a timber frame with adobe or wattle and daub infill, though regional variations are found throughout the country.
Traditional House
Regional Variation
Especially on Jeju Island where volcanic rock and strong winds are abundant, homes traditionally consisted of a double wall system with an exterior wall of volcanic rock surrounding an interior wall, creating a protected corridor around the house. This in turn, protected the interior walls from wind and rain and improved the thermal performance of the home. Also because of the strong winds, thatched roofs were generally secured by a net of straw ropes.
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by Chris Magwood
Making Things Air-Tight
The straw bale revival of the 1990s reintroduced builders to a pioneer building method that showed remarkable potential for building in a modern context. The nature of the basic components of a straw bale wall system – bales with plaster applied directly to bales – combined several obvious advantages over other wall systems while simultaneously raising some serious questions.
The advantages are familiar to TLS readers: low environmental impact, simplicity and well placed thermal mass. The serious questions and attempts to answer them were the lifeblood of TLS: What about moisture? Air tightness? Cold climates? Humid climates? Longevity of the straw in all these conditions?
There was a lot more going on in the construction world of the 1990s than the straw bale revival. The housing industry was recovering from multiple moisture-related disasters, many caused by overly airtight but under-ventilated homes and/or the use of un-vented “waterproof” exterior cladding systems. The research into these issues, among other factors, led to a rise in prominence of “building science” as a distinct engineering discipline. The straw bale revivalists were extremely lucky to have the attention of some of building science’s leading practitioners, in particular John Straube, who authored several key articles and studies about straw bale walls that were essential to answering the question of why bale walls were so resilient, despite some seemingly obvious moisture concerns.
Simply put, building science attempts to quantify the movement of heat and moisture through building assemblies and help designers and builders to make decisions that lead to structures that adequately deal with the moisture and temperature regimens of their particular climate and use.
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This article appeared in TLS #59
by Tim Beatley – Virginia, USA
Reprinted with permission from Residential Architect magazine, November 2005.
We live in disconnected times. We occupy space but know little about it. Instead of joining communities or neighborhoods, we buy houses and make real estate investments.
Sustainable design offers us the chance to rekindle these lost connections, to rebuild knowledge of place. New residential development is commonly thought to bring more cars and traffic, higher taxes, overcrowded schools, diminished views, and open spaces. But there is a way to turn this around – if we can imagine new growth connecting with and strengthening our sense of place. This kind of green design might take many forms, but just a few possibilities are mentioned here.
Acting locally
One idea is to locally source building materials. In our globalized economy, such materials can originate hundreds or thousands of miles away from where they are eventually installed or assembled. They contain a high embodied energy, and their extraction often entails substantial ecological impact. Paradoxically, much of the practice of green building has emphasized materials, such as bamboo flooring, that are transported great distances.
We need to look much closer to home, to materials that nurture local livelihoods and reconnect us to place and land. An innovative sustainable wood initiative here in Virginia holds some clues and offers some inspiration. Operated by Appalachian Sustainable Development (ASD), it supports the local economy by working with small wood-lot owners who are willing to manage and harvest sustainably. The wood produced is beautiful, durable, and distinctive (more of the tree is used, with knotty “character” wood a key result), and it is certified under ASD’s Sustainable Wood label. It is then dried in a solar- and wood-waste-powered kiln and cut into flooring at ASD’s mill.
My family and I recently installed ASDcertified white-ash flooring in our home. As a result, I know where the wood was grown, and I have some assurance that the result for the landscape is not destructive but rather restorative. In this case, a sustainable material close to home was actually less expensive than its standard commercial alternative. It is a small expression of commitment to
sustainability but an important step on the way to a deeper connection and duty to place.
Using local materials is a growing practice in sustainable design communities. Innovative green projects like BedZED, the Beddington Zero Energy Development in the London borough of Sutton, have explicit targets for local materials. At BedZED, more than half of the building materials arrive from sources within a 35-mile radius of the site. Wood siding comes from local municipal forests, bricks from a local brick company.
In Western Australia, there has been a creative effort to nurture furniture building and wood artistry. Rather than exporting logs (or allowing them to be converted to low-value wood chips and then exported), there is a growing sentiment that these resources can be the foundation of a highvalue-added, labor-intensive economy, of which sustainably managed forests can serve as a linchpin. Among other steps, a forest heritage center and school of fine furniture making has been established there, and the number of outlets for locally made wood products and crafts is growing.
Much of our food comes from very far away. It typically travels some 1,500 miles from where it is grown to where it is eaten, according to the 2001 report “Food, Fuel, and Freeways,” and we are usually oblivious to these origins. New developments could begin to think more carefully about the food needs of their future residents, perhaps developing long-term relationships with local growers. This is essentially the concept of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) residents buy a share in a local farm that provides (often delivered) a basket or box full of produce each week during the growing season. CSA farms are growing in popularity – there are now more than 1,500 of them nationally – and they could be offered as part of the package that goes along with a new home (or at least as an option).
Designing in opportunities to grow food directly is another way of promoting sustainability (and healthier living), strengthening place, and re-earthing us. This is a trend in Europe, where ecological, mixed-use projects such as Viikki in Helsinki, Finland, have left green fingers between major buildings for garden plots. Single-family homes might be designed to facilitate this as well. A model sustainable home in the Perth, Australia, suburb of Subiaco, for instance, includes extensive edible landscaping and a built-in raised-bed vegetable garden in its backyard. The garden is large enough to produce all the vegetables a typical family needs.
Energy use is another way to reconnect with local places. Every place has opportunities to generate its own power, whether through wind, sunlight, or biomass. Strong European examples exist of communities that have been able to redirect community resources to local energy production. In Aeroe Island, Denmark, which aspires to be 100 percent energy independent, small power plants generate energy from the sun and from locally grown straw and hay. Expenditures for energy stay local and help to strengthen, not diminish, the region’s economy.
A more urban example is the redeveloped district of Vastra Hamnen in Malmo, Sweden, where a variety of renewable energy technologies and design ideas have been incorporated into dense housing and the ambitious goal of 100 percent renewable energy from local sources has been met. Energy production is a visible element of the community, with vertical solar hot-water-heating panels feeding into a district heating grid.
BedZED again offers inspiration with an on-site combined-heat-and power plant fueled by wood waste from tree trimmings. In Freiburg, Germany, the Solar-Fabrik solar-technology factory burns oil from locally grown rapeseed in a carbon-neutral cycle, further demonstrating the power of combining green and local.
The energy consumed by residents and the embodied energy associated with new building materials might also be compensated for in ways that creatively restore and renew bioregions. In the U.K., the Carbon Neutral Company works with banks and building societies to offer a carbon neutral mortgage, which provides for the planting of enough trees to cover the carbon footprint of the home and lifestyle of its occupants. In Australia, similarly, several banks are now offering carbon-neutral car loans. Habitat and place restoration can happen in many ways, of course, but local tree planting holds potential for productively harnessing the green sensibilities of people on behalf of place.
In an increasingly turbulent and globalized world, rebuilding lost place and human connections in a host of creative ways provides solace, strength, and reassurance. Sustainable design must strive not only to reduce its overall ecological impact, but to do so in ways that enable us to be truly native to place.
Resources
Residential Architect magazine www.residentialarchitect.com
Appalachian Sustainable Development
www.asdevelop.org/sustainable_woods.html
www.bedzed.org.uk
Beddington Zero Energy Development, an environmentallyfriendly,
energy-efficient mix of housing and work space in
Beddington, Sutton, United Kingdom.
Viikki Eco Neighbourhood Blocks – Finland
www.cardiff.ac.uk/archi/programmes/cost8/case/holistic/viikki.html
Malmo, Sweden
naturalspace.com_broadband/swedentext.htm
The CarbonNeutral Company, United Kingdom
www.carbonneutral.com/pages/reducingCO2.asp
Sustainable Communities
Toward Sustainable Communities: Resources for Citizens and
Their Governments by Mark Roseland, Sean Connelly, David Hendrickson and Chris Lindberg.
Developing Sustainable Planned Communities by Richard
Franko, Jo Allen Gause, Jim Heid, and Steven Kellenberg.
Sustainable Communities: The Potential for Eco-neighbourhoods
by Hugh Barton.
Designing Sustainable Communities: Learning from Village
Homes by Michael Corbett, Judy Corbett, and Robert L. Thayer.
Fostering Sustainable Behavior: An Introduction to Communitybased
Social Marketing by Doug McKenzie-Mohr and William Smith.
Ecovillages: A Practical Guide to Sustainable Communities
by Jan Martin Bang.
Sustainable Communities: Learning from the Cohousing
Model by Grahm Meltzer.
Green Cities: A Guide for Sustainable Community Development
by Michael Bloomfield and Michael Lithgow.
Sustainable Communities Network www.sustainable.org
Links citizens to the resources they need to implement innovative processes/programs.
Intentional Communities www.ic.org
Information on ecovillages, cohousing, intentional communities, urban housing cooperatives and other related projects.
School of Living www.schoolofliving.org
Nurturing healthy, Community Land Trust Communities.
New Urbanism www.newurbanism.org
Many choices for living in more sustainable, convenient and comfortable places.
Tim Beatley is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities at the University of Virginia. This article is based, in part, on ideas discussed in his book Native to Nowhere: Sustaining Home and Community in a Global Age (Island Press, 2004).
www.residentialarchitect.com
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