SUPER SUSTAINABLE MANIFESTO

Super Sustainable is a think tank initiated by the architects Joakim Kaminsky and Fredrik Kjellgren. It is composed by a growing team of engaged persons from all over the world. Joakim Kamisnky has formulated their manifesto for a Super Sustainable Architecture.

TOWARDS A SUPER SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE

Humankind faces a challenge comparable in size with the industrial revolution; to create an ecologically sustainable society.

Furthermore ecological sustainability is a prerequisite for social and economical sustainability.

With a unique position of power and influence in this development the designer has a choice; to lead or follow. You better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone, as Bob Dylan put it.

These writings aim to predict how a new architecture can evolve and help create a future sustainable society, we call this architecture Super Sustainable.

Super Sustainable Architecture focuses on sustainability as a natural part of the design process equally important with space, economy, program, morphology, light or shadow.

Super Sustainable architecture has an ingenious approach to sustainability as a natural part of the design process and therefore do not need to obsessively make sustainable buildings look “green”.

Since Super Sustainable architecture is based on science, calculations and results, its sustainable qualities are measurable.

Super Sustainable architecture is indifferent to styles or trends because it can be dressed in many ways. It is defined solely by its sustainable qualities.

Most of the sustainable contemporary architecture focuses mainly on its sustainable features. However well-meaning this is, it will only attract a minority of the population with an interest in environmental issues, while the vast majority will be excluded. Therefore Super Sustainable architecture combines sustainability with many other qualities that are equally important. These characteristics differ for every project and are based on the usual interplay of the design process involving demands of the client, economy, site, context and so forth.

The automobile industry has understood this dilemma. Therefore an environmentally friendly car looks like an ordinary car. It focuses on a number of qualities of which sustainability is one. Other characteristics of equal importance could be safety, design, speed and so forth.

Nevertheless sustainability will profoundly affect basic architectural qualities and aesthetics such as space, materiality, flows, program, morphology, light and shadow. With new sustainable demands on the rise there are a number of common features that will influence the shape of architecture to come.

The most efficient way to reduce the ecological footprint of a building is to design it so that it can be made smaller. Less material will be used and less energy for heating and cooling will be needed.

Buildings will need to have large floor-areas in comparison too their enclosing surfaces to achieve energy efficiency. Therefore compact volumes will be used. With a disperse shape as a starting point energy efficiency is hard to achieve and will mean diminishing other architectural qualities. A compact volume is equally important with respect to heating and cooling of buildings.

With increasing resource scarcity and the end of fossil fuels it will no longer be economical nor sustainable to transport building materials around the globe, instead the architectural palette will consist mostly of locally produced materials.

Materials used should be possible to upcycle or recycle. Therefore different materials will be clearly divided. Also materials will not be treated, mixed, painted or coated in such a way that they cannot be easily recycled. Hybrid or composite materials will be avoided in favor of single source materials.

Excessive use of glazed areas in buildings is a problem in most climates. In cold countries too large windows lead to energy loss, in warmer areas the need of cooling arises. The technical development in this field is fast and the energy efficiency of glazing is continuously improving, nevertheless for the time being architects will need to restrict the use of glazing.

In colder countries the need of insulation will increase in order to reduce energy usage. Today that means using thicker walls, roofs and floors implicating both difficulties and opportunities for the architect. However new materials such as vacuum insulation are likely to soon change these prerequisites making it possible to produce very thin walls with acceptable insulation values.

Throughout history the means of travel have determined the shape of buildings and cities. For instance the introduction of mass car ownership reshaped our cities to suit the car. Areas used for communication grew exponentially and buildings where designed to advertise themselves at a scale recognizable at 100 km/h. In the future our cities will be shaped by the speed and properties of blimps, high-speed trains, trams, subways and bikes. These future means of transportation will have a profound influence on architecture and city planing.

There will be less individual and more collective traveling. By sharing vehicles energy and other resources can be used more efficiently.

The speed of travel will change.

Intercontinental travels will be slower as planes are replaced by blimps. However airports will be more accessible as blimps are much more flexible than planes as to where they dock. Buildings with their own blimp docking stations could be directly connected to the world finally fulfilling the architectural dreams of Archigrams Instant city where underdeveloped, drab towns where connected to the world via blimps.

For medium distance traveling high-speed trains will dominate. They are faster than cars, but not as flexible.

For short distances finer rail-bound networks will dominate in combination with biking and walking. Personal rapid transport monorail systems could offer a flexibility and speed almost equaling that of the car.

When land and resources become sparser we will allow nature to coexist and interplay with cities, buildings and humans. A super sustainable city might very well be an oak forest that is the home and work place for a million inhabitants, such a city was proposed by Gustav Sjöblom, former chairman of the Gothenburg department of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation. A super sustainable building might be an eatable and self generating home for both humans and animals.

As the lifespan of buildings is significantly prolonged architecture as fashion will be redefined. Trends will come and go, but as resource spareness is increasing this process can no longer involve the premature replacement of whole buildings. Instead architects will have to develop new strategies making buildings and cities adaptable and changeable in order to meet the demand for newness while keeping their main infrastructure and building components intact.

A growing population combined with the need of expanded areas for agriculture and wild life are pushing inhabited areas to become ever denser. Dense urban areas are indeed proving to be a very sustainable form of human habitation. This is partly because their mixed program and reduced traveling distances allows for sustainable transport solutions.

Super Sustainable architecture is asymmetrical. In order to utilize solar and wind energy, buildings will have to relate to their surroundings. Their volumes will be shaped by prevailing wind directions, the movement of the sun, the local geology and other conditions. For similar reasons but at a larger scale cities will also be shaped by the local conditions of their environment.

Energy will have to be harvested from renewable resources. To reduce the vulnerability of larger systems and to optimize the efficiency in power transmission we will have to use more locally and small scale resources. Therefore the harvesting of renewable energy will be an natural part of Super Sustainable Architecture. This can be done as an integrated part of buildings or with freestanding units. The harvesting can be carried out with solar cells, solar panels, wind power plants, geothermal heating systems and so forth.

With the failure of modernism and with the industrialization of the building process architects lost the initiative in the design process. Since then the role of the architect has diminished to a mere decorator. Fewer and fewer architects are taking on a holistic approach to the design process. Fewer and fewer are questioning the current state of affairs. Fewer and fewer are envisioning the future.

The implementation of a Super Sustainable Architecture offers great possibilities for the architect. Now is the time to reclaim initiative. With new focuses and fields of expertise emerging the future design process is up for grabs: Who will make the energy calculations? The material evaluations? The life cycle analysis´s? By mastering these new aspects of our profession architects can once again adopt a holistic approach, expanding their field of expertise to envision all parts of the building process.

Still the field of sustainability includes so many disciplines that collaboration is essential. By establishing networks of competence the architect can play a central part and gather all knowledge needed in the design process. Mixing competences is of key importance, with the architect solely in charge the result has too often proved to be a mere green surface.

Lecture at the local architecture school. 150 students can't wait to start. For once it seems architects are heading the change. When Le Corbusier stated that The house is a machine for living in, the industrial revolution had already been around for a good 150 years. Consequently the aesthetics of the modern architecture had to be borrowed from other more visionary professions than that of the architect. The houses took their inspiration from ships, cars, machines (and Greek medieval villages). However in present time it seems many architects have put themselves in the driving seat interpreting their contemporary era and steering it towards a Sustainable future.

Technological inventions alone cannot create a sustainable society. Nevertheless they can help us in the process of getting there. With the present intense focus on sustainability new technological breakthroughs are continuously made. New inventions may very well change the prerequisites for future architects.

Most of the new sustainable techniques and products that are widely adopted are robust. They are often improvements of existing techniques and use fairly basic mechanics. For instance solar panels, heat exchangers, geothermal heating systems, natural ventilation and passive houses are all results of basic design principles.

The building sector is known for its slow adaption of new ideas. It can take decades for a new technique or product to be widely accepted. Passive houses, for instance, have been built in Sweden for almost 20 years but still only constitute a mere 3% of the new housing built every year. With a tradition of an innovative approach, architects are well suited to propose new ideas and products and head change.

Until William McDonoughs and Michael Braungarts cradle to cradle vision magically redefines the current logic of the consumer society the constant flow of products being consumed, deposed and replaced will slow down due to material sparseness. Will the sustainable society finally replace the Society of the Spectacle envisioned by Guy Debord? Will people change their way of life into a more sustainable one? How will these new lifestyles in turn influence architecture and city-planning?

Unlike historic isms the forming of a sustainable society involves implications that go beyond changing politics, philosophies or aesthetics. It is the challenge of adjusting our society to the ecological boundaries of our habitat; the earth. In the long run we have no choice but to stay within these fixed limits. Consequently there is no alternative to a sustainable society. Therefore Super Sustainable architecture is here to stay.