Simple Solutions for Complex Problems | Nov 7th at 1:09pm
Himanshu Parikh thinks that it is dumb to pay more money to get energy efficient buildings. He thinks we should be paying far less.
He is particularly appalled by the first LEED Platinum building in the Middle East, covered in glass. Instead, he proposes simple technologies, noting all the ways that simpler is the better way:
simpler the faster
simpler the cheaper
simpler the easier to build
simpler the more equitable.
simpler the more beautiful.
It takes a smart architect to build a dumb building. Instead, LEED and other systems don’t don’t encourage simplicity, natural ventilation, traditional ways of building as we did before electricity. They build smart buildings with elaborate controls that need lots of smart people to maintain.
That is why Independence Hall in Philadelphia has high double hung windows; air and natural light penetrate deeply. Yet as one commenter noted, looking around the room in Houston Hall, there were venetian blinds blocking the windows and lights turned on, there was air conditioning running and windows closed. The room worked perfectly well a hundred years ago without these technologies and it could be doing it right now.
Lloyd Alter has been an architect, developer, inventor, and builder of prefab housing. He now writes for TreeHugger and Planet Green, is an Associate Professor at Ryerson University teaching sustainable design, and has written for Azure and Ontario Nature magazines.
