Sustainable Timescale(s)by Giuseppe Boscherini

Timescale(s)

Implicit in our understanding of timescale is the notion of measurement. To measure time or land is an inherently human activity, the framework of reference of which is culturally determined. The earth’s ecosystems, in as far as they can be understood and measured, are governed by cycles and timelines of which we are often quite unaware. In that respect we as humans are primarily interested in measuring what interests or affects us as a species, in the short term of our own timescale.

January 11, 2015

Minutes or Hours

While we are aware of clouds coming and going within minutes or hours, of days and nights periodically alternating and of seasons passing, even though their multiplicity as well as their boundaries are a matter of social convention, there exist many processes associated with the Earth that are much slower than a few hours, days or months, which may take thousands of years and present us with new terms of reference in our understanding of “cycles" and "variability".

January 11, 2015

11 Year Solar Cycle

The Sun's magnetic field is changing its direction and strength in cycles that take 11 years on average.

January 11, 2015

100 Million Years Continental Drift

There are slow circulation patterns in the ocean that effectively replace water in the deeper layers after a millennium or two. The Milankovitch cycles, caused by various astronomical, periodic or quasi-periodic oscillations of the Earth's orbit, including changes of its eccentricity, recur every 20,000 year. The continental drift radically changes the shape of the Earth's continents every hundreds of millions of years.

January 11, 2015

Life spans, long and short

Similarly, there are life spans that rival our own in duration either because of their extreme brevity as for the May Fly or longevity, in the case of the Giant Tortoise.

January 11, 2015

Geological Timeline (mya)

Human activities from evolution through the building of civilisations to modern business cycles proceed in parallel with other important cycles, the magnitude and frequency of which sit in another timescale to ours.

The methodologies we adopt regarding the measurement, representation, and evaluation of these timescales is driven by our awareness and understanding of their relevance.

January 11, 2015

Finite Resources

A sustainable approach to design does not merely mean securing commercial growth with limited resources but more importantly preventing negative impacts on the environment and society.

It encourages industry to focus on long-term environmental and societal strategy and goals for the long term benefit of future generations, shifting the focus from minimising the impact on commercial return to maximizing ecological sustainability for future generations.

Sustainable Development

We are, as a society and as designers, embedded in an outlook and lifestyle that is at cross purposes with a vision of sustainable development.

Commentators warn that individuals will have to act as socially responsible citizens, not self-gratifying customers, and to care for their neighbours near and far.

Technology

The practical pressures of development and land use constraints, resulting from the ring-fencing of valuable resources, are however tainting the discourse on sustainability; the current approach is one that stems from a technicist perspective that fundamentally believes that technology, supported by statutory regulation and self-management, will come to a timely rescue.

January 11, 2015

Regulation

UK legislation in the form of the Energy Performance of Buildings (Certificates and Inspections) (England and Wales) Regulations 2007, implements the EC eponymous Directive and requires Energy Performance Certificates and display Energy Certificates.

The reaction to the new legislation from the construction industry has been mixed with some fearing the cost burden and its short term effect on the market and others criticizing the EU for lacking strength of vision and not pushing the initiative far enough, sacrificing long term gains for short term political stability.

Management

As a process, it develops Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) methodology, applying it to the environment, and uses a combination of data collation and evaluation tools borrowed from scientific research and accounting.

Sophisticated methods of analysis, such as, checklists, quantified or component interaction matrices, overlays, networks and simulations have contributed to make EIA a technical process, creating the illusion of certainty where there is little or none.

Development Bias

Current environmental policy, while recognizing the importance of protecting the environment from harmful effects, nevertheless endorses, nearly 30 years after the Rio Declaration, a clear presumption in favour of the first of the three pillars of sustainable development: economic growth. More often than not EIA leads to CBA, whereby the loss to the ecology is accepted and, when possible, compensated for elsewhere, be it through carbon trading, forestation or green taxes, ultimately allowing development to proceed.

Loss of Bio-diversity

Long-term baseline surveys, which capture the flow and flux of natural systems, do not fit easily within anthropocentric commercial timescales.

A sustainable approach should encourage a focus on long-term environmental and societal strategy and goals for the benefit of future generations, shifting the focus from minimizing the impact on commercial return to maximizing ecological sustainability.

January 11, 2015

Long Now

Our design thinking is often limited to relatively short development periods; Stewart Brand caricatures our civilization as “revving itself into a pathologically short attention span”.

The trend may stem from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking.

This translates itself into shortsighted project timescales that constrain architects to the design and delivery of short-lived buildings.

January 11, 2015

Comfort Criteria

The fundamental premise behind sustainability is the assumption of a uniformly controlled environment, which accompanied the emergence of a certain notion of modern comfort based on the application of science and democratisation of technology, should be abandoned in favour of one where the notion of comfort is in tune with natural eco-systems and local conditions.

Comfort is a temporary and precarious social and cultural achievement; it is important to challenge contemporary conventions, the relentless reproduction of which threatens to condemn society to ever-rising energy consumption.

January 11, 2015

Patterns of Use

Most modern buildings contain wasteful technology systems; this is particularly true of lighting and air-conditioning.

Legislation has consequently been focusing on improving the insulation of the thermal envelope contributing to the overall performance of the building.

January 11, 2015

Light foot

Certain nomadic cultures, like the Inuit, Tuareg or Aborigines, may appear unsophisticated, if culture is measured by monumental construction, but their light-footed approach is borne out of respect for the environment and out of an instinctive understanding, passed on through generations, of the necessary balance that must be struck between man and nature.

Educators

Education of and by architects ought to be playing an important role in generating environmental awareness of project development and in promoting values that are conducive to the practice of sustainability.

The approach to the application of sustainability in architecture should be predicated on developing professional skills around three important tools of the design process: consultation, representation and evaluation.

Representation

The issue of representation of environmental impacts of projects and their significance is important in the development of a language and methodology that would eventually support the architectural investigation of sustainability.

Consultation

Consultation plays an important role in environmental awareness both as a data-gathering tool and as a consensus-creating mechanism, recognising the diversity and plurality of points of view; above all it offers necessary project verification as part of a cyclical process of design.

January 11, 2015

Evaluation

The issue of significance in the evaluation of aspects is central to EMS as it affects the subsequent setting of objectives and targets, operational controls and monitoring needs, yet the meaning of significance is subjective, contingent upon values, and dependent upon the environmental and community context, including time constraints.

January 11, 2015

Broader Outlook

Environmental management tools such as EMS and EIA share a fundamental “cyclical” approach to continual improvement with the design process. An intrinsic understanding of the practice of refinement through consultation and balancing of complex and contrasting parameters could potentially place future generations of designers in a position of leadership in developing sustainable stewardship of the environment.

As Bernsen stated:

The design process is not linear, but cyclic. It goes back, not only in small loops to check whether the design fulfils the requirements initially stated, but also in a bigger loop to re-examine and maybe redefine its purpose.

Curators

A balancing corrective action is needed to encourage the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where the Long Now is measured in the scale of centuries.

Hence, architects, keen to facilitate the transition to sustainable development, should be promoting a longer time-horizon and a broader set of goals than traditionally is the case as well as encouraging a wider and more collaborative approach to brief taking and design development.

Thank you