Page 32 - Green Builder Magazine Jan-Feb 2018 Issue

A New Reality

Survival and

Sustainability CREDIT: JLORD AECK SARGENT IN COLLABORATION WITH THE MILLER HULL PARTNERSHIP

Here’s what it took for homes to

withstand storms and other disasters
during last fall’s hurricane season.
T HE 2017 ATLANTIC HURRICANE SEASON has CREDIT: JONATHAN HILLYER PHOTOGRAPHY
BY JOSHUA GASSMAN

drawn to a close, but we still remember related
names—Harvey, Irma, Maria—which are now
synonymous with devastation that upended
millions of people’s lives. It will take years of
work and untold resources to ameliorate the
damage. Additionally, memories still linger of
Katrina, Hugo and Andrew from previous years.
allow flood waters to move below unimpeded, reducing impact on the
natural hydrology.
Increasing development in coastal cities combined with sea level rise Flow on the go. Grand Bay Discovery Center’s 12-foot-high trusses
make natural disaster mitigation and management ever more urgent. These strategies can include design for extensive daylighting to
It is no longer enough for architects to merely reduce the negative reduce the need for artificial lighting, operable windows to allow
environmental impacts of building. We must begin to ask, “What does it for natural ventilation, passive solar design to allow (or avoid) solar
take for our projects to survive the storm?” and more importantly, “How gain based on location and climate, orienting the building to take
can the built environment contribute to the greater good after a disaster?” advantage of prevailing breezes—especially in coastal areas—and,
The first step is designing projects that don’t just survive storms finally, not building in flood-prone locations (while this may seem
but provide critical shelter and services in their wake. We must obvious, flooding in Houston after Harvey and in New Orleans after
create buildings that are passively survivable. The concept of Passive Katrina were exacerbated greatly due to building in low-lying areas).
Survivability was introduced by Environmental Building News (now One example that implemented many of these strategies is the
Building Green) in a December 2005 article published shortly after Blue Ridge Parkway Visitor Center, located just outside of Asheville,
Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. N.C. In the Asheville climate, daylighting and natural ventilation are
The concept posits that buildings should be designed to meet keys to creating a comfortable building in summer, but the winter
some basic needs of occupants, such as light, drinking water and conditions required a more complete passive solution.
ventilation in the face of disaster-induced utility interruptions. At As a result of climate analysis coupled with a study of the
one point, more than 90 percent of the island of Puerto Rico was vernacular architecture of western North Carolina, the team
without power due to Hurricane Maria. Imagine what might have designed a series of Trombe walls along the south façade to passively
happened with a few construction modifications. heat the building. A Trombe wall is a high-mass wall (typically
concrete or stone) with a glass wall in front of it, creating an air
SERVICE WITH STYLE space. The sun heats this gap like a greenhouse, and this energy
Designers must find ways to make structures more habitable in is then transferred to the inside of the building through the mass
the face of such interruptions. Many of the planning and design wall, via venting, or both.
strategies that can make buildings passively survivable have been This strategy, in conjunction with others mentioned, yielded a
around for a long time, but we have ceased to incorporate them as building with energy performance nearly 80 percent better than
we increasingly rely on air conditioning, artificial lighting and other a code-compliant building, while passively providing heat for an
active systems for human comfort. indefinite period of time without the use of any fossil fuels or power.

30 GREEN BUILDER January/February 2018 www.greenbuildermedia.com

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