Defining Sustainability in Relation to the Renovation of Modern Housing: Current Definitions and Metrics for Sustainable Housing Renovation

Summary
This paper focuses on comparing practice-based and academic definitions and metrics of “sustainability” as they relate to the transformation of Modern housing in Denmark.

Keywords:Sustainability, Renovation, Architecture, Denmark, Modern housing

1. Introduction to the Study
Buildings are responsible for 40% of energy consumption and 36% of EU Co2 emissions and the EU ́s Climate and Energy objectives include a 20% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and a 20% savings of energy by 2020. With tightening Danish national and EU regulations relating to energy use in buildings, architects must focus on other parameters as well as energy use because there is more to designing sustainable building than energy savings. In the building industry, there is an increasing focus in building engineering approaches relating to “low energy buildings” and architectural approaches to “sustainability”.

2. Background to the Study and Study Context
Despite the increasing focus on low energy buildings and sustainability, the definitions of key terms in these areas are unclear. This paper focuses on architectural approaches to sustainable building, rather than engineering or other ways of approaching sustainable building. This study is part of a PhD project that aims to develop an insightful, researched, and general view of the complex issue of architectural approaches to sustainable building transformation in Denmark. This study was undertaken to document and analyze the way that architects define and measure sustainability in Denmark.

3. Method and Approach
This study aims to create results that can be useful to both academic research in this area and architects in practice. Architects can benefit from knowing what is currently being designed and built, what strategies were used and when in the design process, and how successfully they were used. Data collected includes definitions of sustainability from outside of the profession, as well as in architectural literature. Definitions used in the context of architectural practice were also studied. The definitions from selected key texts were compared. A survey of Danish architects was undertaken and responses from twelve Danish architectural practices were compared. The survey asked offices to rank their interest in sustainability from one to five, how they define sustainability,if they have an office policy on sustainability, how they assess sustainability on building projects, if they rank energy as the most important parameter of sustainability, how they rank their interest in building transformation from one to five, and what they view as key issues relating to sustainability and renovation. It is interesting to note that there were no two responses that were the same and each office was able to articulate their view of sustainability and none ranked it below 4 in importance. None cited a general, reliable way of measuring sustainability across all of their building projects.

4. Discussion of Results and Conclusions

Defining Sustainability in Architectural Literature
There is no universal definition of sustainability amongst architects. Through misuse and overuse of the word, “sustainability” is often regarded as a mere buzz-word. This can trigger cynicism amongst architects in this important issue. Ken Yeang argues that “we need not only to first define and understand what constitutes green design, but also to understand its premises for it would be counter productive for the designer to leap into green design without understanding and agreeing to such basic principles as connectedness”. In recent years, a new way of thinking about sustaina- bility is emerging. A survey was undertaken to find some ideas of how Danish offices view sus- tainability and transformation. The majority of offices explain that their definition of sustainability depends on the project, and that there is no universal definition, or therefore, no way of measuring sustainability.

Current Metrics Used by Architects To Assess Sustainability
As detailed in architectural literature and in responses to the Questionnaire by the offices, environmental performance or energy efficiency cannot be thought of as equivalent to “sustainability”, although they are often used interchangeably. It is easier to measure energy than some other parameters of sustainability and so often energy gets overriding emphasis. A survey of standardized systems such as BREEAM suggests that there are many ways to measure sustainable design potentials at design stage.

Defining and Measuring Sustainability in Relation to Architectural Renovation
Renovation is, in general, a more “sustainable” strategy than demolishing and creating new building, as defined in the so-called Brundtland definition. Renovation and customizing buildings to meet current needs could be done in such a way as to allow future generations to follow a similar approach. In contrast, if society adopts a strategy of tearing down and rebuilding architecture, future generations will not necessarily be able to adopt this approach due to the limitations of resources and the reality that growth cannot be sustained indefinitely. When approaching architectural renovation, both the literature and the Questionnaire responses emphasize context, user needs and lifecycle despite the fact that all architecture should focus on these parameters, not only building refurbishment.

5. Further Research and Implications
Sustainability is not well defined or measured in architecture, at least by designers, and this is a problem. Sustainability it is also not well understood by users, and further work should be undertaken in this area. It can and must be considered by designers, but due to the complex nature of design, it is difficult to implement, measure, define, compare and communicate. Increasingly as more architects use Building Information Modeling and other digital tools, there are more oppor- tunities for architects to communicate sustainability and analyze their designs. Future research could compare design intentions (as recorded in BREEAM for example) and post occupancy data to see if designs are performing as predicted. Further study could also involve comparison of emerging, smaller assessment systems to see how they serve sustainability and renovation.