Why is Energy Efficient design and building more important today than ever?
Sick building syndrome was a term coined by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1986, where respiratory problems in building occupants were being linked to poor indoor air quality, which in turn was linked to poor quality design and a poor understanding of building science. Thank god we’ve moved on, I hear you say!
Well, gladly we have moved on, to an extent. However, we consider that the vast majority of new market housing provided in the UK still falls significantly short of where it could, and should be. Given our constantly evolving understanding we have of the impact of buildings on our health and the environment, and the new challenges we are facing, we should be doing better.
Building design for the future
We have the expertise to understand building design, and deliver to standards that meet the demands of our age.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are all now spending a significant amount of time at home for either social distancing reasons and the need to work from home where possible.
Therefore, indoor air quality, relative humidity, thermal comfort and energy efficiency are more important than ever. From an energy point of view, if we’re at home more, then it is likely our homes will need to be heated more. However, setting low energy requirements aside for a moment, lets have a closer look at healthy building design.
The optimum range of healthy humidity levels is 40-60% to mitigate pathogens without causing adverse effects. The design of passivhaus buildings maintains a significantly tighter control over this range than conventional buildings due to the airtightness and controlled, filtered ventilation through the MVHR. This achieves a controlled balance between the envelope, MVHR and airtightness.
Therefore, since the onset of COVID-19, these principles achieve two key criteria: 1) significantly reduce the spread of infection in the internal environment. 2) establish a much healthier internal environment for people spending significantly longer periods of time at home.
This is not just about viruses, but allergic rhinitis, asthma, respiratory infections, fungi / mould, mites, chemical interactions etc.
Passivhaus home and office
Since building our own passivhaus home and office, we have spent a great deal more time in it than we had planned and have experienced these benefits first hand. After the environment, one of my own drivers was allergies, which have improved significantly as a result of the internal air quality.
Given that our practice values and expertise at AK. Architects have been consistently central to our work, our own projects are not suffering from a ‘reactive’ response to new issues. Our work has consistently been building these principles into all of our projects for over 15 years.
Our technical expertise can be found in the new low energy community housing schemes we have coming forward, where space standards are improved, to RIBA Case for Space guidance, to allow home working, MVHR, airtightness and highly insulated external building envelopes meet the demands of the current circumstances.
The post COVID-19 future can also be a healthy and green future, where everything we need to be doing with our buildings to meet both challenges, already exists within one building standard. We already know how to do this, and we are proud our projects will help show the way.
Want to know more about Passivhaus?
If you’d like to talk to us about a potential passivhaus please do get in touch to discuss how we could help you realise your project.