302 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy
right orientation, wall dimensions, choice of materials on one side, and clever and
expressive design on the other, and are often creating problems of integration in each
project. These problems are relevant in multy storey buildings and in urban textures
more than in isolated and one storey houses.
What the design method?
I have quoted, as a source of inspiration, Victor Olgyay’s “Design with Climate”
(1963) because, notwithstanding the fact that this publication is quite old, it remains
all the same a beautiful example of inquiry in the complex relationships between
building and climate. The peculiarity of this treaty is to make visible in an elegant
graphic and structural form, the invisible aspects of climatic parameters. The solar
energy flows on roof and East, South, West, North walls, in a building in different
climates and seasons; the dynamics of a region climate parameters (temperature,
humidity, winds, solar energy, rain); the role of sun, wind, rains and orography in
creating a special microclima, the behaviour of wind inside a building and around
buildings etc.
We must remember that the design of a solar building has two purposes, one
is climate answer and energy saving, while the other, even more important, is the
thermal comfort of its inhabitants.
C. Ecosustainable use of building materials, not only for what human health is con-
cerned (harmful or venenous materials), but also from the point of view of their
energy cost in production and transport. The analysis of the energy cost of building
materials (Lyfe Cycle Analysis, or Life Cycle Assessment, LCA) is very laborious and
is usually studied in PHD thesis.
Environment and landscape
Landscape is the visible settlementt of the many processes, antropic and natural,
taking place in a certain geographic area. Land, water and green are the main design
materials, which can be considered for creating parks and leisure but also resource
production: oxygen, water for civil uses, food production, wood etc.
A. Green and water in towns.
Historic towns have always used parks, gardens and green squares not only for lei-
sure but also for bettering the quality of air, for shadow and climate moderation in
summer.
Today the dramatic shortage of water and change of climate, with summers more
and more hot, suggest a design strategy in towns for water saving and energy saving
in order to obtain natural cooling systems wich could be multipurpose, functioning
also for conservation of rain water and recycling of water from houses (kitchens,
washing machines).
Another landscape hypothesis is the use of greenbelts around towns for citizens’s
food production. No longer fields for industrialized agriculture, these greenbelts could
become, and they have already become in different towns in France like in Italy,
“urban countries” or “campagnes urbaines” following the definition given by the
French landscape professor Pierre Donadieu.