Two Decades of Urban Climate Research, by J. Arnfield.
Better Air Quality at Street Level: Strategies for Urban Design, by AW Spirn.
Battle McCarthy website: www.battlemccarthy.com
The set of readings this week ranges in focus and style from a descriptive scientific paper, to a manual for urban design strategies, or a consulting firm website. All of them deal with climate and its interaction with urban form, but they frame it in very different ways. The first one presents some scientific measurements aiming to establish a common methodology for urban climatology, the second offers a catalogue of design possibilities to cope with air pollution in streets, and the third one presents a line of work and research in environmental building systems in a consulting firm.All three approaches seem necessary to develop a more cohesive body of knowledge that allows us to answer effectively to the climate processes in urban settings.
Arnfield’s paper aims to summarize the major advances in two aspects of the Urban Climatology field: the urban atmospheric turbulence and exchange processes for water and energy in the urban environment, and the urban heat island effect.Given the precise scope of the topic and the intended scientific audience, the review is hard to read -or even frustrating- due to the terminology and to the multiple case studies presented that always probe themselves somehow not valid for general agreement. Despite this and the lack of a more propositive set of conclusions, there are some interesting issues to be highlighted. For instance, there is a lot of attention paid to the need of considering the different scales and forms in an urban setting: ‘As spatial scale increases spatial variability is likely to be reduced; that is, there is probably less difference among two land use zones in a city than between the north and south facing walls of an individual building within one of them […] Urban climatology is required to come to terms with this heterogeneity and complexity […]’.
Professor Spirn mentions a similar concern on the need to read the diverse urban fabric in order to analyze the air quality at the street level.‘The degree to which winds penetrate the city at street level is influenced by the orientation and continuity of open spaces, their dimension and shape, and the topography of buildings’.In contrast with the first article, this one is easy to read, and the graphics help to illustrate each issue/case presented. The article offers a comprehensive analysis of the urban air quality and serves as a framework for design strategies to cope with air pollution and to reduce human exposure.
Finally, the website ‘research area’ focuses on three interesting topics: Double Skins, Sustainable Towers, and Wind Towers. Related to the topic we are covering this week, I was particularly interested in the way they refer to ‘climate’ as to propose new energy strategies [solar and wind] integrated with the building structure. This is the reading from inside the building structure to outside, and it offers a good counterpoint to the previous articles look from outside. Unfortunately, the display of information is quite static and poorly developed for all the potential of a website – it lacks illustrations and a more interactive sharing of information that allows going into more detail in the projects. In this sense, although the incorporation of double skins and wind towers has a lot of potential when integrated in the design of different building typologies, I am particularly curious about the operative conclusions in the exploration on towers. The research aims to incorporate a broad range of issues to enrich the performance of towers in their relation with the environment; however, I feel clueless on how these concerns are going to be shaped. For instance, quoting the authors -Ken Yeang, HTA Architects and Battle McCarthy- we can read:‘The high-rise covers less land area than a low-rise development. This will provide more green areas and reduce the impact of urban sprawl on the environment’. ‘Ecological and environmental benefits can be improved by introducing vertical landscaping on buildings and linking this with the green belts in the city’.‘Tall structures can enhance urban biodiversity. Integration between human environments and animal and plant ecosystems can enrich and add merit to a site […]. Successful high-density urban development must involve choice.
Little is said about how the environment will benefit from unlimitedly increasing the density by high-rise buildings [vertical urban sprawl?], or how the remaining green areas in ground floor are going to be programmed, or how we can link vertically what we fail to link horizontally, or how tall structures will enhance urban biodiversity. These are some of the limits/challenges we can find in the broad definitions of sustainability we are get used to.
