Climate of change: the vernacular lessons of buildings in hot latitudes can help shape an ecologically responsive architecture.

Before the Modern Movement's white heat of technology and egalitarian impulses liberated architectural form, buildings were, as they had been for centuries, shaped by more fundamental concerns such as place and climate. Rooted in Northern European experience, Modernism provided a rational, universal model that could be applied anywhere, with the addition of the odd brisesolcil. And while forays into non-temperate climes such as Brazil, Algeria and India created memorable additions to the historical canon, the legacy in terms of contextual appropriateness and physical durability is decidedly more mixed (AR February 2006). So a pattern was established, which still continues, of designs from temperate latitudes assuming the status of standardised, desirable imperatives, capable of being applied to all sorts of conditions and contexts. And over half a century later, the real legacy of the Miesian urge for transparency and lightness is the ubiquitous glass prostheses infesting skylines from Dubai to Shanghai, artificially conditioned limbs grafted onto patently unsuitable host bodies, rapaciously demanding of energy to create habitable internal environments. Can't stand the heat? Turn up the air con and watch the planet fry.

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From the Bedouin tent to the Mediterranean courtyard house, the built environment was traditionally shaped by deeply rooted responses to climate. Within a framework of limited technology and circumscribed social and aesthetic aspirations, vernacular solutions tended to prevail and in many cases are directly analagous to a particular climate. As Dean Hawkes noted, 'Questions of form--whether compact or dispersed, of orientation--whether to admit or exclude the sun, of the size and disposition of shading devices and so on, are frequently eloquently illuminated by studies of the vernacular'. (1) Now, in an ironic and potentially disastrous role reversal, buildings are shaping climate, wretchedly implicated in the build up of C[O.sub.2] emissions that is driving global warming. Across the 25 nations of the European Union, buildings account for 47 per cent of emissions, (2) a doubtless familiar statistic to AR readers, but one worth restating.

The planet hots up

It is now an undisputed fact that the world is gradually getting hotter. Moreover, the effects of climate change are already evident in catastrophic storms, floods, melting glaciers, thinning ice sheets, increased desertification and extreme heat episodes. Estimates vary, but between 20 000 and 35 000 people are reported to have died in the European heatwave of 2003, in sustained summer temperatures that would normally be expected every 450 years. By the end of this century, it is predicted that such an 'anomalous climate event' will be a murderously familiar biennial occurrence, and average temperatures across the globe will have risen between 6 and 11.5 deg C. (3)

Yet the hubristic pleasure of taking on and taming nature through unsuitable or unsustainable development is still deprecssingly in evidence. It is not just manifest through the built environment, but also in patterns of human consumption and behaviour. In an increasingly globalised, on-demand world, local nuance is gradually being flattened out or eroded and any suggestion of modifying behaviour to suit climate is seen as faintly risible (the Mediterranean siesta is now under increasing threat, for instance). There were, however, good reasons why the British Raj decamped to Shimla en masse each summer, or why shops in Seville shut in the early afternoon. And while not advocating a return to the paper bark dwellings of the Aborigines, it is clear that many tenets of vernacular tradition, both built and behavioural, are still relevant in the quest to create environments that are both ecologically sustainable and humanly satisfying.

How might these traditions be reinterpreted or reworked for the current age to take account of quite different technological circumstances and changing social aspirations? It is a recurring paradox--how to be modern and yet 'return to the sources'; how to reconcile intuitive wisdom with the blaring, shifting, scenographic dislocation of contemporary culture. As Kenneth Frampton, the great advocate of regionalism as a strategy of resistance notes, 'Everything will depend on the capacity of rooted culture to recreate its own tradition while appropriating foreign influences at the level of both culture and civilisation'. (4) Neither history nor technology marches backwards, but this does not mean that conscious and enlightened attempts cannot be made to rekindle and reapply the legacies of historic knowledge to current conditions. The notion of a contemporary, unsentimental, environmental regionalism could be defined as a self-conscious commitment to exploring and synthesising unique responses to place and climate, and the ability to reconcile these with current technologies into an ecologically responsive built form.

Responding to climate

This issue considers the effect of climate on buildings in a variety of warm or hot latitudes from Phoenix in the American Southwest (the USA's hottest city), to Mexico, Spain, Nigeria and Japan. In their different ways, each project responds to the often intense demands of climate, place and culture. The powerful geometry of shaded decks and terraces in David Chipperfield's sophisticated new hospitality building in Valencia harbour (p44) speaks of a social generosity while tactfully evoking Modernist archetypes, as does Carme Pinos' compelling reworking of the office tower in Guadalajara (p34). Here, however, the tower is not wilfully sheathed in an exposed glass skin, but in an external layer of slatted timber panels.

In the more tropical climes of Lagos, Allies and Morrison tread thoughtfully and lightly in their new information centre for the British Council (p56), a simple yet elegant building that intelligently mines and reinterprets the local vernacular while also making a civilising contribution to the public realm. Working with Logos based Godwin Hopwood Kuye, Allies and Morrison were also involved in producing a recent competition submission for a new African Institute of Science and Technology in the Nigerian capital of Abuja. Though the competition was subsequently won by Massimiliano Fuksas, Allies and Morrison's proposal is an intriguing and considered response to a campus brief that will eventually accommodate 5500 students. Touching on African archetypes, the scheme is based on the notion of creating space for people to gather 'under the tree', of providing shade both in buildings and in the spaces in-between. Canopies inspired by the form and function of a leaf create an inviting-shaded realm, minimising direct solar gain, as well as harvesting-energy and water. It is a thoughtful take on tropical architecture adding to a regional continuum that encompasses both local tradition and current technology. In common with the other projects in the issue, it offers a measure of hope in a world that will soon feel like hell.

1 The Selective Environment--An approach to environmentally responsive architecture. Dean Hawkes, Jane McDonald and Koen Steemers, London, Spon, 2002, p21.

2 Architecture in a Climate of Change. Peter Smith, Oxford, Architectural Press, 2005, pxiii.

3 Smith, ibid, p10.

4 'Modern Architecture and the Critical Present', Kenneth Frampton, AD Profile, 52:7-8, p77.