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The official magazine of the Scottish Ecological Design Association, 28 Albert Street, Edinburgh, EH7 5LG
SEDA AGM May 5th/6th 2007, Scottish Natural Heritage Headquarters, Inverness
by Richard Atkins
Early May saw SEDA’s AGM held at the new
SNH Headquarters in Inverness, organised by
our new Development Officer Mary Kelly.
Richard Atkins reflects over the past ‘SEDA
year.’
ast year’s AGM weekend in Bute was
followed by an inspiring and well
attended talk in Dundee from David
Orr, Professor of Environmental Studies and
Politics at Oberlinn College in Ohio.
In July SEDA was well represented, along
with Reforesting Scotland and ASHS, at the
'Big Tent' Festival of Stewardship at
Falkland Palace in Fife. The festival was so
successful in 2006 that we went back this
year, and we intend to return next year as
well.
No sooner had we washed the mud off
from our straw bale building and earth
plastering workshops at the Big Tent than
we found ourselves in Glasgow for the
Krystyna Johnson Travel Award and two
talks; from Fionn Stevenson on her recent
doctorate thesis: 'Materiality and Place' and
L
from Alice Bently on the new Johnston Central
Library and Farnham Centre in Canavan, Ireland.
With funding from the Business
Environment Partnership, SEDA took on student Robert MacWhannell to undertake a
major piece of research work on the various
'Eco-assessment' procedures available to
Designers, which will soon be made available to the membership.
Towards the end of the year we were sad
to see Kara leave us as development Officer
due to personal reasons and we wish her
well in her teaching role with CAT.
2007 got off to a business-like start in
January with a visit to the Holmes partnership in Glasgow where Harry Phillips welcomed us to his offices and hosted a lively
discussion on 'Corporate Clients and
Sustainability'. In contrast, Daniel Wahl
gave a multi-media presentation of his
recently completed doctorate, focussing on
“Ecological Design as a Large Concept” (see
page 7 of this issue).
This year also saw Mary Kelly, our new
Development Officer, get in to her stride
and the success of the first half of 2007,
which has already seen the number of
members grow substantially, is largely
down to her efforts.
Thanks are due to everyone on the steering group for their time and commitment
over the past year. Chris Morgan, who has
acted as Vice-Chair, Co-Chair and subsequently Chair of SEDA over the past three
years, has retired from the post to concentrate on his new job as a Dad - congratulations! Our thanks go to Chris for all the
energy and enthusiasm he has injected into
SEDA over this time.
Positions for the upcoming year are;
Chair - Richard Atkins; Vice Chair - Sarah
Worrall; Treasurer - Robin Baker; Secretary Steve Malone; Membership Secretary - Gill
Pemberton; Elected Members - Jenny
Humphreys, Sue Manning and Sam Foster;
Co-opted Members - Jim Johnson, Mary
Roslin and Sheena Stone. Anna Poston has
stepped down as an elected member.
Below: This year’s AGM was held at the new SNH Headquarters building in Inverness, by Keppie Architects. Left - Large vertical windows afford views out into the countryside and help ventilate and provide light to the open-plan office spaces. Right - Members gather for a photoshoot on the atrium’s main stair. (Photographs by John Gilbert)
SEDA AGM 2007
Study visits reviewed
pages 4-6
T h i s
i s s u e
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S E DA
w w w . s e d a 2 . o r g
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b e e n
s p o n s o r e d
i n f o @ s e d a . o r g
by
Editorial
Education for Sustainability
at the Findhorn Foundation
Ecovillage
News
by Jim Johnson
programmes in education for
sustainable development and
the design of sustainable communities.
Stop Press :
For further information contact
SEDA ‘Design and Detailing
for Toxic Chemical Reduction
in Buildings’ Imminent...
Daniel at [email protected]
“There are 55,000 materials in
use in the building industry and
only 3% have been tested for
their toxic effects on humans.”
Neither blacklists nor white
lists are really very useful within
this context, so it's been an
awkward one to nail down.
Then we got caught in the
elections down time.
But we are close to a finish on
this and the final iteration of
the final draft is now circulating
around the advisory panel. We
hope to have the third guide in
the series in the public domain
by the next newsletter.
www.gaiaeducation.org.
or [email protected]. A
pdf of the full 140 page curriculum can be downloaded from
SEDA AGMs are becoming the
highlights of the calendar. Last
year's visit to Bute was followed by the excellent May
2007 weekend in Inverness. As
only a (sizeable) minority of
members can manage these
events, this issue aims to
spread the enjoyment and
information and is devoted to
a discussion of some of the
buildings we visited, and their
implications for the development of a more sustainable
approach to design.
Whilst it was good to see
two sustainable buildings of
substantial scale - SNH's new
HQ and Forest Enterprise's
area office at Smithton - my
own favourite had to be Neil
Sutherland's little community
woodland
shelter
at
Strathnairn. What could have
been just a hut designed to
keep out wind and rain, was
transformed into something
magical. After sheltering from
a tropical downpour whilst listening to Neil's talk about the
principles underlying his practice, the sun came out and one
wall opened up and over to
reveal a woodland glade, created by the trees felled for the
timber to construct the building. With timber decks stepping down towards the view
the whole structure had a
Japanese elegance. I've never
seen a better example of “resting lightly on the planet”.
The underlying theme of
several of the visits, bioregionalism, is reinforced by
2005 travel award winner
Daniel Wahl's article, based on
his academic research. Daniel
stresses the importance of setting ecological design within a
broader theoretical world
view. He reminds us that it's
only too easy to stick within
the confines of our own disciplines and neglect some of the
wider issues which should
shape our work.
S E D A
SEDA
The Highlands and Islands
Enterprise (HIE) Moray have
funded Dr. Daniel Christian
Wahl to engage in a six months
pilot project focussed on academic outreach and programme
development for the Findhorn
Foundation College. The aim is
to offer Scottish and other UK
universities the opportunity of
engaging with the Findhorn
Foundation College in developing a wide range of practical
Howard Liddell
M a g a z i n e
E-Bulletin
If you are a member of SEDA
and are not receiving the e-mail
bulletin, please contact Gill on
[email protected] .
We try to get everyone onto
the circulation list (providing
they want to receive e-mails!),
but changes of address and email failures may mean that you
have fallen off.
The bulletin gives updates on
SEDA events, a few other events,
notices and bits and pieces of
news, and comes out approximately once a month. We try
not to deluge you with information.
Sponsors of this issue of the SEDA Magazine
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Events
Wednesday 29th August,
Edinburgh: SEDA Steering
Group meeting, ICOSIS
Architects, 28 Albert St, EH7
Weekend of 18th / 19th August
and 15th / 16th September:
Tombreck Workshop - contact
Sue Manning for further details:
[email protected] or
visit www.tombreck.co.uk
Weekend of 15th / 16th
September: Perthshire trip /
weekend building study visits
(Watch SEDA Bulletin for further
details)
Each weekend throughout
September: Heritage Doors
Open Days
These events take place annually
as Scotland’s contribution to
European Heritage Days – for
“sharing + exploring cultural
heritage” – with over 750
Scottish buildings now featured.
Co-ordination of the event is by
the Scottish Civic Trust and in
2007 there is an additional
focus on environmental and sustainable building projects
around the country - with each
region currently compiling
information on local projects
which are participating.
SEDA members are encouraged to put forward their own
buildings and projects however
small or large that they would
like to be included amongst
those that will be opened to the
public for a couple of days in
their region as part of this
event. Members should note
that they can set the terms for
opening up their projects – limiting the opening hours, limiting the numbers or setting up
timed guided tours for example.
To find out the relevant dates
for each region and for more
details on the event itself please
contact Mary Kelly, SEDA
Development Officer Tel: 01668
219247
For more information on events
visit the SEDA website at
www.seda2.org/future/future.htm
View from
the Chair
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Thanks to our sponsors
NorDan and to everyone
who has contributed to this
issue. If you have any views
or letters you would like published please send them
marked for the attention of
the Editor to; SEDA, 28 Albert
Street, Edinburgh, EH7 5LG.
This issue of the SEDA
Magazine was put together
by Steve Malone, Richard
Atkins and Jim Johnson.
While we hope you find the
articles and features of interest we would point out that
they do not always represent
the opinions of SEDA or our
sponsors.
Commentary...
I was struck a few years ago by a
comment made by a
Development Officer from a
Housing Association. During a
round table discussion about
sustainability I mentioned that I
thought that TV makeover programs had a lot to answer for, as
they had encouraged a culture
of continuous change.
The desire to replace the
kitchen, redecorate the living
room and replace furniture, curtains and carpets etc to achieve
a new look, well before the end
of the useful life of these things
was, I felt, a significant contributor to the total waste stream in
the UK.
My development Officer
friend piped up that as an
Association they were under
pressure from their clients to
replace kitchens, bathrooms
and windows as these were seen
as aspirational purchases,
whose perceived value to the
client went way beyond their
performance.
I thought the inclusion of
S E D A
windows was interesting as they
are hardly a fashion item, but
even a cursory reading of
SEDA's Guide to Improving Airtightness (available as a download at www.seda2.org) will
reinforce what an important
role windows have in improving
the energy performance of
buildings.
This month’s magazine is
sponsored by NorDan who have
been one of those companies at
the forefront of developing
energy efficient glazing systems
for many years, designed for
extreme climate of Norway
which varies from the Arctic
Circle to the damp maritime climate of the western coast.
Modern soft-coat low E glazing units can deliver U-values of
1.1 w/m2K with an argon fill,
however whole window U-values for the best timber windows
had been stuck at around 1.5
W/m2K and the only way to
improve this is to look at the
frame material. The latest
designs incorporate a laminate
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section featuring a PU intermediate lamella and with further
adaptation of the profile to
allow triple-glazing results in a
window with a U-value of
0.7W/m2K, surpassing even the
Passivhaus standard benchmark.
Many years ago I was lucky
enough to visit the NorDan factory and I was struck by the
attention to detail, from the use
of slow-growth FSC certified
Baltic timber which arrives in
relatively short lengths and is
then finger jointed to form a
continuous piece that can be
cut to exact lengths, to the way
that the order in which windows are made all minimises
the wastage of glass.
Surely in this age of consumerism we must be looking for
window systems that have the
longest design life and the highest performance, particularly
given our desire to maximise the
amount of daylight and beneficial
solar gains in our homes.
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by Richard Atkins
This is my first view from the
chair and I am conscious that
I am following in the foot
steps of so many illustrious
predecessors. The outlook for
SEDA from the shoulders of
such giants is rosy indeed.
For all of us who have been
advocating a more environmentally
responsible
approach to design it seems
at last that the world is beginning to sit up and take note.
The challenge now is to maintain our position of independence and advocacy as well as
to continuing to lead debate
and support both research
and best practice.
SEDA has long been the litmus test for sustainability,
often causing good natured
but intense debate and long
may this be the case. We are
also continuing to expand our
influence. As a new member
of the Built Environment
Forum
Scotland
(www.befs.org.uk/) we have
the opportunity to help shape
BEFS policy and consultation
responses.
Over the coming months
we have a full program of
events and the aim is to promote SEDA to a potentially
wider membership, which
has already grown by 10% in
each of the first two quarters
of this year.
In the next few months we
have the third of the SEDA
Design Guides, ‘Design and
Detailing for Toxic Chemical
Reduction in Building’ to look
forward to. The plan is to create a bit of a splash with a
high profile launch as with
the first two guides.
The big challenge of the
next few years will be securing funding to not only continue but increase the role of
our Development Officer.
Clearly one way is to grow
membership, but realistically
this can only partly resource
the position and we will have
to look for other sources of
income and grant support.
Now is the time to start thinking about this and all suggestions are welcome.
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SEDA AGM May 5th/6th 2007
A
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by Una Lee, Sustainable Development Officer, The Highland Council
T
his year's SEDA AGM tour was a
heartening reminder of the stepchange that has taken place in sustainable building practice in the Highlands
since SEDA's last visit in 2002. Five years
ago, Neil Sutherland was one of a small
band of radicals pioneering the use of
homegrown timber, Nicole Edmund's
straw-bale house was trail-blazing in the
best Findhorn tradition and the new woodfuel heating system at Highland
Birchwoods was pure novelty. Now there is
clear evidence that sustainable design is
entering the mainstream.
It is hard to pin down a single driver for
this change but there is no doubting the
shift in public sector consciousness towards
sustainable design. This was borne out by
SEDA's visit to SNH's headquarters, which
included a comprehensive briefing from
project architect, Donald Canavan. One
year since it opened, this building has
immense significance for Inverness. It is the
Highlands only national agency headquarters, accommodating up to 400 people. It
Above: Inside the atrium space at the SNH Headquarters. Opposite page: Forest Enterprise’s new Area
Office by HRI (left) and inside Neil Sutherland’s new community woodland shelter at Strathnairn (right)
(Photographs by John Gilbert and Jarek Gasiorek)
scored the highest BREEAM rating to date
of any office development, anywhere. And
it proves that a corporate headquarters procured under a Private Finance Initiative can
L o c a l T i m b e r U s e i n t h e B u i l d i n g s V i s i t e d D u r i n g t h e S E D A To u r
by Ivor Davies, Centre for Timber
Engineering, Napier University,
Edinburgh
Photographs by Jarek Gasiorek,
John Gilbert and Steve Malone.
Above: Neil Sutherland’s woodland classroom. The building is designed and detailed to exploit the specific sizes and characteristics of local timber.
E
cological sourcing of timber products
was a recurrent theme during the
SEDA tour. The buildings visited
demonstrate a range of approaches to this
issue and this article highlights some of the
main potential and challenges.
Reused or recycled timber is of course the
first choice wherever possible, but in the
Scottish Highlands such material is usually
unobtainable. Encouraging therefore to see
Keppie's SNH Headquarters building
employing softwood flooring salvaged from
the hospital that previously occupied the
site; similarly the round houses at Findhorn
made from reused Douglas fir whiskey vats.
Although these are isolated examples they
do highlight that reuse of timber is possible
even away from big cities.
Nowadays public buildings in Scotland
have to demonstrate that all new timber
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timber used came from FE forests in the
Inverness area.
Over 70% of Scottish housing is now constructed using a timber frame structure,
however, very little of the sawn timber used
is homegrown. Scotland produces around
2.7 million m3 of sawn softwood timber
per annum but virtually all of this is exported to England whilst most Scottish timber
frame firms import their sawn timber from
Scandinavia or the Baltic. It is thus encouraging to see the timber framed buildings
by Neil Sutherland Architects and those at
the Findhorn Community being built using
locally produced machine graded spruce.
Although timber frame housing uses little
Scottish sawn timber it does employ OSB
(made near Inverness) for the sheathing
boards and in the I-joists manufactured at
Forres which are rapidly gaining a strong
comes from legal and sustainable sources this differs from the rest of the UK where
the requirement is only for legal timber
sourcing. There are currently four certification schemes that enable timber used in
Scottish buildings to be tracked back to the
forest of origin. While timber certification
is in principle 'a good thing' it adds additional paperwork to a job and can introduce new difficulties because the schemes
define sustainability mainly in terms of forest management issues and do not take
account of the distance the timber has to
be transported. The designers of the SNH
building, for example, had difficulty ensuing that local larch cladding was used in
preference to Siberian larch transported
half way around the world. These pressures
were avoided on HRI Architects' Forest
Enterprise building because much of the
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the scale of the SNH headquarters will be
replicated in the near future, this project is
already influencing similar-sized projects
elsewhere in the Highlands.
Neil Sutherland led the last leg of the
Highland tour, before SEDA departed for
Findhorn, taking in a new community
woodland shelter at Strathnairn (below
left) and two houses under construction by
his design-build company, Makar. Many
SEDA members are familiar with Neil's
design approach, particularly his allegiance
to Scottish timber. The tour highlighted
Neil's response to the wider Highland context, which takes account of the region's
abundant timber resource, the economic
benefit of adding value to a local commodity and the challenge of developing uses and building skills - that suit both the character of Highland timber and the Highland
climate.
The SEDA visit presented a satisfying
snapshot of current sustainable design
activity around Inverness. Elsewhere in the
Highlands, two woodfuel district heating
schemes are now operating in Aviemore
and Wick and The Highland Council has
commissioned Gaia Architects to design
Scotland's first sustainable school in
Lochaber. From this April the Council
requires all large new developments to
make use of grey-water recycling and energy efficient design. And Scotland's first
Housing Fair will take place in Inverness in
2009 to showcase exemplary standards of
sustainable design - as good an occasion as
any for SEDA's next Highland visit?
enjoy a predominantly timber structure,
passive solar design, some locally sourced
materials and exemplary standards of airtightness, insulation and energy efficiency including the use of natural ventilation as
an alternative to air-conditioning. The
result: a building extremely popular with
both the public and occupants alike.
Forest Enterprise's new Area Office
(above) was built to accommodate 40 staff
at Smithton, south of Inverness city centre.
Designed by HRI Architects and opened in
February 2007, the building features many
aspects of low-carbon design: widespread
use of low-embodied energy, locallysourced materials (timber and stone); carbon-neutral heating (wood chip); passive
solar, energy efficient design. Whereas it is
unlikely that public sector development on
Above: Keppies ensured that local larch cladding
was used rather than imported Siberian larch on
the SNH HQ.
market presence. These joists currently use
local timber in the OSB web but imported
sawn timber flanges.
Scottish timber is also used for large section posts and beams. Douglas fir is the
most common choice and several of the
buildings we visited employed this material. Neil Sutherland highlighted that obtaining such timber in long lengths is becoming increasingly difficult, however.
All of the buildings we visited used local
larch for external cladding. This is no coincidence as the Scottish highlands produce
most of the UK larch timber of a size suitable for cladding. Obtaining this in other
parts of Scotland is often more difficult. It
is therefore encouraging to see new technologies emerging that can increase the
durability of timber without the use of the
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biocides employed in timber preservatives.
There are several of these 'wood modification' processes now on the market and a
particularly notable feature of the Forest
Enterprise building was the use of local
Scots pine cladding that had been furfrulated. This process, from Norway, involves
pressure impregnating the timber with
furfrul alcohol which is then fixed in the
timber where it acts to keep the timber relatively dry. This prevents fungal decay and
renders the timber quite dimensionally stable. Furfrul alcohol is bi-product of making
molasses and the whole process is biocide
free.
Most of the buildings we visited used a
Above: Locally produced machine graded spruce has
been used in constructing timber frames in domestic
projects by Neil Sutherland Architects.
considerable amount of local timber. Neil
Sutherland's woodland classroom & house
used the highest proportion - everything
except the window frames. To achieve this
degree of local sourcing is however very difficult and Neil has had to build his own
supply chain including sourcing trees from
the forest, sawing and drying the timber in
his yard, and then employing a team of
experienced joiners. His buildings are
designed and detailed to exploit the specific sizes and characteristics of local timber.
This degree of commitment to local timber
is both exceptional and commendable but
beyond reach for a “normal” architectural
practice. One delight of the SEDA tour was
a reassurance that architects no longer have
to take radical steps to make use of, at least
some, home-grown timber.
Below: Local Scots pine cladding at HRI’s Forest
Enterprise building that has been pressure impregnated with furfrul alcohol to increase the durability of the timber.
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SEDA AGM May 5th/6th 2007
Visit to the Findhorn Foundation
by Sam Foster
Above: The Field of Dreams at Findhorn Eco-Village. (Collage by Jarek Gosiorek. Photographs by Jarek Gosiorek and Steve Malone)
F
ollowing humble beginnings in the
late 1950s and early 1960s, the perseverance and dedication of Eileen and
the late Pater Caddy, and Dorothy Maclean
has led to the Findhorn Foundation becoming a household name, both in the eco-fraternity and, increasingly, the public realm.
The community that developed on the
outskirts of the small fishing village at
Findhorn started as a centre for those seeking and leading the way in spiritual and
ecological guidance and living. Over more
than 40 years the community has developed and grown and now has an incredibly
diverse population of several hundred permanent inhabitants, with an estimated
14,000 visitors annually. The underpinning
purpose of the Community is to undertake
work based on the values of planetary service, co-creation with nature and attunement to the divinity within all beings.
This mass of people has been housed in a
number of various different means of shelter: from temporary structures such as yurts
and caravans, to more permanent lodgings,
in the form of the famous whisky barrel
houses and Bag End, and, more recently,
the modern houses in the Field of Dreams.
The early development of the buildings at
the Foundation was undertaken on a relatively ad-hoc basis, with the Field of Dreams
being the first real attempt by the commu-
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nity to pre-define the density of a new set
of buildings.
On the Sunday of this year's AGM, a contingent of folk continued to Findhorn as the
last visit of the weekend for a tour around
the Community, led by Mark Jones: long
term resident and director of Build One, a
building company based on site.
Build One are responsible for the construction of many of the newer individual
houses in the Community, as well as the
'Centini' terraced housing development
which snakes it's way through the centre of
the Field of Dreams.
The tour around the Community provided an opportunity to clearly see the difference in attitude between the older and
newer developments. Clusters of buildings
dating from the early 1980s such as Bag
End (with a density of around 22
houses/ha) were built with a respect for
culture, scale, space and careful massing.
This has allowed the surrounding to mature
over the last quarter of a century, and the
buildings have become part of the setting.
By comparison, the masterplan for the
Field of Dreams (with the same density) has
been seen by many plot owners as an
opportunity to build vast new houses, with
an array of surfaces and odd forms, which
stretch to the edge of the site, squeezing
gardens to a minimum and reducing any
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opportunities for a developing landscape to
reduce their visual impact. Whilst many of
the houses may have been built using the
likes of untreated timber and sheep wool
insulation, there is a concise and desperate
lack of ecological integrity, and parts of the
site have a feeling of constant one-upmanship going on behind the scenes.
On the other hand, the Centini housing
provides a mix of 14 individual apartments
at a density of around 110 dwellings/ha.
The scale, proportion and massing of this
development has been carefully thought
out and, whilst it may have some minor
problems, it fits into the site very well. It
provides just enough space to live and the
simple plan helps fulfil the most basic
premise of ecological design: maximising
volume to surface area ratio.
With these developments taking up most
of the last remaining free space on the site
within the current area of development, it
is understood that the Foundation has been
looking recently at possible areas to
expand. This is, perhaps, a timely opportunity to evaluate the successes and failures
of the built stock in the Community and
introduce an increased level of structured
thinking, community planning and consultation to ensure that the Community
regains its position at the forefront of ecological design, thinking, innovation and integrity.
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K r y s t y n a
J o h n s o n
Tr a v e l
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Ecological Design as a Large Concept:
The Emergence of Salutogenic Design
by Daniel C Wahl
I
n March I gave a talk to SEDA members
at the University of Dundee. The
Occasion was the launch of the Krystyna
Johnson Travel Award 2007. I had the privilege of receiving this award in August
2005, but had been unable to complete the
proposed journey until December 2006
since I was busy finishing my PhD at the
Centre for the Study of Natural Design.
The person I had proposed to visit, Prof.
David W. Orr from Oberlin College, ended
up being my external examiner and some
SEDA members will remember his inspiring
presentation in May 2006. David spoke primarily about the Adam Joseph Lewis
Building, which he co-designed with students, staff and a whole range of experts
including William McDonough Architects,
John Todd, and John Tillman Lyle. The
building was effectively the first college
building constructed to LEED Platinum
standard of the UC Green Building Council
and embodied David's idea of sustainable
architecture as pedagogy.
Much information is available on the web
about this building and David gave the
inside story in his talk, so I decided to zoom
out and focus my presentation and this
brief article on a much wider question
about the definitions and boundaries we
use to define the field of ecological design.
According to Prof. Orr, “ecological design is
a large concept that joins science and the
practical arts with ethics, politics and economics;” to him ecological design “is not so
much about how we make things as about
how we make things that fit gracefully over
long periods of time in a particular ecological, social, and cultural context” (The
Nature of Design, p.4 & p.27).
Indeed, if I dared to play the role of
'agent provocateur' within SEDA, I would
claim that SEDA has been dominated by an
architectural focus on ecological design and
rarely ventured beyond dealing with the
built environment. Our remit and vision
could be so much bigger! The creative
challenge and invitation to our ingenuity to
envision what John Todd calls “elegant
solutions premeditated by the uniqueness
of place” goes well beyond creating environmentally sensitive buildings, it dares us
to engage with local communities everywhere in a process of catalysing the transition towards a sustainable human civilization. This is a monumental challenge of
S E D A
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unprecedented scale and significance in the
history of our species.
Ecological design is a large concept
because it calls for an integration of the
way we meet human needs - for shelter,
food, education, community, clean air &
water, transport, energy and a meaningful
life - into the opportunities and limits set
by local and regional ecosystems as well as
the biosphere as a whole. The growing
attention given to issues such as climate
change, loss of biodiversity, national and
international inequity, peak oil and
resource depletion is strengthening the
calls for a truly transdisciplinary and participatory approach to ecologically, economically and socially literate design for sustainability.
My talk in March included a series of
interviews with some of the people who
have dedicated their life's work to offering
tentative solutions to these complex design
challenges. Apart from David Orr, I highlighted the pioneering ecological design
work of John and Nancy Todd since their
founding of the New Alchemy Institute in
1969, and Robert Costanza's work on ecological economics. Costanza was among
the first to raise awareness of the value of
social and natural capital, as well as economic capital in decision-making processes.
We need to value the 'ecosystems services'
that healthy and resilient ecosystems contribute to our economies free of charge,
and reconsider the importance of social ties
and healthy, cooperative community
exchange structures in an increasingly individualized society.
Making globalization sustainable requires
us to bring it into balance with a simultaneous process of sustainable regionalization
and localization. In my own research I have
referred to this as scale-linking design for
sustainability and systemic health. To
respond to the challenges and boundless
opportunities of ecological design creatively we need to climb out of the silos of our
individual disciplines. We need to explore
the synergies between product design,
architecture, construction ecology, community design, industrial ecology, urban
design, bioregional planning, and national
and international cooperative networks.
Sustainability is not an endpoint we can
ever reach and then maintain indefinitely,
rather, it is a community based process of
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learning how to respond creatively to a
continuously shifting complex dynamic system in which we are participants and codesigners.
The promise of ecological design is that if
we learn how to engage cooperatively in a
new way of joined-up thinking that honours the wisdom of many minds, worldviews, and disciplines we may just be able
to create a healthier, more desirable, and
more meaningful world for all of humanity.
We may just be able to reintegrate humanity as a co-creative participant into the natural cycles of local ecosystems and the planetary biosphere which ultimately sustain life
on Earth, and thus the health of individuals, communities and ecosystems.
In order to do this, David Orr suggests,
we may have to initially put aside the question of how to design a more sustainable
human presence in the world and begin by
turning to a much deeper question of why
humanity should be sustained. What is our
unique contribution to the evolution of life
on Earth that is worth sustaining not only
for our sake but for the benefit of the whole
community of life of which we are co-creative participants?
If design is most broadly defined as the
expression of human intentionality through
interactions and relationships, maybe we
need to get much clearer about the underlying intentionality behind all acts of
design in order to create truly sustainable
systems and processes? My humble suggestion is that all ecological and sustainable
design will ultimately have to sustain the
health of the whole - the complex social,
ecological, economic and psychological
interactions in which we participate.
Together with my mentor, Prof. Seaton
Baxter, OBE, I have come to call this
approach health-generating or salutogenic
design.
Daniel C. Wahl holds a BSc(Hons) Zoology
form the University of Edinburgh, a MSc in
Holistic Science from Schumacher College, and
a PhD in Natural Design from the University of
Dundee. He is an associate member of staff at
the Centre for the Study of Natural Design and
academic director of the Findhorn Foundation
College. Comments are encouraged to: [email protected]
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Visit to Edenhope, Yarrowford - March 17th
New Members
by Jed Pemberton
We warmly welcome:
Kelman
Taylor,
Building
Contractor, Peebles
Tony Gowland, Tayport, Fife
John Riley, Scottish Action on
Climate, Biggar
Alexa Mottram, Student in
Furniture
and
Product
Design, Edinburgh College of
Art
Hamish Neilson, Landscape
Architect, Biggar
Justus van Latie, Student,
Napier University
Rosemary Burton, Corbridge,
Northumberland
Linda Marie Nelson & Jeremy
Penford,
Ceramist
and
Decorator,
Gorebridge,
Midlothian
Paul Jennings, Air Leakage
Specialist, Bude, Cornwall
Alison Jardine, Architect, Boat
& Butty Boatyard, Runcorn
Stephen Brogan, Research
Student, University of Dundee
Annie Kenyon, AKA Architect,
Insch, Aberdeenshire
Robert Cockayne, Student,
Heriot Watt University
Ann
McKillop,
Project
Manager,
Stonehouse,
Midlothian
Donald Canavan, Architect,
Burntisland, Fife
David
Jardine,
Forest
Enterprise Inverness, Forestry
Commission, Smithton
Matthew Collins, NorDan,
Gloucester
I
have heard it said that any
community, actually, runs on
generosity.
One of the things that I have
always liked about the green
movement in general, and SEDA
in particular, is a generosity that
sits beyond any commercial
reckoning. “Please take this
answer, this information, and
use it freely, that's what it is
for.” The more green thinking
becomes the current default in
our country, our culture, then
the happier we will be.
As in SEDA so at Edenhope,
the house of Andy Swales and
Sarah Eno. Those of us who
have visited have benefited
from the largesse of a couple
who have “shown it can be
done, and are willing to take
time out to explain the nuts and
bolts and numbers of how it
was possible, why it was done,
and why it is worth doing.
In the first of two visits to
Edenhope in April, about thirty
SEDA members gathered at a
lay-by in a beautiful valley within the hill-country around
Yarrowford, near Selkirk, to be
shown the building at the end
of the driveway, climbing up
through the old grounds of the
local stately home.
The house is a zero-heating,
zero-carbon-footprint structure
as a building, and as a process
of construction. It is also
expected to be self-sufficient.
TECHNICAL STUFF
The house is South-facing,
about 200 sq m floor space (100
sq m per storey) and sits on a
cellar (or undercroft) of c. 100sq
m cut into the slope of the land.
This gives space for the water
storage, battery storage and a
workshop. The design is based
on houses by Gokai Deveci
There is a 25,000-litre rainwater collection tank in the concrete block constructed undercroft, which has too low a head
height to be called a basement,
S E D A
Above: SEDA members gather outside Edenhope for a guided tour by owner
and builder Andy Swales. (Photograph by Steve Malone)
under the main body of the
house. A double purification
/pumped system leads from
there around the rest of the
house. Grey water and potable
water have twin circuits. All
this (the water supplies, and
lots of things in fact) had to be
calculated at length to convince
the Building Control Authority.
Electricity generation is to be
by photovoltaic cells, yet to be
installed, and so a generator,
run by bio-diesel, is still used at
the moment.
There is heat recovery from
controlled ventilation and a
cooling system for hot days, taking cool underground air in and
around the internal space.
Timber construction employs
mostly lightweight “Masonite”
“I” beams and studs with warmcel insulation in external walls
and roof. The layout uses the
passive solar technique of a
glazed south-facing storey-anda-half height projecting bay,
beyond a simple rectangular
plan form.
There are no trussed rafters,
but there is a roof ridge beam
(formed of several adjacent
Masonite beams).
Rainwater goods and flashings are formed in stainless steel
in place of lead, which is better
for the collected water.
Drainage is to a septic tank
then reed-beds.
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SYMBOLIC THOUGHTFULNESS
Finally, as a perfect example
of what intelligent green design
can include (and as a simple
delight to me personally) in taking out the rocky gravel from
the undercroft to begin with,
instead of paying to have it carted away and then paying again
for the dumping of it into a
landfill waste site, it was sieved
to aggregate and sand sizes for
use in the concrete floor of the
undercroft, and so a saving in
trucking in bought aggregate
was made.
For more information visit
www.enoswales.clara.co.uk
Ralph Ogg & Partners
Q u a n t i t y
2
King
James
S u r v e y o r s
Place,
Perth,
PH2
8AE
tel. 01738 625619 e-mail:[email protected]
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Ecological Design as a Large
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The official magazine of the Scottish Ecological Design Association, 28 Albert Street, Edinburgh, EH7 5LG
SEDA AGM May 5th/6th 2007, Scottish Natural Heritage Headquarters, Inverness
by Richard Atkins
Early May saw SEDA’s AGM held at the new
SNH Headquarters in Inverness, organised by
our new Development Officer Mary Kelly.
Richard Atkins reflects over the past ‘SEDA
year.’
ast year’s AGM weekend in Bute was
followed by an inspiring and well
attended talk in Dundee from David
Orr, Professor of Environmental Studies and
Politics at Oberlinn College in Ohio.
In July SEDA was well represented, along
with Reforesting Scotland and ASHS, at the
'Big Tent' Festival of Stewardship at
Falkland Palace in Fife. The festival was so
successful in 2006 that we went back this
year, and we intend to return next year as
well.
No sooner had we washed the mud off
from our straw bale building and earth
plastering workshops at the Big Tent than
we found ourselves in Glasgow for the
Krystyna Johnson Travel Award and two
talks; from Fionn Stevenson on her recent
doctorate thesis: 'Materiality and Place' and
L
from Alice Bently on the new Johnston Central
Library and Farnham Centre in Canavan, Ireland.
With funding from the Business
Environment Partnership, SEDA took on student Robert MacWhannell to undertake a
major piece of research work on the various
'Eco-assessment' procedures available to
Designers, which will soon be made available to the membership.
Towards the end of the year we were sad
to see Kara leave us as development Officer
due to personal reasons and we wish her
well in her teaching role with CAT.
2007 got off to a business-like start in
January with a visit to the Holmes partnership in Glasgow where Harry Phillips welcomed us to his offices and hosted a lively
discussion on 'Corporate Clients and
Sustainability'. In contrast, Daniel Wahl
gave a multi-media presentation of his
recently completed doctorate, focussing on
“Ecological Design as a Large Concept” (see
page 7 of this issue).
This year also saw Mary Kelly, our new
Development Officer, get in to her stride
and the success of the first half of 2007,
which has already seen the number of
members grow substantially, is largely
down to her efforts.
Thanks are due to everyone on the steering group for their time and commitment
over the past year. Chris Morgan, who has
acted as Vice-Chair, Co-Chair and subsequently Chair of SEDA over the past three
years, has retired from the post to concentrate on his new job as a Dad - congratulations! Our thanks go to Chris for all the
energy and enthusiasm he has injected into
SEDA over this time.
Positions for the upcoming year are;
Chair - Richard Atkins; Vice Chair - Sarah
Worrall; Treasurer - Robin Baker; Secretary Steve Malone; Membership Secretary - Gill
Pemberton; Elected Members - Jenny
Humphreys, Sue Manning and Sam Foster;
Co-opted Members - Jim Johnson, Mary
Roslin and Sheena Stone. Anna Poston has
stepped down as an elected member.
Below: This year’s AGM was held at the new SNH Headquarters building in Inverness, by Keppie Architects. Left - Large vertical windows afford views out into the countryside and help ventilate and provide light to the open-plan office spaces. Right - Members gather for a photoshoot on the atrium’s main stair. (Photographs by John Gilbert)
SEDA AGM 2007
Study visits reviewed
pages 4-6
T h i s
i s s u e
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t h e
S E DA
w w w . s e d a 2 . o r g
M a g a z i n e
h a s
b e e n
s p o n s o r e d
i n f o @ s e d a . o r g
by
Editorial
Education for Sustainability
at the Findhorn Foundation
Ecovillage
News
by Jim Johnson
programmes in education for
sustainable development and
the design of sustainable communities.
Stop Press :
For further information contact
SEDA ‘Design and Detailing
for Toxic Chemical Reduction
in Buildings’ Imminent...
Daniel at [email protected]
“There are 55,000 materials in
use in the building industry and
only 3% have been tested for
their toxic effects on humans.”
Neither blacklists nor white
lists are really very useful within
this context, so it's been an
awkward one to nail down.
Then we got caught in the
elections down time.
But we are close to a finish on
this and the final iteration of
the final draft is now circulating
around the advisory panel. We
hope to have the third guide in
the series in the public domain
by the next newsletter.
www.gaiaeducation.org.
or [email protected]. A
pdf of the full 140 page curriculum can be downloaded from
SEDA AGMs are becoming the
highlights of the calendar. Last
year's visit to Bute was followed by the excellent May
2007 weekend in Inverness. As
only a (sizeable) minority of
members can manage these
events, this issue aims to
spread the enjoyment and
information and is devoted to
a discussion of some of the
buildings we visited, and their
implications for the development of a more sustainable
approach to design.
Whilst it was good to see
two sustainable buildings of
substantial scale - SNH's new
HQ and Forest Enterprise's
area office at Smithton - my
own favourite had to be Neil
Sutherland's little community
woodland
shelter
at
Strathnairn. What could have
been just a hut designed to
keep out wind and rain, was
transformed into something
magical. After sheltering from
a tropical downpour whilst listening to Neil's talk about the
principles underlying his practice, the sun came out and one
wall opened up and over to
reveal a woodland glade, created by the trees felled for the
timber to construct the building. With timber decks stepping down towards the view
the whole structure had a
Japanese elegance. I've never
seen a better example of “resting lightly on the planet”.
The underlying theme of
several of the visits, bioregionalism, is reinforced by
2005 travel award winner
Daniel Wahl's article, based on
his academic research. Daniel
stresses the importance of setting ecological design within a
broader theoretical world
view. He reminds us that it's
only too easy to stick within
the confines of our own disciplines and neglect some of the
wider issues which should
shape our work.
S E D A
SEDA
The Highlands and Islands
Enterprise (HIE) Moray have
funded Dr. Daniel Christian
Wahl to engage in a six months
pilot project focussed on academic outreach and programme
development for the Findhorn
Foundation College. The aim is
to offer Scottish and other UK
universities the opportunity of
engaging with the Findhorn
Foundation College in developing a wide range of practical
Howard Liddell
M a g a z i n e
E-Bulletin
If you are a member of SEDA
and are not receiving the e-mail
bulletin, please contact Gill on
[email protected] .
We try to get everyone onto
the circulation list (providing
they want to receive e-mails!),
but changes of address and email failures may mean that you
have fallen off.
The bulletin gives updates on
SEDA events, a few other events,
notices and bits and pieces of
news, and comes out approximately once a month. We try
not to deluge you with information.
Sponsors of this issue of the SEDA Magazine
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Events
Wednesday 29th August,
Edinburgh: SEDA Steering
Group meeting, ICOSIS
Architects, 28 Albert St, EH7
Weekend of 18th / 19th August
and 15th / 16th September:
Tombreck Workshop - contact
Sue Manning for further details:
[email protected] or
visit www.tombreck.co.uk
Weekend of 15th / 16th
September: Perthshire trip /
weekend building study visits
(Watch SEDA Bulletin for further
details)
Each weekend throughout
September: Heritage Doors
Open Days
These events take place annually
as Scotland’s contribution to
European Heritage Days – for
“sharing + exploring cultural
heritage” – with over 750
Scottish buildings now featured.
Co-ordination of the event is by
the Scottish Civic Trust and in
2007 there is an additional
focus on environmental and sustainable building projects
around the country - with each
region currently compiling
information on local projects
which are participating.
SEDA members are encouraged to put forward their own
buildings and projects however
small or large that they would
like to be included amongst
those that will be opened to the
public for a couple of days in
their region as part of this
event. Members should note
that they can set the terms for
opening up their projects – limiting the opening hours, limiting the numbers or setting up
timed guided tours for example.
To find out the relevant dates
for each region and for more
details on the event itself please
contact Mary Kelly, SEDA
Development Officer Tel: 01668
219247
For more information on events
visit the SEDA website at
www.seda2.org/future/future.htm
View from
the Chair
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Thanks to our sponsors
NorDan and to everyone
who has contributed to this
issue. If you have any views
or letters you would like published please send them
marked for the attention of
the Editor to; SEDA, 28 Albert
Street, Edinburgh, EH7 5LG.
This issue of the SEDA
Magazine was put together
by Steve Malone, Richard
Atkins and Jim Johnson.
While we hope you find the
articles and features of interest we would point out that
they do not always represent
the opinions of SEDA or our
sponsors.
Commentary...
I was struck a few years ago by a
comment made by a
Development Officer from a
Housing Association. During a
round table discussion about
sustainability I mentioned that I
thought that TV makeover programs had a lot to answer for, as
they had encouraged a culture
of continuous change.
The desire to replace the
kitchen, redecorate the living
room and replace furniture, curtains and carpets etc to achieve
a new look, well before the end
of the useful life of these things
was, I felt, a significant contributor to the total waste stream in
the UK.
My development Officer
friend piped up that as an
Association they were under
pressure from their clients to
replace kitchens, bathrooms
and windows as these were seen
as aspirational purchases,
whose perceived value to the
client went way beyond their
performance.
I thought the inclusion of
S E D A
windows was interesting as they
are hardly a fashion item, but
even a cursory reading of
SEDA's Guide to Improving Airtightness (available as a download at www.seda2.org) will
reinforce what an important
role windows have in improving
the energy performance of
buildings.
This month’s magazine is
sponsored by NorDan who have
been one of those companies at
the forefront of developing
energy efficient glazing systems
for many years, designed for
extreme climate of Norway
which varies from the Arctic
Circle to the damp maritime climate of the western coast.
Modern soft-coat low E glazing units can deliver U-values of
1.1 w/m2K with an argon fill,
however whole window U-values for the best timber windows
had been stuck at around 1.5
W/m2K and the only way to
improve this is to look at the
frame material. The latest
designs incorporate a laminate
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section featuring a PU intermediate lamella and with further
adaptation of the profile to
allow triple-glazing results in a
window with a U-value of
0.7W/m2K, surpassing even the
Passivhaus standard benchmark.
Many years ago I was lucky
enough to visit the NorDan factory and I was struck by the
attention to detail, from the use
of slow-growth FSC certified
Baltic timber which arrives in
relatively short lengths and is
then finger jointed to form a
continuous piece that can be
cut to exact lengths, to the way
that the order in which windows are made all minimises
the wastage of glass.
Surely in this age of consumerism we must be looking for
window systems that have the
longest design life and the highest performance, particularly
given our desire to maximise the
amount of daylight and beneficial
solar gains in our homes.
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by Richard Atkins
This is my first view from the
chair and I am conscious that
I am following in the foot
steps of so many illustrious
predecessors. The outlook for
SEDA from the shoulders of
such giants is rosy indeed.
For all of us who have been
advocating a more environmentally
responsible
approach to design it seems
at last that the world is beginning to sit up and take note.
The challenge now is to maintain our position of independence and advocacy as well as
to continuing to lead debate
and support both research
and best practice.
SEDA has long been the litmus test for sustainability,
often causing good natured
but intense debate and long
may this be the case. We are
also continuing to expand our
influence. As a new member
of the Built Environment
Forum
Scotland
(www.befs.org.uk/) we have
the opportunity to help shape
BEFS policy and consultation
responses.
Over the coming months
we have a full program of
events and the aim is to promote SEDA to a potentially
wider membership, which
has already grown by 10% in
each of the first two quarters
of this year.
In the next few months we
have the third of the SEDA
Design Guides, ‘Design and
Detailing for Toxic Chemical
Reduction in Building’ to look
forward to. The plan is to create a bit of a splash with a
high profile launch as with
the first two guides.
The big challenge of the
next few years will be securing funding to not only continue but increase the role of
our Development Officer.
Clearly one way is to grow
membership, but realistically
this can only partly resource
the position and we will have
to look for other sources of
income and grant support.
Now is the time to start thinking about this and all suggestions are welcome.
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SEDA AGM May 5th/6th 2007
A
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S E DA
To u r
by Una Lee, Sustainable Development Officer, The Highland Council
T
his year's SEDA AGM tour was a
heartening reminder of the stepchange that has taken place in sustainable building practice in the Highlands
since SEDA's last visit in 2002. Five years
ago, Neil Sutherland was one of a small
band of radicals pioneering the use of
homegrown timber, Nicole Edmund's
straw-bale house was trail-blazing in the
best Findhorn tradition and the new woodfuel heating system at Highland
Birchwoods was pure novelty. Now there is
clear evidence that sustainable design is
entering the mainstream.
It is hard to pin down a single driver for
this change but there is no doubting the
shift in public sector consciousness towards
sustainable design. This was borne out by
SEDA's visit to SNH's headquarters, which
included a comprehensive briefing from
project architect, Donald Canavan. One
year since it opened, this building has
immense significance for Inverness. It is the
Highlands only national agency headquarters, accommodating up to 400 people. It
Above: Inside the atrium space at the SNH Headquarters. Opposite page: Forest Enterprise’s new Area
Office by HRI (left) and inside Neil Sutherland’s new community woodland shelter at Strathnairn (right)
(Photographs by John Gilbert and Jarek Gasiorek)
scored the highest BREEAM rating to date
of any office development, anywhere. And
it proves that a corporate headquarters procured under a Private Finance Initiative can
L o c a l T i m b e r U s e i n t h e B u i l d i n g s V i s i t e d D u r i n g t h e S E D A To u r
by Ivor Davies, Centre for Timber
Engineering, Napier University,
Edinburgh
Photographs by Jarek Gasiorek,
John Gilbert and Steve Malone.
Above: Neil Sutherland’s woodland classroom. The building is designed and detailed to exploit the specific sizes and characteristics of local timber.
E
cological sourcing of timber products
was a recurrent theme during the
SEDA tour. The buildings visited
demonstrate a range of approaches to this
issue and this article highlights some of the
main potential and challenges.
Reused or recycled timber is of course the
first choice wherever possible, but in the
Scottish Highlands such material is usually
unobtainable. Encouraging therefore to see
Keppie's SNH Headquarters building
employing softwood flooring salvaged from
the hospital that previously occupied the
site; similarly the round houses at Findhorn
made from reused Douglas fir whiskey vats.
Although these are isolated examples they
do highlight that reuse of timber is possible
even away from big cities.
Nowadays public buildings in Scotland
have to demonstrate that all new timber
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timber used came from FE forests in the
Inverness area.
Over 70% of Scottish housing is now constructed using a timber frame structure,
however, very little of the sawn timber used
is homegrown. Scotland produces around
2.7 million m3 of sawn softwood timber
per annum but virtually all of this is exported to England whilst most Scottish timber
frame firms import their sawn timber from
Scandinavia or the Baltic. It is thus encouraging to see the timber framed buildings
by Neil Sutherland Architects and those at
the Findhorn Community being built using
locally produced machine graded spruce.
Although timber frame housing uses little
Scottish sawn timber it does employ OSB
(made near Inverness) for the sheathing
boards and in the I-joists manufactured at
Forres which are rapidly gaining a strong
comes from legal and sustainable sources this differs from the rest of the UK where
the requirement is only for legal timber
sourcing. There are currently four certification schemes that enable timber used in
Scottish buildings to be tracked back to the
forest of origin. While timber certification
is in principle 'a good thing' it adds additional paperwork to a job and can introduce new difficulties because the schemes
define sustainability mainly in terms of forest management issues and do not take
account of the distance the timber has to
be transported. The designers of the SNH
building, for example, had difficulty ensuing that local larch cladding was used in
preference to Siberian larch transported
half way around the world. These pressures
were avoided on HRI Architects' Forest
Enterprise building because much of the
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the scale of the SNH headquarters will be
replicated in the near future, this project is
already influencing similar-sized projects
elsewhere in the Highlands.
Neil Sutherland led the last leg of the
Highland tour, before SEDA departed for
Findhorn, taking in a new community
woodland shelter at Strathnairn (below
left) and two houses under construction by
his design-build company, Makar. Many
SEDA members are familiar with Neil's
design approach, particularly his allegiance
to Scottish timber. The tour highlighted
Neil's response to the wider Highland context, which takes account of the region's
abundant timber resource, the economic
benefit of adding value to a local commodity and the challenge of developing uses and building skills - that suit both the character of Highland timber and the Highland
climate.
The SEDA visit presented a satisfying
snapshot of current sustainable design
activity around Inverness. Elsewhere in the
Highlands, two woodfuel district heating
schemes are now operating in Aviemore
and Wick and The Highland Council has
commissioned Gaia Architects to design
Scotland's first sustainable school in
Lochaber. From this April the Council
requires all large new developments to
make use of grey-water recycling and energy efficient design. And Scotland's first
Housing Fair will take place in Inverness in
2009 to showcase exemplary standards of
sustainable design - as good an occasion as
any for SEDA's next Highland visit?
enjoy a predominantly timber structure,
passive solar design, some locally sourced
materials and exemplary standards of airtightness, insulation and energy efficiency including the use of natural ventilation as
an alternative to air-conditioning. The
result: a building extremely popular with
both the public and occupants alike.
Forest Enterprise's new Area Office
(above) was built to accommodate 40 staff
at Smithton, south of Inverness city centre.
Designed by HRI Architects and opened in
February 2007, the building features many
aspects of low-carbon design: widespread
use of low-embodied energy, locallysourced materials (timber and stone); carbon-neutral heating (wood chip); passive
solar, energy efficient design. Whereas it is
unlikely that public sector development on
Above: Keppies ensured that local larch cladding
was used rather than imported Siberian larch on
the SNH HQ.
market presence. These joists currently use
local timber in the OSB web but imported
sawn timber flanges.
Scottish timber is also used for large section posts and beams. Douglas fir is the
most common choice and several of the
buildings we visited employed this material. Neil Sutherland highlighted that obtaining such timber in long lengths is becoming increasingly difficult, however.
All of the buildings we visited used local
larch for external cladding. This is no coincidence as the Scottish highlands produce
most of the UK larch timber of a size suitable for cladding. Obtaining this in other
parts of Scotland is often more difficult. It
is therefore encouraging to see new technologies emerging that can increase the
durability of timber without the use of the
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biocides employed in timber preservatives.
There are several of these 'wood modification' processes now on the market and a
particularly notable feature of the Forest
Enterprise building was the use of local
Scots pine cladding that had been furfrulated. This process, from Norway, involves
pressure impregnating the timber with
furfrul alcohol which is then fixed in the
timber where it acts to keep the timber relatively dry. This prevents fungal decay and
renders the timber quite dimensionally stable. Furfrul alcohol is bi-product of making
molasses and the whole process is biocide
free.
Most of the buildings we visited used a
Above: Locally produced machine graded spruce has
been used in constructing timber frames in domestic
projects by Neil Sutherland Architects.
considerable amount of local timber. Neil
Sutherland's woodland classroom & house
used the highest proportion - everything
except the window frames. To achieve this
degree of local sourcing is however very difficult and Neil has had to build his own
supply chain including sourcing trees from
the forest, sawing and drying the timber in
his yard, and then employing a team of
experienced joiners. His buildings are
designed and detailed to exploit the specific sizes and characteristics of local timber.
This degree of commitment to local timber
is both exceptional and commendable but
beyond reach for a “normal” architectural
practice. One delight of the SEDA tour was
a reassurance that architects no longer have
to take radical steps to make use of, at least
some, home-grown timber.
Below: Local Scots pine cladding at HRI’s Forest
Enterprise building that has been pressure impregnated with furfrul alcohol to increase the durability of the timber.
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SEDA AGM May 5th/6th 2007
Visit to the Findhorn Foundation
by Sam Foster
Above: The Field of Dreams at Findhorn Eco-Village. (Collage by Jarek Gosiorek. Photographs by Jarek Gosiorek and Steve Malone)
F
ollowing humble beginnings in the
late 1950s and early 1960s, the perseverance and dedication of Eileen and
the late Pater Caddy, and Dorothy Maclean
has led to the Findhorn Foundation becoming a household name, both in the eco-fraternity and, increasingly, the public realm.
The community that developed on the
outskirts of the small fishing village at
Findhorn started as a centre for those seeking and leading the way in spiritual and
ecological guidance and living. Over more
than 40 years the community has developed and grown and now has an incredibly
diverse population of several hundred permanent inhabitants, with an estimated
14,000 visitors annually. The underpinning
purpose of the Community is to undertake
work based on the values of planetary service, co-creation with nature and attunement to the divinity within all beings.
This mass of people has been housed in a
number of various different means of shelter: from temporary structures such as yurts
and caravans, to more permanent lodgings,
in the form of the famous whisky barrel
houses and Bag End, and, more recently,
the modern houses in the Field of Dreams.
The early development of the buildings at
the Foundation was undertaken on a relatively ad-hoc basis, with the Field of Dreams
being the first real attempt by the commu-
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nity to pre-define the density of a new set
of buildings.
On the Sunday of this year's AGM, a contingent of folk continued to Findhorn as the
last visit of the weekend for a tour around
the Community, led by Mark Jones: long
term resident and director of Build One, a
building company based on site.
Build One are responsible for the construction of many of the newer individual
houses in the Community, as well as the
'Centini' terraced housing development
which snakes it's way through the centre of
the Field of Dreams.
The tour around the Community provided an opportunity to clearly see the difference in attitude between the older and
newer developments. Clusters of buildings
dating from the early 1980s such as Bag
End (with a density of around 22
houses/ha) were built with a respect for
culture, scale, space and careful massing.
This has allowed the surrounding to mature
over the last quarter of a century, and the
buildings have become part of the setting.
By comparison, the masterplan for the
Field of Dreams (with the same density) has
been seen by many plot owners as an
opportunity to build vast new houses, with
an array of surfaces and odd forms, which
stretch to the edge of the site, squeezing
gardens to a minimum and reducing any
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opportunities for a developing landscape to
reduce their visual impact. Whilst many of
the houses may have been built using the
likes of untreated timber and sheep wool
insulation, there is a concise and desperate
lack of ecological integrity, and parts of the
site have a feeling of constant one-upmanship going on behind the scenes.
On the other hand, the Centini housing
provides a mix of 14 individual apartments
at a density of around 110 dwellings/ha.
The scale, proportion and massing of this
development has been carefully thought
out and, whilst it may have some minor
problems, it fits into the site very well. It
provides just enough space to live and the
simple plan helps fulfil the most basic
premise of ecological design: maximising
volume to surface area ratio.
With these developments taking up most
of the last remaining free space on the site
within the current area of development, it
is understood that the Foundation has been
looking recently at possible areas to
expand. This is, perhaps, a timely opportunity to evaluate the successes and failures
of the built stock in the Community and
introduce an increased level of structured
thinking, community planning and consultation to ensure that the Community
regains its position at the forefront of ecological design, thinking, innovation and integrity.
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K r y s t y n a
J o h n s o n
Tr a v e l
A w a r d
Ecological Design as a Large Concept:
The Emergence of Salutogenic Design
by Daniel C Wahl
I
n March I gave a talk to SEDA members
at the University of Dundee. The
Occasion was the launch of the Krystyna
Johnson Travel Award 2007. I had the privilege of receiving this award in August
2005, but had been unable to complete the
proposed journey until December 2006
since I was busy finishing my PhD at the
Centre for the Study of Natural Design.
The person I had proposed to visit, Prof.
David W. Orr from Oberlin College, ended
up being my external examiner and some
SEDA members will remember his inspiring
presentation in May 2006. David spoke primarily about the Adam Joseph Lewis
Building, which he co-designed with students, staff and a whole range of experts
including William McDonough Architects,
John Todd, and John Tillman Lyle. The
building was effectively the first college
building constructed to LEED Platinum
standard of the UC Green Building Council
and embodied David's idea of sustainable
architecture as pedagogy.
Much information is available on the web
about this building and David gave the
inside story in his talk, so I decided to zoom
out and focus my presentation and this
brief article on a much wider question
about the definitions and boundaries we
use to define the field of ecological design.
According to Prof. Orr, “ecological design is
a large concept that joins science and the
practical arts with ethics, politics and economics;” to him ecological design “is not so
much about how we make things as about
how we make things that fit gracefully over
long periods of time in a particular ecological, social, and cultural context” (The
Nature of Design, p.4 & p.27).
Indeed, if I dared to play the role of
'agent provocateur' within SEDA, I would
claim that SEDA has been dominated by an
architectural focus on ecological design and
rarely ventured beyond dealing with the
built environment. Our remit and vision
could be so much bigger! The creative
challenge and invitation to our ingenuity to
envision what John Todd calls “elegant
solutions premeditated by the uniqueness
of place” goes well beyond creating environmentally sensitive buildings, it dares us
to engage with local communities everywhere in a process of catalysing the transition towards a sustainable human civilization. This is a monumental challenge of
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unprecedented scale and significance in the
history of our species.
Ecological design is a large concept
because it calls for an integration of the
way we meet human needs - for shelter,
food, education, community, clean air &
water, transport, energy and a meaningful
life - into the opportunities and limits set
by local and regional ecosystems as well as
the biosphere as a whole. The growing
attention given to issues such as climate
change, loss of biodiversity, national and
international inequity, peak oil and
resource depletion is strengthening the
calls for a truly transdisciplinary and participatory approach to ecologically, economically and socially literate design for sustainability.
My talk in March included a series of
interviews with some of the people who
have dedicated their life's work to offering
tentative solutions to these complex design
challenges. Apart from David Orr, I highlighted the pioneering ecological design
work of John and Nancy Todd since their
founding of the New Alchemy Institute in
1969, and Robert Costanza's work on ecological economics. Costanza was among
the first to raise awareness of the value of
social and natural capital, as well as economic capital in decision-making processes.
We need to value the 'ecosystems services'
that healthy and resilient ecosystems contribute to our economies free of charge,
and reconsider the importance of social ties
and healthy, cooperative community
exchange structures in an increasingly individualized society.
Making globalization sustainable requires
us to bring it into balance with a simultaneous process of sustainable regionalization
and localization. In my own research I have
referred to this as scale-linking design for
sustainability and systemic health. To
respond to the challenges and boundless
opportunities of ecological design creatively we need to climb out of the silos of our
individual disciplines. We need to explore
the synergies between product design,
architecture, construction ecology, community design, industrial ecology, urban
design, bioregional planning, and national
and international cooperative networks.
Sustainability is not an endpoint we can
ever reach and then maintain indefinitely,
rather, it is a community based process of
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learning how to respond creatively to a
continuously shifting complex dynamic system in which we are participants and codesigners.
The promise of ecological design is that if
we learn how to engage cooperatively in a
new way of joined-up thinking that honours the wisdom of many minds, worldviews, and disciplines we may just be able
to create a healthier, more desirable, and
more meaningful world for all of humanity.
We may just be able to reintegrate humanity as a co-creative participant into the natural cycles of local ecosystems and the planetary biosphere which ultimately sustain life
on Earth, and thus the health of individuals, communities and ecosystems.
In order to do this, David Orr suggests,
we may have to initially put aside the question of how to design a more sustainable
human presence in the world and begin by
turning to a much deeper question of why
humanity should be sustained. What is our
unique contribution to the evolution of life
on Earth that is worth sustaining not only
for our sake but for the benefit of the whole
community of life of which we are co-creative participants?
If design is most broadly defined as the
expression of human intentionality through
interactions and relationships, maybe we
need to get much clearer about the underlying intentionality behind all acts of
design in order to create truly sustainable
systems and processes? My humble suggestion is that all ecological and sustainable
design will ultimately have to sustain the
health of the whole - the complex social,
ecological, economic and psychological
interactions in which we participate.
Together with my mentor, Prof. Seaton
Baxter, OBE, I have come to call this
approach health-generating or salutogenic
design.
Daniel C. Wahl holds a BSc(Hons) Zoology
form the University of Edinburgh, a MSc in
Holistic Science from Schumacher College, and
a PhD in Natural Design from the University of
Dundee. He is an associate member of staff at
the Centre for the Study of Natural Design and
academic director of the Findhorn Foundation
College. Comments are encouraged to: [email protected]
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Visit to Edenhope, Yarrowford - March 17th
New Members
by Jed Pemberton
We warmly welcome:
Kelman
Taylor,
Building
Contractor, Peebles
Tony Gowland, Tayport, Fife
John Riley, Scottish Action on
Climate, Biggar
Alexa Mottram, Student in
Furniture
and
Product
Design, Edinburgh College of
Art
Hamish Neilson, Landscape
Architect, Biggar
Justus van Latie, Student,
Napier University
Rosemary Burton, Corbridge,
Northumberland
Linda Marie Nelson & Jeremy
Penford,
Ceramist
and
Decorator,
Gorebridge,
Midlothian
Paul Jennings, Air Leakage
Specialist, Bude, Cornwall
Alison Jardine, Architect, Boat
& Butty Boatyard, Runcorn
Stephen Brogan, Research
Student, University of Dundee
Annie Kenyon, AKA Architect,
Insch, Aberdeenshire
Robert Cockayne, Student,
Heriot Watt University
Ann
McKillop,
Project
Manager,
Stonehouse,
Midlothian
Donald Canavan, Architect,
Burntisland, Fife
David
Jardine,
Forest
Enterprise Inverness, Forestry
Commission, Smithton
Matthew Collins, NorDan,
Gloucester
I
have heard it said that any
community, actually, runs on
generosity.
One of the things that I have
always liked about the green
movement in general, and SEDA
in particular, is a generosity that
sits beyond any commercial
reckoning. “Please take this
answer, this information, and
use it freely, that's what it is
for.” The more green thinking
becomes the current default in
our country, our culture, then
the happier we will be.
As in SEDA so at Edenhope,
the house of Andy Swales and
Sarah Eno. Those of us who
have visited have benefited
from the largesse of a couple
who have “shown it can be
done, and are willing to take
time out to explain the nuts and
bolts and numbers of how it
was possible, why it was done,
and why it is worth doing.
In the first of two visits to
Edenhope in April, about thirty
SEDA members gathered at a
lay-by in a beautiful valley within the hill-country around
Yarrowford, near Selkirk, to be
shown the building at the end
of the driveway, climbing up
through the old grounds of the
local stately home.
The house is a zero-heating,
zero-carbon-footprint structure
as a building, and as a process
of construction. It is also
expected to be self-sufficient.
TECHNICAL STUFF
The house is South-facing,
about 200 sq m floor space (100
sq m per storey) and sits on a
cellar (or undercroft) of c. 100sq
m cut into the slope of the land.
This gives space for the water
storage, battery storage and a
workshop. The design is based
on houses by Gokai Deveci
There is a 25,000-litre rainwater collection tank in the concrete block constructed undercroft, which has too low a head
height to be called a basement,
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Above: SEDA members gather outside Edenhope for a guided tour by owner
and builder Andy Swales. (Photograph by Steve Malone)
under the main body of the
house. A double purification
/pumped system leads from
there around the rest of the
house. Grey water and potable
water have twin circuits. All
this (the water supplies, and
lots of things in fact) had to be
calculated at length to convince
the Building Control Authority.
Electricity generation is to be
by photovoltaic cells, yet to be
installed, and so a generator,
run by bio-diesel, is still used at
the moment.
There is heat recovery from
controlled ventilation and a
cooling system for hot days, taking cool underground air in and
around the internal space.
Timber construction employs
mostly lightweight “Masonite”
“I” beams and studs with warmcel insulation in external walls
and roof. The layout uses the
passive solar technique of a
glazed south-facing storey-anda-half height projecting bay,
beyond a simple rectangular
plan form.
There are no trussed rafters,
but there is a roof ridge beam
(formed of several adjacent
Masonite beams).
Rainwater goods and flashings are formed in stainless steel
in place of lead, which is better
for the collected water.
Drainage is to a septic tank
then reed-beds.
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SYMBOLIC THOUGHTFULNESS
Finally, as a perfect example
of what intelligent green design
can include (and as a simple
delight to me personally) in taking out the rocky gravel from
the undercroft to begin with,
instead of paying to have it carted away and then paying again
for the dumping of it into a
landfill waste site, it was sieved
to aggregate and sand sizes for
use in the concrete floor of the
undercroft, and so a saving in
trucking in bought aggregate
was made.
For more information visit
www.enoswales.clara.co.uk
Ralph Ogg & Partners
Q u a n t i t y
2
King
James
S u r v e y o r s
Place,
Perth,
PH2
8AE
tel. 01738 625619 e-mail:[email protected]
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