Context of Practice: Ecomodernism: A Local Example

Ecomodernism

(Source:Wikipedia)

Enquiry: Is ecomodernism a distraction from the anthropocene's full impact? Does it go far enough to make an effective difference to our carbon footprint? From now on, is it designers jobs to ensure future developments and practices are ecomodern in ideology? Have we lost our connection with physical, natural materials?

Extract from The Ecomodernist Manifesto

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'To say that the Earth is a human planet becomes truer every day. Humans are made from the Earth, and the Earth is remade by human hands. Many earth scientists express this by stating that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans. As scholars, scientists, campaigners, and citizens, we write with the conviction that knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, or even great, Anthropocene.

A good Anthropocene demands that humans use their growing social, economic, and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilize the climate, and protect the natural world.

In this, we affirm one long-standing environmental ideal, that humanity must shrink its impacts on the environment to make more room for nature, while we reject another, that human societies must harmonize with nature to avoid economic and ecological collapse.'

Ecomodernism is an environmental philosophy which argues that humans can protect nature by using technology to "decouple" anthropogenic impacts from the natural world.
Ecomodernism is a school of thought from many environmental and design scholars, critics, philosophers, and activists.
Ecology-based Modernism
It embraces the most successful aspects of the Outlaw Designers (Jay Baldwin, Buckminster Fuller and Stewart Brand) from the 1960s and 70s with the reform-based hopeful pragmatism of the Modernists.
It encourages designed objects and systems created with the logical inspiration of nature's cycle built in to its goals.
The resulting material and immaterial creations hope to better unite technology, humanity and nature.
Eco-Modernism urges designers to unplug from their world of pixels and reconnect with the nuances of our natural environment so as a collective we can better understand the materials we use, processes we employ and appreciate the importance of our natural resources.
Instead of the a linear approach to a design process, based on Fordism and Taylorism, Eco-Modernism embraces nature's model of "waste equals food" (William McDonough and Michael Braungart) and cradle-to-cradle coined by Walter R. Stahel in the 1970s (during the Outlaw Design Movement) where design and manufacturing aim to "close the loop". To achieve this component of the movement designers must minimise their environmental footprint by utilising local and renewable resources for all of our future endeavours.
In their 2015 manifesto, 18 self-professed ecomodernists enlarged the scope of Eric Benson's and Peter Fine's 2010 original definition as such: "we affirm one long-standing environmental ideal, that humanity must shrink its impacts on the environment to make more room for nature, while we reject another, that human societies must harmonise with nature to avoid economic and ecological collapse."
Ecomodernism explicitly embraces substituting natural ecological services with energy, technology, and synthetic solutions.
Ecomodernists embrace agricultural intensification, genetically modified and synthetic foods, fish from aquaculture farms, desalination and waste recycling, urbanisation, and substituting denser energy fuels for less dense fuels (e.g. substituting coal for wood, and preferably getting all energy from progressively lower carbon technologies such as fossil fuel power plants equipped with carbon capture and storage, nuclear power plants, and advanced renewables).
Key among the goals of an ecomodern environmental ethic is the use of technology to intensify human activity and make more room for wild nature.
Ecomodernism emerged from the academic design writing of Eric Benson and Peter Fine in an article published in 2010. Various debates, including the debate over when Homo sapiens became a dominant force acting on Earth's ecosystems (proposed start-dates to the so-called Anthropocene range from the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago to the invention of atomic weapons in the 20th century). Other debates that form the foundation of ecomodernism include how best to protect natural environments, how to accelerate decarbonisation to mitigate climate change, and how to accelerate the economic and social development of the world's poor.
Eco-Modernism embraces the basic tenets of sustainability where all design is created to: respect and care for the community, improve the quality of life, conserve Earth's vitality and diversity, minimise the depletion of non-renewable resources, and change personal attitudes and practices maintain the planet's carrying capacity.
The designers and artists working in this movement seek creative fulfilment within larger systemic design problems to elevate the profession from the bottom rung of the corporate ladder to respected leaders and innovators across the culture. They embrace Modernist logic and reform-based initiatives but reject universal solutions and instead utilise local materials and gender/culturally sensitive ideas that create what Jorge Frascara believed the best design to be: to facilitate, support and improve life.

Local Ecomodernism example

Greenhouse, Beeston, Leeds: a building professed by its developers to be 'eco-modernist'.

Greenhouse is an eight-storey, mixed-use block of eco-flats in Beeston, Leeds. The building took its present form in 2010, after renovation of a 1938 development, Shaftesbury House. As Shaftesbury House, the building was noted for its technologically innovative, modernist housing of migrant workers. As Greenhouse, it has been noted for an approach to promoting ecological and social sustainability far ahead of most of the UK building industry.

Sustainability features

The building has been ranked at Code for Sustainable Homes level 4 (out of 6); at the time this meant that it more than doubled the number of such units in the UK. A key aspect of its sustainability is that it involved renovating an existing structure. The following features were, at the time of the building's design, presented as innovative sustainability features.

Insulation, heating, and cooling

The building was built or, in the case of older parts, clad with high-performance insulation.
Energy for heating was designed to come from solar water heating through 44 roof-mounted panels, then among the largest such schemes in the UK, and ground source heating via two eighty-metre boreholes enabling heat to be condensed from a natural reservoir beneath the building. An electric immersion-heating system was installed as a back-up.
Heating and cooling of rooms is achieved through a shared system based on heat exchange, integrated into the water heating and cooling system, and delivered via air-conditioning (meaning that units contain no boilers or radiators). Instead of being expelled into the atmosphere, waste heat from warm parts of the building (such as busy offices) can, for example, be transferred to cool parts of the building (such as north-facing residences), or used to warm water.

Electricity generation and conservation

The building has two wind turbines contributing electricity to communal lighting and lifts.
Corridor lighting is controlled by sensors.

Water consumption

Taps aerate water, to reduce consumption by 25%.
Rain water and grey water from washing is collected, filtered, and used to flush toilets.

Materials

The concrete used is ground granulated blast-furnace slag, with a lower carbon footprint than conventional concrete.
Floorboards and work surfaces are made of bamboo, noted for durability and agricultural sustainability.
Carpet underlay is made of recycled tyres.
Numbers on the doors of units are made with recycled yogurt pots.
Planters inside the courtyard and in front of the building were made of reclaimed railway sleepers.

Community and behavioural change

At the time of the building's completion, an IPTV system delivered real-time information about each unit's energy consumption, along with other information.
The mixed-use development, combined with the heat exchange system, promotes efficient use of energy and a lively environment both during and outside office hours.
Communal events were organised first by the developer and subsequently by a residents' committee established in 2012. Activities have at various times included a local pub quiz, bike club, gardening, an art exhibition, and board-games nights.
The ground floor includes a freecycle area.
Shared use of an allotment plot at Ladypit Lane Model Allotments.
Shared use of an on-site gym.
The development includes a cafe space, which has been occupied by various businesses, sometimes employing residents.

Features reported but not implemented

Electric car club or on-site eco-friendly taxis.
Collection of grey water from washing and reuse for clothes washing.
Sixteen small wind turbines, and one large off-site turbine.
Prevention of purchase of units by buy-to-let landlords.
Shared umbrellas to encourage pedestrianism.

One resident interviewed by the Daily Telegraph noted that there had been technical problems with some of the features of the building, 'but most residents accept that it comes with the territory of living with cutting-edge technology'.

Carbon footprint: At the concept stage, the building was widely touted as being 'carbon negative', intended to generate more energy than it used. This was later tempered to 'zero-carbon', nearly zero-carbon, or 'self-sufficient'. On completion of the building, the architects in fact estimated annual CO2 emissions for a typical flat of 0.5 tonnes, representing a 60% overall increase in energy efficiency compared with an average UK property, though a resident later blogged real-life figures that suggested higher emissions. The carbon footprint of creating and redeveloping the building appears not to have been measured.

The building has influenced subsequent work by the same developers, such as at Little Kelham and a factory in Hunslet to produce passive houses, initially for deployment next door in Citu's Climate Innovation District in Leeds.

It’s political impact and exemplar qualities were presented when Greenhouse was visited by the then Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne, in 2012.