Elemental Dangers, Ancient Advice
Modern “green” buildings may have acronyms and descriptions infused with technological phrases, but concerns they address mirror the necessity and technique of early permanent shelters. In an article for the Arizona Daily Star, Tom Beal captures this dichotomy in a side-by-side comparison of an ancient cliff dwelling and a new green building, the Reid Park Zoo Conservation Learning Center in Tucson, Arizona.
What is particularly striking when the aspects of both projects are spelled out is how much the buildings mirror each other in basic design. The modern efforts at conservation and sustainability—which include formaldehyde-free plywood, waterless urinals, and insulation made from recycled jeans—also include basic design features that the cliff dwelling. Both are oriented with shade to cool the building in summer, and help heat it in winter. At the new zoo building, rainwater captured on the roof irrigates native plants, just as the cliff dwelling harnessed rain and ground water for its habitants and crops. Both structures make use construction material made on-site. For the zoo building, materials include rammed-earth patio walls and existing concrete and asphalt ground and recycled for new paving. For the cliff dwelling, early builders constructed walls with stone, mud, and adobe with nearby materials.
Since the cliff dwelling has survived for thousands of years in a harsh terrain, maybe looking back to engineering roots can help solve contemporary problems. Wildfires in the west and hurricanes in the southeast routinely cost insurers billions of dollars for losses. John Morrison and Alex Sink note in a column in The Washington Post note that:
Increasingly destructive weather -- including heat waves, hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, floods, wildfires, hailstorms and drought -- accounted for 88 percent of all property losses paid by insurers from 1980 through 2005.
These fundamental and incredibly destructive natural forces may never be adequately controlled by human civilization, but we must live in an environment laden with such risk. The buildings we construct carry responsibility not just for its inhabitants but for the impact it makes on global climate. This is the cost of living on the planet, just as the human race has done since we lived in caves and on the sides of cliffs. But now it seems that environment is turning worse. Morrison and Sink note that, “seven of the 10 most expensive catastrophes for the U.S. property and casualty industry happened between 2001 and 2005.” (Even fortune cookies seem to be picking up on the negative trends.)
As Eric Corey Freed notes of building practices in an interview with HousingZone.com:
Then the whole building itself wastes energy. It doesn’t use the energy that it consumes well, and then of course it doesn’t even produce its own energy and it is dependent on fossil fuels…you realize how illogical it all is. That was the appeal to me [of green building]. It just makes sense.
By taking cues from buildings that had to cope with nature, first and foremost, maybe we can build so that the earth doesn’t become more vindictive.