Environmental Design
Definition:
The process of addressing surrounding environmental parameters when devising plans, programs,
policies, buildings, or products. Classical prudent design may have always considered environmental
factors; however, the environmental movement beginning in the 1940s has made the concept more
explicit.
Environmental design can also refer to the applied arts and sciences dealing with creating
the human-designed environment. These fields include architecture, geography, urban
planning, landscape architecture, and interior design. Environmental design can also encompass
interdisciplinary areas such as historical preservation and lighting design.
In terms of a larger scope,
environmental design has implications for the industrial design of products: innovative
automobiles, wind power generators, solar-powered equipment, and other kinds of equipment
could serve as examples. Currently, the term has expanded to apply to ecological
and sustainability issues.
History
The first traceable concepts of environmental designs focused primarily on solar heating, which
began in Ancient Greece around 500 BCE. At the time, most of Greece had exhausted its supply
of wood for fuel, leading architects to design houses that would capture the solar energy of the sun.
The Greeks understood that the position of the sun varies throughout the year. For a latitude of 40
degrees in summer the sun is high in the south, at an angle of 70 degrees at the zenith, while in
winter, the sun travels a lower trajectory, with a zenith of 26 degrees. Greek houses were built with
south-facing façades which received little to no sun in the summer but would receive full sun in the
winter, warming the house. Additionally, the southern orientation also protected the house from
the colder northern winds. This clever arrangement of buildings influenced the use of the grid
pattern of ancient cities. With the North-South orientation of the houses, the streets of Greek cities
mainly ran East-West.
The practice of solar architecture continued with the Romans, who similarly had deforested much
of their native Italian Peninsula by the first century BCE. The Roman heliocaminus, literally 'solar
furnace', functioned with the same aspects of the earlier Greek houses. The numerous public baths
were oriented to the south. Roman architects added glass to windows to allow for the passage of
light and to conserve interior heat as it could not escape. The Romans also used greenhouses to
grow crops all year long and to cultivate the exotic plants coming from the far corners of the
Empire. Pliny the Elder wrote of greenhouses that supplied the kitchen of the Emperor
Tiberius during the year.[2]
Along with the solar orientation of buildings and the use of glass as a solar heat collector, the
ancients knew other ways of harnessing solar energy. The Greeks, Romans and Chinese
developed curved mirrors that could concentrate the sun's rays on an object with enough intensity
to make it burn in seconds. The solar reflectors were often made of polished silver, copper or brass.
Early roots of modern environmental design began in the late 19th Century with
writer/designer William Morris, who rejected the use of industrialized materials and processes in
wallpaper, fabrics and books his studio produced. He and others, such as John Ruskin felt that the
industrial revolution would lead to harm done to nature and workers.
Examples
Examples of the environmental design process include use of roadway noise computer models in
design of noise barriers and use of roadway air dispersion models in analyzing and designing urban
highways.
Designers consciously working within this more recent framework of philosophy and practice seek a
blending of nature and technology, regarding ecology as the basis for design. Some believe that
strategies of conservation, stewardship, and regeneration can be applied at all levels of scale from
the individual building to the community, with benefit to the human individual and local and
planetary ecosystems.
Specific examples of large scale environmental design projects include:
Boston Transportation Planning Review
BART - Bay Area Rapid Transit System Daly City Turn-back project and airport extension.
Metropolitan Portland, Oregon light rail system
