̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Koen Steemers

Pedestrians choose healthy obstacles over boring pavements, study finds

ta385 — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 08:45:00 +0000

Millions of people in the UK are failing to meet recommended targets for physical activity. Exercising 'on the go' is key to changing this but while walking along a pavement is better than nothing it causes no significant increase in heart rate so only qualifies as mild exercise. Walking also fails to significantly improve balance or bone density, unless it includes jumping, balancing, and stepping down.

But would adults opt for such ‘fun’ routes if given the choice? A ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge-led study published today in the journal Landscape Research suggests that with the right design, most would.

Previous research on ‘healthy route choices’ has focused on people’s likelihood of walking instead of using transport. But this study examined how likely people are to pick a more challenging route over a conventional one and which design characteristics influenced their choices.

Lead author, Anna Boldina, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Architecture, said: “Even when the increase in level and extent of activity level is modest, when millions of people are using cityscapes every day, those differences can have a major positive impact on public health.”

“Our findings show that pedestrians can be nudged into a wider range of physical activities through minor changes to the urban landscape. We want to help policy makers and designers to make modifications that will improve physical health and wellbeing.”

Boldina began this research after moving from Coimbra in Portugal – where she found herself climbing hills and ancient walls – to London, which she found far less physically challenging.

Working with Dr Paul Hanel from the Department of Psychology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Essex, and Professor Koen Steemers from Cambridge, Boldina invited almost 600 UK residents to compare photorealistic images of challenging routes – variously incorporating stepping stones, balancing beams, and high steps – with conventional pavements.

Participants were shown images of challenging and conventional tarmac routes and asked which route they would choose. ̽��ֱ��researchers tested out a range of encouraging / discouraging parameters in different scenarios, including crossing water, shortcuts, unusual sculptures and the presence / absence of a handrail and other people. Participants were asked to score how challenging they thought the route would be from 1 (as easy as walking on level tarmac) to 7 (I would not be able to do it).

Eighty per cent of the study’s participants opted for a challenging route in at least one of the scenarios, depending on perceived level of difficulty and design characteristics. Where a challenging option was shorter than a conventional route, this increased the likelihood of being chosen by 10%. ̽��ֱ��presence of handrails achieved a 12% rise.

Importance for health

̽��ֱ��WHO and NHS recommend at least 150 minutes of ‘moderate’ or 75 minutes of ‘vigorous’ activity spread over a week, including a variety of activities aimed at enhancing bones, muscles, and agility to stay healthy. In addition, adults over 65 are advised to perform strength, flexibility, and balance exercises.

Boldina said: “ ̽��ֱ��human body is a very complex machine that needs a lot of things to keep working effectively. Cycling and swimming are great for your heart and for your leg muscles but do very little for your bone density.”

“To improve cardiovascular health, bone density and balance all at once, we need to add a wider range of exercises into our routine daily walks.”

Psychology of choice

Co-author Dr Paul Hanel said: “Children don’t need much encouragement to try out a balance beam but we wanted to see how adults would respond, and then identify design modifications which made them more likely to choose a challenging route.”

“We found that while embarrassment, anxiety, caution and peer pressure can put some adults off, the vast majority of people can be persuaded to take a more challenging route by paying careful attention to design, safety, difficulty level, location and signage.”

̽��ֱ��proportion of participants who were willing to pick a more challenging route varied from 14% for a particular balance beam route to 78% for a route involving wide, low stepping stones and a log with a handrail. ̽��ֱ��least intimidating routes were found to be those with wide, steady-looking balancing beams and wide steppingstones, especially with the presence of handrails.

̽��ֱ��researchers suggest that routes that incorporate more difficult challenges, such as obstacle courses and narrow balancing beams, should be placed in areas more likely to be frequented by younger users.

̽��ֱ��participants expressed a range of reasons for picking challenging routes. Unsurprisingly, the study found that challenging routes which also acted as short cuts appealed. Up to 55% of participants chose such routes. ̽��ֱ��researchers also found that the design of pavements, lighting and flowerbeds, as well as signage helped to nudge participants to choose more challenging routes. Many participants (40%) said the sight of other people taking a challenging route encouraged them to do the same.

̽��ֱ��participants who picked conventional routes often had concerns about safety but the introduction of safety measures, such as handrails, increased uptake of some routes. Handrails next to one steppingstones route increased uptake by 12%.

To test whether tendency to choose challenging routes was linked to demographic and personality factors, participants were asked to answer questions about their age, gender, habits, health, occupation, and personality traits (such as sensation seeking or general anxiety).

̽��ֱ��researchers found that people of all levels of activity are equally likely to pick a challenging route. But for the most difficult routes, participants who regularly engaged in strength and balancing exercises were more likely to choose them.

Older participants were as supportive of the concept as younger ones but were less likely to opt for the more challenging routes for themselves. Nevertheless, across all age groups, only a small percentage of participants said they would avoid adventurous options completely.

̽��ֱ��study applies the idea of “Choice Architecture” (making good choices easier and less beneficial choices harder) plus “Fun theory”, a strategy whereby physical activity is made more exciting; as well as some of the key principles of persuasion: social proof, liking, authority, and consistency.

Future work

̽��ֱ��researchers hope to run experiments in physical test sites to see how intentions convert into behaviour, and to measure how changes in habits improve health. In the meantime, Boldina continues to present her findings to policy makers.

Critics might question the affordability and cost effectiveness of introducing ‘Active landscape routes’ in the current economic environment.

In response, the researchers argue that installing stepping stones in a turfed area can be cheaper than laying and maintaining conventional tarmac pavements. They also point out that these measures could save governments far greater sums by reducing demand for health care related to lack of exercise.

Reference

A Boldina et al., ‘Active Landscape and Choice Architecture: Encouraging the use of challenging city routes for fitness’, Landscape Research (2022). DOI: 10.1080/01426397.2022.2142204

Up to 78% of walkers would take a more challenging route featuring obstacles such as balancing beams, stepping stones and high steps, research has found. ̽��ֱ��findings suggest that providing ‘Active Landscape’ routes in urban areas could help tackle an 'inactivity pandemic' and improve health outcomes.

Pedestrians can be nudged into a wider range of physical activities through minor changes to the urban landscape

Anna Boldina

Collage imagining a challenging 'Active Urbanism' route applied to Sermon Lane in London

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Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike

Global collaboration takes off

ag236 — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 14:35:01 +0000

An alliance between the ̽��ֱ�� of California Berkeley, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the National ̽��ֱ�� of Singapore has moved into its next phase following the first joint call for research proposals and the approval of five inaugural projects.

̽��ֱ��successful proposals, in the areas of “Cities”, “Precision medicine” and “Smart systems”, will be supported through a joint fund of £723,900 –including a contribution of £301,000 from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

These are the first projects set up under the auspices of the Global Alliance, a partnership between UC Berkeley, Cambridge and NUS formalised at the end of 2015.

̽��ֱ��aim of the partnership is to promote collaborative and multidisciplinary research on a global scale.

Its focus is on finding solutions to global challenges that cannot be solved by a single institution, or even through bilateral collaboration.

Prof Chris Abell, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said:

“ ̽��ֱ��projects supported under this first call show the many ways in which our joint resources will let us tackle global problems more effectively. They are the first in a series of research collaborations that will allow our three institutions to work together for the global good.”

̽��ֱ��five successful projects were:

“Toward an open and secure internet-of-things reference platform” (Cambridge PI: Prof Simon Moore)
“Modelling interacting high-dimensional phenotypes – Kronecker Products for imaging, genetics and imaging genetics” (Cambridge PI: Prof John Aston)
“Mathematical and statistical theory of imaging” (Cambridge PI: Dr Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb)
“Smart design: human-centric planning of urban districts” (Cambridge PI: Prof Koen Steemers)
“Translucent city” (Cambridge PI: Dr. Ruchi Choudhary)

Funding for the five projects will be released between November 2016 and February 2017.

A further call for proposals will be published in May 2017 (deadline September 2017).

For more information, contact Dr Kata Fülöp, International Strategy Office, Kata.Fulop@admin.cam.ac.uk

Funding approved for research projects involving UC Berkeley, Cambridge and the National ̽��ֱ�� of Singapore

̽��ֱ��projects supported under this first call show the many ways in which our joint resources will let us tackle global problems more effectively.

Prof Chris Abell

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Yes

How to build a healthier city

cjb250 — Mon, 13 Jun 2016 11:32:29 +0000

“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford,” said Samuel Johnson in the 18th century. For Johnson, the rich tapestry of London life and the myriad cultural assets clearly outweighed any downsides of city dwelling.

For others, though, city life is a grind. Public transport is overcrowded, house prices are soaring, traffic is at gridlock and diesel fumes hang almost perceptibly in the air. Little surprise, then, that people do become tired of London, even if not of life itself.

Even if issues such as air pollution are taken out of the equation, living in a city can be bad for your health, which is not good news considering that the World Health Organization estimates that by 2017 the majority of people will be living in urban areas.

A study published in 2014 by Dr Manjinder Sandhu from the Department of Medicine suggested that increasing urbanisation of rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa might lead to an explosion of the incidence of stroke, heart disease and diabetes. Yes, moving to towns and cities provides better access to education, electricity and hospitals, but town and city dwellers become less active, their work becomes less physical and their diets worsen.

“If this pattern is repeated across the globe – which we think it will – then we could face an epidemic of obesity, diabetes and other potentially preventable diseases,” says Sandhu. “Local and national governments need to take this into consideration when planning infrastructure to try and mitigate such negative effects.”

As far as ‘healthy’ cities go, Cambridge has a lot going for it. Its population has higher than average levels of education and is physically active: Cambridge has been nicknamed ‘the cycling capital of Britain’ – the sight of bicycles leaning against walls is as iconic as that of punts passing under the Bridge of Sighs. But as the city expands and house prices rocket, more and more people are living in neighbouring villages and towns, where cycling to work along winding, congested country lanes can be less appealing than driving.

In 2011, the world’s longest guided busway opened, connecting Cambridge with nearby Huntingdon and St Ives along a former railway line. An integral part of the busway was a cycle path along its route – and this appears to have helped nudge people in the right direction. A study led by Dr David Ogilvie from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit found that, among people who commuted into Cambridge from within a 30 km radius, those who lived closer to the busway were more likely to increase the amount of ‘active’ commuting they did, particularly cycling.

“Commuting is a part of everyday life where people could include a bit more physical activity without having to think about it very much or make time for it,” says Ogilvie. “When new infrastructure integrates opportunities for walking and cycling, we see people shifting their commuting behaviour.”

Ogilvie’s research is, he says, “contributing bricks of evidence to a wall that’s slowly being assembled from across the world of the health benefits of investing into this kind of infrastructure.” While such benefits are often alluded to in business cases, until now the evidence to support them has been limited.

There are ways to integrate more pedestrian-friendly environments in existing infrastructure, he says, citing examples such as those in the Netherlands – now being introduced in some areas of London – where traffic is slowed to walking pace and the divisions between pavement and road are deliberately blurred, cuing drivers to share the space.

With more thoughtful urban planning, Ogilvie says, it should be possible to design towns and cities as environments that promote not just physical activity, but improved health and wellbeing – “in short, a place where people want to live”.

“Sprawling cities with retail parks on the fringes are not conducive to doing your shopping on foot,” he says. “People are more likely to walk and cycle around their neighbourhood if it is safe, well connected and has good local amenities. And getting people out on the streets not only gets them active, it also increases social interactions and a sense that it’s safe to be on the streets.”

Dr Jamie Anderson from the Department of Architecture is also interested in the relationship between the built environment and our broader wellbeing. As part of his PhD project with Professor Koen Steemers (Architecture) and Professor Felicia Huppert (Department of Psychology), he did a study of another Cambridge initiative, the housing development known as Accordia.

Since the first residents moved into their homes in the mid-noughties, Accordia has won numerous prizes, including the Royal Institute of British Architects Stirling Prize, for its innovative mixing of private and public spaces. Yet surprisingly, says Anderson, no one had done a detailed study of the impact on its residents.

One of the interesting approaches taken by Accordia was to focus on communal spaces rather than private gardens: only one in five homes has its own garden. Given the stereotype of the British as a very private people, how did people respond? Did people spend time chatting outdoors with their neighbours, or did they shut themselves away and draw the curtains?

̽��ֱ��results, explains Anderson, were mixed. While one middle-aged couple missed having their own garden and were now on a long waiting list for a local allotment, one mother described the communal gardens as “crucially important”: she had suffered from postnatal depression and, with her husband away at work all day, she told Anderson that she “wouldn’t have got through her depression” without the interactions that the adjacent communal areas provided.

“In terms of behaviours that we associate with physical health and positive mental health – so people interacting with each other, children out playing, for example – we found clear positive associations with Accordia’s outdoor neighbourhood spaces,” he adds, “but when we looked at people’s subjective wellbeing, it wasn’t as clear cut.”

With Accordia, Anderson was evaluating an already established development, but he now has a chance to influence a project at the planning stage. Part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s vision of a ‘Northern Powerhouse’ will see a £110 million culture venue in Manchester named ̽��ֱ��Factory after the eponymous record company behind such iconic bands as Joy Division and Happy Mondays.

Under a fellowship from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Anderson, in collaboration with engineering firm BuroHappold, is carrying out a Health Impact Assessment (HIA) of the proposed new site, looking at factors that might influence health and wellbeing, from the lighting in office spaces, through to educational opportunities for young people from deprived communities and the restaurants within the venue.

HIAs are currently voluntary, but are set to become mandatory for significant developments across the UK in 2017, and can help architects and designers improve their submissions for planning application. How effective they’ll be is unclear, warns Anderson. “You might have some really strong evidence, but the final decision is a blend of opinion from various stakeholders, so you could end up with a watered-down version of what’s needed.”

He remains optimistic, however: “We’re moving in the right direction. By building consideration of health and wellbeing into the planning process, it should raise the bar and hopefully we will see many more cycle lanes, more inviting and better options for active transport, and maybe fewer fast-food shops.”

“I don’t know what makes me stay / ̽��ֱ��city life just ain’t the same,” sang New Order, one of Factory Record’s best known signings, in 2001. Perhaps the work of Cambridge researchers will help make cities attractive – and healthy – places to stay.

Life in towns and cities can grind you down, but putting health and wellbeing at the centre of new housing and infrastructure developments could make for happier, healthier citizens.

When new infrastructure integrates opportunities for walking and cycling, we see people shifting their commuting behaviour

David Ogilvie

Accordia - where the provision of more communal than private outdoor space encourages people to interact

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Innovating for the future of cities

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 15:30:00 +0000

There is a clear line of sight on the broad features of the cities of the future.

They will be large, with significantly more than half of the world’s growing population crammed into them.

They will house an increasingly older population, placing stress on services to the elderly and a rising tax burden on young workers whose taxes pay for those services.

They will be environmentally constrained, require a lower environmental impact of almost everything we depend on today, and they will need more resilient infrastructure, buildings and economies as the climate shifts.

In at least the developing world, the megacities will be a complex and messy mix of formal and informal settlements, with no obvious governance structure covering the entire city.

These are very broad sketches of the challenges. ̽��ֱ��more interesting issues revolve around how we respond to those challenges, and how those responses affect the design, operation and governance of cities. How we respond will in turn profoundly influence the quality of life of residents and what it feels like to live in such cities.

̽��ֱ��future depends on the innovations we create and put in place today. But what form might those innovations take? We divide them into the physical city, urban governance and the choices made by the residents of a city. Each is the focus of intensive research at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge in collaboration with our partners elsewhere and in the public and private sectors.

̽��ֱ��physical city

Future cities must become smarter, since resources and services will be stretched to their limits. Our cities today are built on projections of long-term needs, and locked into the infrastructure to meet those needs with a large margin of safety so they are robust against different potential futures. This is wasteful of materials and energy.

Buildings and infrastructure of the future will be fitted with sensors monitoring every aspect of operations from climate to energy performance to material safety and service demand. Energy will flow in real time to where it is most needed. Transport will be directed around areas of high air pollution so human health is preserved. Buildings will be monitored for stresses, allowing actions to be taken before catastrophic failure, reducing the over-engineering of buildings with more concrete and steel than may ever be required.

̽��ֱ��same sensors will monitor the climate and allow buildings and infrastructure to respond so damage from extreme weather events is minimised. ̽��ֱ��technologies for climate adaptation are well known. ̽��ֱ��problem is how to allocate limited technological and financial resources so the overall impact on a city by a changing climate is minimised. This requires understanding the role of specific parts of the physical city in the economy and services. An approach is needed to rationalising adaptation resources so they are used wisely to protect the city’s economy and services, in turn ensuring livelihoods and well-being are preserved. Macroeconomic models linked to engineering knowledge allow decision-makers to understand where adaptation and recovery resources can best be directed to get a city back on its feet after an extreme weather event.

Governance

Cities will become living laboratories for sustainability, requiring changes in governance. Since cities are heterogeneous mixtures of planned and unplanned buildings, formal and informal developments, no single set of solutions to service provision, crime, health or education will work everywhere within the city. Systems of governance will allow for experimentation, testing solutions in some parts of the city but not others, with the design of those trials allowing us to see what works where and under what conditions.

̽��ֱ��city will become a laboratory in the scientific sense, with the language of case-control and cohort studies. ̽��ֱ��messy and complex nature of cities will be turned into an asset, allowing for natural experiments. This in turn requires governance systems that embrace experimentation; politicians who are willing to admit when an experiment has failed and move on to the next experiment; a public that will not penalise those who are brave enough to try something in the face of profound uncertainty and then adjust their decisions when evidence emerges.

Cities will also find an intermediate ground between top-down planning (as in the ‘new towns’ such as Milton Keynes) and bottom-up growth (think of the favelas of South American cities). Bottom-up solutions allow for highly local differences in economies, architectural style, material and energy consumption. However, they can reduce the efficiency of resource use of the city when viewed as a system. ̽��ֱ��‘transmission’ of a future city, sitting somewhere between the Mayor’s office and neighbourhood groups, will enable local solutions to remain local while facilitating solutions for the greater good of the city overall.

̽��ֱ��challenge is to design a governance structure that enables the efficiency of technocratic, systemic control of planning and development to take place while also allowing citizens to develop solutions that work for their local conditions. ̽��ֱ��challenge is to find a system where bottom-up and top-down decisions co-exist comfortably.

People

Citizens must become smarter as well. Future technologies will not simply provide data. They will be linked to data analytics that reflect who is taking decisions, why, when and where. ̽��ֱ��data will be turned into information to guide decisions on (for example) assets, and transmitted in easily understood form to the pinch points where decisions are taken. People will be re-connected to the ebb and flow of material and energy in the city, with much deeper understandings of how their personal actions influence the performance of their city, and how the information around them influences their own decisions on use of materials, energy and services.

Future cities will make increasing use of natural ventilation based on advances in ecology and fluid dynamics. With the transport system dominated by much quieter electric vehicles, windows will be left open, indoor pollution will be reduced and levels of comfort will rise as the heat island effect disappears. Improved walking and cycling paths will bring the benefits of exercise and re-connect people to their neighbourhood activities. Health and well-being will be improved by, rather than be collaterally damaged from, urban life.

These are just three examples of future challenges being explored at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge in collaboration with partners at other universities in the UK and globally, and with public and private sector organisations. Taken together, they are providing the evidence base that will solve the high level and ground level challenges, and enable the top-down and bottom -up solutions, that are emerging as urban life becomes the norm for a growing global population.

Professor Doug Crawford-Brown is at the Department of Land Economy, Professor Lord Robert Mair is at the Department of Engineering and Professor Koen Steemers is at the Department of Architecture.

Today, we commence a month-long focus on the future of cities. To begin, Doug Crawford-Brown, Robert Mair and Koen Steemers describe the challenges our future cities will face and how mitigation depends on the innovations we create and put in place today.

How we respond to these challenges will profoundly influence the quality of life of residents and what it feels like to live in such cities.

Doug Crawford-Brown, Robert Mair, Koen Steemers

GLAS-8

Dark City

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Good tidings for coastal communities

sj387 — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 09:00:49 +0000

Flooding from rising sea levels and extreme weather events is a major global issue, and the UK is no exception. According to the Government’s 2012 Climate Change Impact Risk Assessment, flooding is the greatest threat facing the UK today.

̽��ֱ��UK’s current strategy for coastal defence is largely reliant on rigid structures such as sea walls. Many of these are reaching the end of their design life, and proving disadvantageous in terms of cost, restrictive access to the sea and limited capacity to adapt to rising sea levels.

As for the longer term, the Future Foresight flood research project commissioned by government and published in 2004, concluded that the government’s 100-year shoreline defence plans were not adaptive enough to cope with changes expected within the next 15 to 30 years.

But how can walls and buildings – which we take for granted as solid, enduring structures – adapt to a landscape that is gradually changing from firm ground to wetlands to sea? Does such an adaption require a sea-change in our own attitudes to permanence in our built environment?

Ed Barsley, who completed a Master’s in Architecture and Urban Design last year in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge's Department of Architecture and has now started a PhD, believes it does, and has come up with an adaptive, flexible approach to coastal flooding as innovative in design and technological terms as it is sensitive in cultural ones.

“I aimed to design a town that is intrinsically able to inhabit this increasingly flood-prone landscape,” he said. “It is characterised by two distinctive features. ̽��ֱ��first is a multi-layered threshold that combines soft and hard defences. ̽��ֱ��second is that every one of these thresholds is permeable by the sea.”

Barsley based his study in the town of Par near St Austell, inspired by a year spent building and designing eco-houses in Cornwall. Shortlisted for the Government’s now defunct Eco-town scheme, Par has been earmarked as a future key commercial and transport hub for the region. Yet it is at high risk of flooding.

Barsley’s concept starts not in the town itself, but out at sea. Wave attenuation devices would divert the waves’ energy, and harness it to power the town. A zone of coastal nourishment, created by spraying sediment on the sea bed, would then graduate the force of the waves and help dissipate their power. Next, a series of interconnected saline lagoons would help to further reduce the waves’ crest height and velocity, as well as provide vital wildlife habitats.

It would only be at the harbour that the sea meets a wall – and one with a difference. “My sea wall, which also acts as a social causeway, is perforated, its apertures work to diffuse the flow of the waves before they enter the harbour,” said Barsley. ”It has been designed to provide access to the water’s edge at a variety of height levels depending on the tides. Like the Thames Barrier, it could lock down and close up during extreme weather conditions.”

̽��ֱ��town itself is designed on the same principle as the permeable sea wall. “Buildings designed to act as buffers are juxtaposed with ones designed to let the water through, so as to enable the people of Par to maintain use of some buildings during a flood event” said Barsley. “Furthermore, because the apertures of the porous buildings are smaller at the front than at the back, the varied configuration of buildings would mean that the streets themselves act like the sea wall, further attenuating the turbidity of the water.”

Par is situated on ground that slopes up from the sea. ̽��ֱ��planning of Barsley’s town takes advantage of this. Organised on the basis of phased inhabitation zones, a range of street levels provides shelter and access routes, with essential services on highest ground.

This results in a main high street that is not only a refuge but is quintessentially Cornish in style and atmosphere. It is peppered with lateral access routes – narrow twisting lanes, winding staircases and inclines – that lead down to the harbour and afford tantalising glimpses of the sea. This charming, higgledy-piggledy style (or ‘Cornish vernacular’ as it known to architects) has emerged from Barsley’s strategic response to the need for resilience, rather than being a pastiche.

Despite its resilience, large portions of Barsley’s town would, eventually, become submerged: current data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that Par will be flooded on a daily basis by 2100. Barsley’s design caters for a future beyond this point. “Once submerged,” he said, “the town as a whole would form a major water-calming device in the same way as the other permeable thresholds, by both obstructing and attenuating the waves. As wetlands form in the area behind the town, the water would, I hope, be sufficiently calm to accommodate floating homes and amphibious technologies proven in their efficacy on still water, but unsuited to choppy sea-water.”

̽��ֱ��fundamental principle behind Barsley’s design for Par is that it should enable its residents to live in harmony with the ebb and flow of the sea. To an extent, they already go with the flow: the tides in Par fluctuate by 4.5 metres on an average day.

As well as adapting to the tides in pragmatic terms, however, Barsley believes that a fundamental shift in cultural attitudes towards the idea of possession of property is needed, because gradually, but inexorably, the sea is re-possessing the land. So Barsley’s design is based on the assumption of a policy of 50-year leasehold land parcels to underpin the strategy of Phased Inhabitation Zones. “A ground floor unit by the waterfront might start off life as a café or an artist’s studio,” he explained, “but after 50 years might need, for instance, to turn into a boatshed or a store. And at some point that unit will have to be abandoned and left to function as a defence threshold. We have to change our attitudes towards possession and risk, and stop fighting a losing battle with nature.”

Barsley begins his thesis with H G Wells’ prescient warning written in 1945: ‘Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative’. Barsley, and his fellow students and graduates of the Department of Architecture at Cambridge, are responding to the challenge.

Koen Steemers, Professor of Sustainable Design and Head of the Department of Architecture, said: “Ed’s project exemplifies design research that builds on the latest multidisciplinary research expertise to synthesise and test an imaginative design in response to pressing environmental issues. Because of the real potential application of such projects, recognised by the architectural profession, developers and policy-makers worldwide, we are now looking into setting up an enterprise advisory scheme to help realise such innovative and necessary visions of architecture.”

You can find more information about the pioneering work of students in Architecture and Urban Design including details of Ed Barsley’s project.

̽��ֱ��sea sustains life but also threatens it. An innovative design concept by Ed Barsley aims to contend with rising seawater by welcoming it into our coastal settlements.

We have to change our attitudes towards possession and risk, and stop fighting a losing battle with nature

Ed Barsley

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Yes

School carbon emissions in England are on the rise

bjb42 — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 06:00:41 +0000

Typical CO₂ emissions from schools in England are rising, despite reductions to their heating demands, because of an increase in electricity consumption, according to new research.

̽��ֱ��study also suggests that the new “academies”, schools funded directly by the state and heavily supported by the present Government, have significantly higher energy consumption profiles than normal secondary schools.

Researchers drew primarily on a database of Display Energy Certificates (DECs), which are required under UK legislation, (stemming from EU directives on building energy). These have applied to all public buildings over 1,000m² since 2008, and show the building’s annual energy performance.

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Shinawatra ̽��ֱ��, Thailand, were able to obtain records for around 25,000 DEC’s produced in 2008-9, following a Freedom of Information request to the Department of Communities and Local Government. Previously, only partial datasets had been made widely available, which lacked crucial information such as the type of building to which the DEC applied. This made large scale analysis almost impossible.

Using the FOI-released material, the research team were able to combine information from the certificates with data collected from Ofsted to create a detailed schools database covering about 40% of the primary and secondary schools in England, including academies.

Their findings, published in the new issue of the journal Building Research & Information, explore the key factors affecting energy use in schools, including the type of school, location, and the type of heating, ventilation and air conditioning system it uses.

In general, it was found that existing benchmarks for energy consumption in schools had over-estimated the fossil-thermal energy they need (primarily to heat the buildings), but underestimated the amount of electrical energy schools consume.

̽��ֱ��study also found significant differences in energy use between different school types. Both secondary schools and academies were typically found to have higher annual CO₂ emissions per m² than primary schools (6% and 27% respectively). Taking account of the different pupil densities was found to accentuate these differences: typical CO₂ emissions per pupil were found to be 47% higher in secondary schools, and 116% higher in academies, both compared with primary schools. These differences are due mostly to greater electrical consumption. Academies typically use one-and-a-half times the electricity per pupil compared with secondary schools, and over twice that of primary schools.

Professor Koen Steemers, Head of the Department of Architecture at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and one of the authors of the new report said: “This research shows that design strategies to reduce heat loss have been moderately effective but have been offset by increasing electricity demands, for mechanical ventilation, lighting or equipment.”

“In the context of national and international targets to reduce emissions, the paper establishes the need for continued monitoring and research into the relative roles of building design, systems and occupant behaviour to ensure that the emissions trend is downwards.”

Researchers believe that a combination of different reasons explains the rise in schools’ electricity consumption. One may be the increase in recent years in IT facilities and other technology to support teaching and learning.

When compared to school energy studies carried out over the last decade, the DEC data showed that there had been reductions in fossil-fuel thermal energy consumption, likely caused by improvements in building thermal performance and heating equipment. Electrical energy consumption has, however, increased, resulting in small increases in CO₂ emissions across the school types. Current “good practice” electrical consumption in schools in England is actually worse than typical practice in 1995.

Academies, which are publicly-funded schools operating outside of local authority control and funded directly by central government, tend to have more state-of-the-art buildings and facilities. This may go some distance to explaining why their emissions through electricity use are so much higher.

̽��ֱ��present Government has given considerable backing to academies. ̽��ֱ��research suggests that there will need to be significant reductions in the electrical consumption of academy buildings if they are to form an increasing proportion of the UK’s schools stock and still meet existing commitments to CO₂ reductions.

̽��ֱ��research team is now further analysing the DEC database, considering other non-domestic building types including hospitals and offices.

Richard Lorch, editor of Building Research and Information, said: “ ̽��ֱ��research breaks new ground and is important for public policy. Monitoring actual energy usage provides an evidence base for how policy translates into practice – in this case how the UK will meet its carbon reduction commitments. In particular, it alerts the Department for Education of the need to review its current and future practices on school design and operation.”

New data obtained by researchers shows that electrical energy consumption in England's schools has gone up, even as heating demand has fallen, with academies consistently using more energy than other institutions.

In the context of national and international targets, this establishes the need for continued monitoring and research to ensure that the emissions trend is downwards.

Koen Steemers

Draco 2008 from Flickr.

Demolition of Manor Park School, Newcastle.

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Libraries and light

bjb42 — Sat, 01 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Architectural design involves making choices and identifying opportunities, and the best buildings are arguably those in which the various roles of architecture – social, environmental, functional, aesthetic – are positively combined and mutually inclusive. Yet current lighting design guidance, with its emphasis on quantitative criteria such as the recommended levels of illumination, generally fails to take this into account.

A three-year study led by Professor Koen Steemers and Mary Ann Steane in the Department of Architecture, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, aims to redress this balance in a particular type of building – libraries.

Libraries are the subject of much current debate. ̽��ֱ��UK Government is formulating its vision for the future of public libraries, and a recently completed consultation phase invited comment on the need to reconsider what kinds of places they should be and what kinds of environments they should provide. Issues such as the commissioning, updating, designing and operating of library buildings are likely to come under scrutiny in response to changing expectations. How libraries are lit, both naturally and artificially, is a major consideration when renovating or designing new libraries because it is intrinsically connected to aspects such as user comfort, energy consumption and use of space.

Library visits

̽��ֱ��aim of the ‘Designing with light in libraries’ project has been to create new understanding of the factors that influence the opportunities, and the dilemmas, of lighting strategies, and to marry this with an exploration of how users experience the environment around them. In providing an analysis of how day lighting is being successfully integrated (or not) with other design ambitions, the project will be of interest to librarians and architects alike.

Eight recently completed libraries were visited, seven in the UK and one in Ireland, plus one 1960s ‘benchmark’ library building in Finland, whose designer was the celebrated master of day lighting, Alvar Aalto. ̽��ֱ��eight contemporary libraries represent a range of uses and lighting strategies, and have all won prizes for aspects of their design. User questionnaires were completed at seven of these buildings and, wherever possible, current librarians were probed on operational issues, and the original designers on their ambitions for daylight.

Let there be light

What is ‘good reading light’? ̽��ֱ��phrase conjures up an image of a reader near a window, book to hand, the page in question turned towards the light. What the image implies is that the relationship of the reader to the light, the book and the room is important – in other words, that good conditions for reading are a matter of spatial geometry as well as sufficient illumination.

̽��ֱ��situation of private reading in a public space is not an issue that is particularly well addressed by current lighting guidelines, which focus more on quantitative than qualitative aspects. To gain knowledge in this area, the project examined the role of ‘good reading light’ in libraries, comparing the contemporary libraries with data gathered by PhD student Oriel Prizeman on late 19th- and early 20th-century libraries, built when daylight was the principal source of task light. In these older libraries, the overall lighting arrangements have typically been informed by considerations of spatial geometry; the library designs ensure that readers are located and oriented to make the most of the natural light.

Analysis of the more recent libraries demonstrated just how complex an issue ‘good reading light’ is, and the extent to which it involves a broad appreciation of people’s response to, and interaction with, buildings. With the availability of artificial light, it has become possible to design library buildings that are larger and can be open for longer. ̽��ֱ��consequence is that intelligent day lighting has frequently been ignored – the very availability of artificial light seems to be prompting its conspicuous consumption. In fact, having all the lights on in a public building like a library has now come to signal ‘openness’ to such a degree that even buildings designed to be predominantly day-lit are being artificially lit throughout the day. ̽��ֱ��project therefore underlines the need for consideration of lighting designs that make better sense in day lighting terms: in other words, lighting that consumes less energy yet maintains adequate – and stimulating – lighting conditions as day turns to night.

Room with a view

In any project of this type, it’s important to ask the users themselves what their opinion is of the lighting in their library through user questionnaires. In the course of the project, new ways of monitoring and recording lighting of the interior spaces have been developed to examine the ‘lightscape’ and the design principles at play, and to help the team interpret the responses from the user questionnaires.

A range of qualitative aspects of lighting are being considered by team members, such as mood, lightness and access to view. As an example, one finding has been the fact that users now expect to have access to a view from the library. They may not necessarily be clear about whether the light they enjoy is daylight or artificial light, but they seem to appreciate the additional visual interest and feeling of spaciousness that views can induce. Where libraries did not meet this criterion, users were considerably less positive, even if an interior was potentially well day-lit through narrow side windows, or through larger, high-level windows or roof lights. It would seem that users value the visual release from focused studying provided by low-level windows of any orientation. Effectively, libraries, whether public or institutional, are now ideally a room – or perhaps several rooms – with a view.

On this account, the 1960s Finnish benchmark library, which lacks a view, turned out to be less well liked by its users than the more recent buildings. However, another explanation for this lack of enthusiasm might also be the fact that the library has clearly outgrown the space for which it was originally designed. This illustrates an important dilemma for any library designer aiming to make the most of daylight: in the Finnish library, what was once a generous if highly introverted space is now both gloomier and more constricted in terms of space and light in which to browse.

Future change, future lighting

In seeking longevity, should designers give the potential need for flexibility of library spaces a high priority? A future change of use – or change of layout – could undermine lighting strategies adopted in the original design. This is why assessment of the benefits and drawbacks of flexible spatial arrangements, and potential strategies for expansion, deserve close consideration early in the design process. ‘Designing with light in libraries’ aims to act as a catalyst for higher quality design, guiding how design can be reframed to make the most of light.

For more information, please contact the authors Professor Koen Steemers (kas11@cam.ac.uk) and Mary Ann Steane (mas58@cam.ac.uk) at the Department of Architecture.

Research in the Department of Architecture aims to reveal the creative potential of light in the design of contemporary libraries.

Jan Tik

library light

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