Reyner Banham on Household Energy

For architects and engineers who want energy-efficient buildings, it's natural to be interested in how buildings were heated, cooled, and lit before modern times.  I've taught a class about this myself.  Steven Mouzon, author of The Original Green: Unlocking the Mystery of True Sustainability (2010), writes on his website:

“Originally, before the Thermostat Age, the places we built and buildings we built had no choice but to be green, otherwise people would freeze to death in the winter, die of heat strokes by summer, starve to death, or other really bad things would happen to them.”

Mouzon's point is true, in a sense, but its truth depends on the word "green" being tied to a modern conception of energy use.

Reyner Banham had a different point of view, which took account of broader issues.  In this quotation he castigated educators who romanticized the low energy use in buildings before (what Mouzon calls) the Thermostat Age:

"It might also be a good idea to fire anybody, but especially historians, who pretends that vernacular or pre-modern architecture was ever conspicuously less wasteful of available energy than is modern architecture.  As penance they might be condemned to spend two semesters in a vernacular structure in some part of the world that does not have a freakish-benign climate (i.e., not New Mexico) carrying up wood and water, breaking ice, carrying out ordures, chasing flies off rotting food, etc.  The fact that no energy-consuming equipment is marked on the plans of such structures does not mean that no energy was consumed in them—ask any eighteenth century serving wench about Georgian houses!"*

Though Banham clearly was not politically-correct (and pointlessly gender-specific, since a lot of Georgian domestic workers were men), his comment raises the important issue of labor and class.  Pre-modern comfort depended on cheap labor and an underclass.  (It seems to me there is very little literature about this issue; perhaps it comes up in older British sources Banham would have read.)  Banham believed in "applied power": The Industrial Revolution, the rise of the middle class, and the development of modern comfort were directly interrelated, all contributing to the standard of living we enjoy.

My view?  There may be techniques and mindsets to be usefully appropriated from pre-modern building practices (especially, it seems to me, in daylighting), but it's not helpful to be naive about the standards of living in past eras, including issues of labor and class. 

Your view?  (Comments welcome!)

*"Educators Roundtable," Journal of Architectural Education, February 1977.

Previously:
A great Banham quotation
Reyner Banham on Solar Heating
Reyner Banham's Unwarranted Apology

Also related:
The "Surprisingly Sophisticated" Fallacy

The Master's Thesis Playbook

I’m working with several Master's Degree students currently—some in Architectural Engineering and some in American Studies. I’m frequently the third or fourth member on a student’s committee, so I have the luxury of staying out of ‘the weeds’ and looking at these projects from a big-picture point of view. Here’s my approach to Master’s theses as a faculty advisor. I think this is probably useful for students in a variety of disciplines.

First I look for Clarity of Purpose and Significance. What is the Big Question the project will address? In other words, why are you doing what you're doing? You should be able to answer this very clearly. Is your subject important and will your contribution be meaningful? Are you sure your Big Question hasn't been asked & answered before? Students who struggle with these need some good guidance, or the project is in trouble. If it’s a small question, let's make it Big.

Second, I want to know about Approach. You must have a specific plan for answering your Big Question. (And you shouldn't know the answers in advance.) Do you have the right tools to get reliable data? Are you sure your assumptions are valid? Are you aware of previous similar work that you’re building upon? Are you going to be able to reach significant conclusions and speak with authority? 

Be aware of whether you’re using established methods of your discipline, or if you’re innovating. You probably need a compelling reason to innovate. Ideally, in the end, you will have something like a chemistry experiment (even if it's a Humanities project), where someone else using the same procedure or sources would find similar results and reach similar conclusions.

Third, I ask what could go wrong. You might find a lot of evidence contradicting your hypothesis. The data might be messy or inconclusive. What will you do if you can’t answer your Big Question with confidence, or if the conclusions are simply dull?

Finally, I tell students that writing is easy if you’re thinking clearly and have a lot to say, but it’s difficult otherwise. Give special care to distinguishing between facts and interpretations. Don’t try to write ‘like an academic’ because this usually means being purposely unclear. Short declarative sentences are good.

Appraising Solar Energy

If you want to build a Solar or Net-Zero house today, you'll likely encounter this source of frustration: the amount you invest in a PV system will not be reflected in the home's appraised value.  In my area, a PV system is given no value (ZERO) by appraisers, even though it has a real asset value of $20-30,000, and it will reduce the home's operating cost by hundreds each month.  Why would a speculative homebuilder include solar?  The buyer will only be able to borrow up to the appraised value; the builder will be giving away his or her profits by installing PV.  Everyone I've talked to in the real estate industry knows about this.  The NAHB acknowledges this problem in a page entitled “Valuing Green Homes for What They’re Worth.”  Appraisal practices represent a huge barrier to solar energy. 

This would seem to be an easy problem to solve.  Would you be surprised to learn that it has persisted for nearly 40 years?  Here's an excerpt from a 1978 report (referring to solar-thermal heating systems):

"The appraisal of a solar home for purposes of permanent finance is an unresolved issue within the financial community.  The builder and purchaser benefit from appraisal practices which include the cost of the solar system in the value of the home.

Lenders report that the most common appraisal technique is the market valuation method, which is based on the sales of comparable units. However, at this time there are few, if any, solar homes in the market area served by local financial institutions.  As a result, appraisers have wide discretion in determining value.  The diverse practices of the interviewed permanent lenders reflect uncertainty over the question of appraising solar systems."

It is hard to believe that this is still an "unresolved issue"!

Source for quotation: "Building the Solar Home," HUD Report by Dubin-Bloome Associates, 1978.

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Update, October 2017: A new Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) report confirms this problem, saying builders "do not directly benefit from the operational cost savings and have no incentive to maximize them."  The solution is called residential property assessed clean energy (R-PACE) financing.

Some Facts about Air Conditioning

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS), 2009.

Source: U.S. Department of Energy, 2011 Building Energy Data Book, 2012.

Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 655.

Solar Futures: The View from 1978

The history of solar energy is full of predictions that were not realized and appear in retrospect to have been too-wishful.  Here's an example from 1978:

"No one's crystal ball works very well in examining energy futures, but based on available information and recognizing the uncertainties we view the following goals as optimistic but achievable if we commit the necessary resources to them:
...solar energy technology could meet a quarter of our energy needs by the year 2000.
...It is now possible to speak realistically of the United States becoming a solar society.  A goal of providing significantly more than one-half our energy from solar sources by the year 2020 should be achievable if our commitment to that goal and to conservation is strong."

Source: Solar Energy, Progress and Promise, Council on Environmental Quality.

See also: Solar Futures: The View from 1973