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Adaptive Design in the Middle East
28 Aug 2008
Catherine Walker, Editor of Cityscape Intelligence, talks to Nader Ardalan, President Ardalan Associates and Research Fellow, Harvard University.
“Cutting across all other issues facing the countries surrounding the Gulf and the world is climate change. Its practical and elegant mitigation by designing Sustainable Built Environments is our greatest challenge.”
-Nader Ardalan
What is The Gulf Research Project?
The Gulf Research Project is about sustainable design for the UAE and the eight countries that surround the Gulf. We should first look at what sustainable design means. It might be stated that sustainable design is the most holistic, effective and adaptive design to both a physical and cultural context. Within that type of framework we undertook the Gulf Research Project, which is an academic research project that was sponsored by the UAE Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. We have completed the first year of that work which included the active participation of the graduate programme of the Architectural Association in London and the American University in Sharjah.
We brought students to the UAE and studied the traditional methods of adaptive design and then developed guidelines about how to develop new building and urban form using sustainable design principles to achieve human comfort conditions with minimum energy use. We concluded this pilot study by holding an extensive seminar at Harvard University, where I am the Fellow at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies. It was more or less a peer review of what had been studied. We invited a number of developers from this region, in addition to leading academics in the field, to gain insight into what might be called the effectiveness of the ‘Dubai model metaphor’.
What is the ‘Dubai Model Metaphor’?
Dubai is one of the outstanding examples of how a very traditional architectural heritage was highly adaptive to its context of climate and culture. This has, however, transformed into what we see in Business Bay and other areas. These are successful financial development models, but when measured in terms of sustainable design defined both in terms of energy efficiency and cultural relevance, they are really lacking in both those areas. So the seminar observed what were the benefits of what is being done currently, what are some of its shortcomings and how could it be substantially improved. We’re now going to carry out such studies around other countries in the Gulf, hopefully Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
What challenges does the Middle East face and how are these traditionally addressed?
The Middle East, particularly the Gulf area, faces the great challenge of physical climatic conditions that are extremely harsh. We have the highest radiant energy gain in the world, particularly in the UAE, high humidity and this combined with dust in the air creates a very harsh environment. So how do you build for that? Traditionally the pattern has been what might be called low rise, high density, compact, courtyard design with well insulated buildings using materials from the area. Those are the key principles of good adaptive design for this climate. The Gulf Research Project documented this vital lesson scientifically and technically, by showing how microclimates, for example in these courtyards, are so conducive to creating basic human comfort conditions. You have to design for human comfort and in the Gulf region four months out of the year in the winter are extremely mild and can support comfort without having to have 24 hour air conditioning. So one of the lessons from the Gulf Research Project is to engage in mixed mode design where you have natural ventilation, outdoor living in a suitable climate, rather than creating closed boxes in which we have to continually pump energy 24 hours, 365 days a year and emit vast amounts of CO2 that pollutes the environment and is the principle cause of global warming.
What are the benefits of traditional low rise courtyard design and the relevance of the imported Western model?
An important aspect of being conscious of low rise, high density courtyard design is the vital benefits of intervening or transitory spaces, like porches and shaded outdoor spaces. These are the types of adaptive design elements that went out of the traditional building model when the new” isolated box” model took over. One of the greatest challenges is that right now we have a very low level of current knowledge about how to build sustainably in our environment in the Middle East. For the last 30 or 40 years, the mindset has been to emulate New York City or Houston, Texas, with any of the closed, 24-hour air conditioned buildings that were models of the modern movement brought over to the Middle East. Because oil was so cheap and environmental issues ignored, it didn’t occur to our consciousness that we were polluting the world and creating aspects of global warming. But now that this is conscious and the UAE shows one of the highest carbon footprints in the world, with oil prices as they are, it has suddenly hit us that we ought to be doing something about it. In looking at this, our greatest shortcoming is we don’t have enough ready models built to know what are the new models that are more sustainable that people should use. So people are still building the western model we have imported which, in many ways, are not relevant because of both the physical and the cultural context.
However, we do have one important benefit-that is for centuries we’ve had an excellent heritage of traditional models of climatically adaptive, correct passive design. These are the models we can readily reuse in contemporary ways. Now here you face an important philosophical and aesthetic issue. Many people might say this will cause a “pastiche” and you end up building Disney Land copies of Bastikaya such as Madinat Jumeirah. Madinat Jumeirah is successful in limited visual ways. It sits at one end of two opposite poles which are very interesting and successful, at least financially, yet hardly the new model to inspire the future direction of design for this region. You have the Burj Dubai, which is 200 floors high, at one extreme and very unsustainable in energy terms and traffic pollution generation. At the other extreme you have Madinat Jumeirah, copying traditional forms but not making a contribution because it is a pastiche and still not very sustainable in its total design approach. Here with the wealth of new development opportunities for building entire new cities, how does Dubai and Abu Dhabi take advantage of creating truly significant world architecture instead of going into these two polar opposites which are in many ways considered dead ends?
Is there a new paradigm of sustainable modern design?
A new paradigm of sustainable design needs to be explored and made manifest. We know scientifically and technically that good passive design is the key principle to sustainable modern design. So if we can learn the lessons of traditional adaptive design and then apply them as principles rather than imitations, then I think we have identified a meaningful new paradigm to re-conceive the future of Middle East Architecture and urban design.
Could you give some examples from The Intelligent Tower, Doha, Qatar?
Any tower has good and bad qualities. If you can create a compact community in a tower which may accommodate four or five thousand people or more, the idea of compaction in one unit in general is good. However, if the compaction is vertical and exposed to all the elements, and has a tremendous heat gain, you are going to have to find ways to overcome that and to make it adaptive. So the Intelligent Tower in Doha first of all has attempted to have a very high performance skin. I think the key lesson about towers is that single pane or double pane insulated glass tends in this climate to not be suitable. So with the Intelligent Tower project we engineered a skin with a proposed triple insulated layer of high performance glass, with an integral automatic shading device which tracks the sun and allows the skin to close down and not admit heat, yet to allow natural light to reduce the need for artificial illumination. The building should be light coloured, it shouldn’t be dark coloured because that absorbs heat. The building should not be highly reflective because if you use highly reflective glass that is of value to that building, it reflects all its heat onto its neighbours. These are some of the essential aspects in the first line of design.
What are the techniques for natural ventilation?
The other themes in dealing with mixed mode design is that you should have the building naturally ventilated. This is a great debate with engineers that if you allow a building to breathe and to be ventilated you may be dealing with issues of mould and humidity, dust in the building but those are all items that can be filtered out and can be controlled. We should not be creating buildings that cannot breathe. If you have a building that has no windows that operate, then you are forced to deal with 24 hour air conditioning. We are finding that because four months out of the year the weather is quite suitable that buildings can open and people should have the flexibility to have windows or hoppers that open. There are many different techniques for how you can ventilate a building and filter out the undesirable aspects in the air.
What other aspects have been taken into account when designing the tower?
Another aspect is the materials that you use, so we are choosing materials that would be regionally available. For example, we have plentiful access to stone both in the Arabian Peninsular and Iran. The region is supplying a lot of its own glass fabrication. So the first line of design is the tower, the next is how you take a high level of technology so the building consumes less energy, then how can the building produce its own energy. Because the tower is growing and is going to be almost 90 floors high, the top is nearly 400m high. At those levels you get extremely usable, high wind patterns, so vertical wind turbines can be used to produce energy as well as PV panels to produce energy. We are also using a system called Chilled Beam Design. This is a much more effective way to cool than by air and it saves on space and reduces floor to floor height. We’re having grey water recycling which is also terribly important in these buildings. The building has a number of mechanical floors and domains that are related to sky gardens. We have at least four sky gardens which allow for social integration and leisure which is terribly important if you have thousands of people in a tower who need to be more productive and attain a sense of social well being. This aspect of human productivity is an important consideration – when you have direct contact with nature through indoor gardens and leisurely settings, good natural lighting and natural ventilation, with an indoor environment that is non-toxic and imbued with a sense environmental sensitivity.
How do you place the tower in a cultural context?
We have also been conscious about using signs and symbols reflecting the culture of the area, so the very form of the tower is of a cypress tree. It has very nice historic, visual and iconic imagery- Iconic, in that we have used symbols that represent longevity and self-regeneration. As the Intelligent Tower may one day stand on the West Bay Corniche, it would have a symbolic quality, a connotation of an historic metaphor of ancient lineage in our poetry and artistic designs.
Does the high expat and transitive population in the Gulf have an impact on implementing sustainable design?
Certainly in the last 20 or 30 years there has been the import of expats to be involved in the building of these cities. With them of course they have brought their own ways of life but they have also just brought the buildings of the west. Unfortunately, the buildings of the western models were developed when sustainability was not such a great concern. Also the Bauhaus modern movement from the 1920s had a particular issue. It wanted to be universal and it wanted to be technical. It had no great concern for culture or context and so these two pivotal considerations were never emphasised. Space was regarded as being universal, transcending culture and place. Now this mindset can no longer be substantiated and supported. We have to design within context and so at this time one of the problems of inheritance of the expat is that we have brought 20th Century unsustainable models which are now causing us problems. It’s not only here, they are causing the main problems throughout the world. We know that 20th Century buildings are at the root of the energy and carbon emission problem. We have the chance now in the 21st Century to deal with global warming and with energy conscious design. So when people come today from the west, there is so much more consciousness in the West about green architecture, so many of them do bring now very positive, relevant messages. The trouble is we don’t have enough paradigms or enough models of correct “Green Buildings” to emulate.
How important is societal structure in the Middle East?
We also have to look at the current social structure of our societies in the Middle East. Our social structures are a pyramidal, hierarchic, autocratic social and political structure. This is the way these societies have run and are still being run. So if the leadership shows the way, the rest generally will follow. Now fortunately in the UAE, the UAE leadership in terms of sustainability has really shown the way. In Abu Dhabi you have this whole process of Estidama ( Arabic for “Sustainability” ) guidelines that are being developed- so I think they are showing the way.
Do you think projects such as Masdar in Abu Dhabi will help lead the way?
I believe in general we are moving towards greater consciousness of sustainable design. We have mentioned that there are not enough prototypes built and Masdar is really the first hope of this new prototype. So out of the Masdar studies and what is to be built, there is the opportunity for such a built paradigm and the potential opportunity of co-operation to share this experiment with the larger community. One can ask: “Is the idea of photovoltaic energy production placed on building roof tops in this climate going to work?” Well, there are 40 different panels out in the desert being tested now for almost a year and Masdar has indicated willingness to share those lessons with others. So in many ways I think Masdar, both in its design and in the technology that is being used and also the process of sharing its information with others can make a very significant contribution to developing new models for sustainable design in hot, dry and semi-humid climates.
Is the current construction boom at odds with projects such as Masdar?
The big drive for development has both negative and positive aspects. The negative is that everything is imported and uses building models which are not very relevant for city building and architecture in this region. Really we ought to be trying to reduce transport costs and carbon emissions and try to use materials which are from the region. Another important idea is that we are extremely wasteful on our construction sites and in our methods of construction. Both of course in terms of materials and in energy waste, those are areas which could be significantly improved. Right now something like 30 percent or more of materials that come to the site go out of the site as waste.
The positive aspects are the ability of developers to change rapidly. If you look at where Dubai was even thirty years ago, suddenly in one or two generations the phenomenon that is Dubai has spread to many other cities in the region. If you can make such cataclysmic and enormous changes in ways of life and ways of building in one generation, there should be no reason why the next generation of buildings and urban designs should not change to be more sustainable –perhaps even exemplary of outstanding adaptive design. I see initiatives that are starting are demanding that we move and change in more sustainable ways, so I think that will continue with this dynamism.
Do you think guidelines such as Estidama, LEED and BREEAM set high enough benchmarks?
If truly the interest is in mitigating global warming then you have to begin regulating and designing at a much larger scale to be effective than where LEED, BREEAM or Estidama are currently focussed. These rating systems are mainly focussed at building level or unit levels. I believe that if we step back to view the larger picture, it becomes very clear that the highest level of benefit is to be gained if you begin at a regional level. Let me give you an example, the biggest issue we deal with is the production of energy. How do we produce electricity in the UAE? We produce electricity through gas turbines and others. So we rely on fossil fuels and that is what creates the carbon emissions. For this reason, we have the highest rating of energy use per capita in the world. However, we have vast expanses of desert, so if the world’s largest solar energy production farm could be put in the western region of the UAE, for instance, you could produce enough electricity for the entire Arabian Peninsula. Now, wouldn’t that be the major way to reduce carbon emissions?
This is only one aspect, the whole issue we have about transportation, about regional water resources, all of these are aspects that if they could be handled at a macro, regional level we would gain an 80 percent change. Right now we are dealing with these issues at a very minor building level. The next level is at a community and city level and here fortunately Estidama is already developing a community scale guideline. That is already showing tremendous consciousness. I have participated on the committee to comment and review these guidelines, so I think Abu Dhabi is more correctly addressing this idea of scale with these draft guidelines. And yes definitely there is indeed not enough encouragement of energy production by buildings. So you have to encourage this and I’m sure others will emulate the UAE, such as the Gulf states of Kuwait and Qatar.
Do you think there need to be incentives for sustainable design?
I think the biggest issue for developers about Estidama are incentives. Why should a developer be encouraged to exceed a one pearl rating? Why should they try to go beyond a five pearl level? You’ve got to have some incentives. I think that the issue of encouraging the developers to be more sustainable requires a good dialogue between the government, the developer, the professionals and also the users to achieve a common ground support for this new paradigm of development. Ultimately, the user should definitely benefit from all this because in time there would result a reduction in operating costs and the government authorities would see significant life cycle cost reductions in the basic infrastructure of urban communities.
We’re at a stage that there is still a mystery as to what sustainable design is all about. Because we’re talking about hope and change and yet we don’t exactly know what it means as we don’t have enough built examples. So many developers carry a risk contingency of 10 – 20 percent added cost to a Business as Usual (BAU) model, because of sustainable design. However, for professionals involved with sustainable design, their aim is not to carry such a burden. Overall costs should even out to be the same or a maximum of 5 percent more expensive than BAU, since you are reducing the capital costs of a number of the more expensive building systems that produce chilled water for air conditioning or the electrical substations, to name a few. So in time, I truly believe we will obtain good statistical knowledge about sustainable design, which is based on good passive design and your efficient use of, for example, light bulbs, flushing toilets that use less water, etc. When you take all of these into account, this now will probably not exceed five percent of extra cost to a Building as Usual Scenario.
We are in an experimental stage of the sustainable design phenomena. There will be much promised in the marketplace, but prudence and experience will weed out the false from the true. We are deeply involved in projects similar to Masdar – not at the same scale, but certainly with the same objectives to design and deliver low carbon emission communities and major buildings. I believe that when these are built in a couple of years, we will have a far better appreciation of what sustainable design costs to implement, its benefits and the breakthroughs of design that one deservedly could call Iconic. The tasks of city building, architecture, engineering and governance are now confronted with a global survival challenge unparalleled in human history.
Biography of Nader Ardalan
Nader Ardalan, President of Ardalan Associates, is an architect of international repute for ecologically sensitive and culturally relevant design. He currently is collaborating with Klingstubbins and ARUP on the Master Plan for a new “Green Community” in the UAE and a sustainable tower in Qatar. He holds a B Arch from Carnegie-Mellon University and an M Arch from Harvard GSD.
He led international design and operations at Boston’s Jung/Brannen Associates (1983-94) during which time he won several international design competitions, including the ADMA/OPCO tower in Abu Dhabi. He then served for twelve years as Director of Design at KEO International Consultants in the Gulf Region and designed major academic, residential, hospitality and commercial projects that have been built. He is a founding member of the Steering Committee of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. He is the co-author of "The Sense of Unity" (Chicago University Press). He is a registered consultant with the World Bank, active in several professional societies and serves on numerous international design competition juries.
Source: Cityscape Intelligence