It takes tech to tango

From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Mon May 05 2003 - 06:35:44 MDT

  • Next message: Amara Graps: "Canada 'cares too much about liberties'"

    "Way past Ikea lies a Swedish housing complex that is ecologically
    sound and wired for all sorts of remote-control fiddling with heat,
    power and security."

    It takes tech to tango
      by Raul Barreneche May 2003

    http://www.popsci.com/popsci/hometech/article/0,12543,448268,00.html

    Peter Söderholm pays two or three times the market rate for the
    850-square-foot apartment he and his wife moved into last year in
    the Swedish city of Malmö, an apartment about half the size of their
    previous home. That's quite a premium for a unit located on a
    contaminated former Saab factory site, even if it sits by the sea
    and on a clear day offers a view of the Danish coast 10 miles away.
    But Söderholm and his wife, Gunvor, are happy to pay: They live in
    Tango, a green-and-wired 27-unit complex that decontaminates its own
    soil, recycles its water into a rebuilt marsh ecology, generates
    power from renewable sources, uses roof space to put oxygen back
    into the environment and, through sensors and broadband Web access,
    allows owners to re-motely monitor and control everything from
    energy use to electronic key access. Söderholm can sit on his
    balcony, survey the Øresund like a sea captain, and know that he
    lives in a showcase for the convergence of home technologies that,
    piece by piece, are popping up in developments in Europe and the
    United States. Tango won an important building-of-the-year award in
    Sweden last year and in January won an American Institute of
    Architects award for its progressive integration of technology,
    sustainability and lifestyle-focused design.

    "We put our money into where we live; that's our priority," says
    Söderholm. "This green aspect was very important to us because for
    many years we've felt that we're all wasting our natural re-sources.
    I think you can have a good standard of living and use energy
    responsibly. You don't have to feel bad about living well."

    Tango isn't a technology showcase by accident: It was built for the
    BoO1 exhibition, one of a series of Swedish housing fairs, held in
    Malmö in 2001. Along with the residential units, BoO1 also featured
    offices, cafés, day care centers, a school and a library. Söderholm
    says that walking through it was a bit like wandering through a
    world's fair, except that people were already inhabiting the
    pavilions-including the Söderholms. "During the fair, I was out on
    my balcony a lot," says Söderholm, "wanting to throw bananas at
    people."

    European firms developed most of the architecture on display, except
    for Tango, which was designed by Moore Ruble Yudell Architects &
    Planners of Santa Monica, California. The company worked locally
    with FFNS Architects, a Swedish firm. MRY, known more for its
    cheerful, postmodernist approach to residential architecture than
    its tech focus, created an appealing, bright, courtyard-facing
    design whose units include floor-to-ceiling glass doors and windows
    framed in a rainbow of colors. But, says MRY senior associate and
    Tango project architect James O'Connor, "from the start, we wanted
    ours to be the most technologically advanced project at the fair."

    Tango began with a brownfield site, the term applied to abandoned,
    usually polluted former industrial lands. Brownfield redevelopment
    often deploys barrier, venting and cleaning technologies to deal
    with soil and water contaminants, site instability and subterranean
    gas buildups. In this case, much soil was removed, and the landscape
    was replanted with species that extract pollutants-often heavy
    metals-from the soil, and others that immobilize them. (Some, like
    river birch, are metal accumulators that act like wicks, drawing
    metals into their trunks; grasses, meanwhile, trap compounds in
    their roots.) The site topography was shaped and planted to mimic,
    on the development's east side, the marshy ecology of the sound,
    with vegetation fed by recycled rainwater. Grass planted on the
    roofs provides a layer of overhead insulation, slows flooding during
    heavy rains, and pumps oxygen into the atmosphere. Construction
    methods and materials hewed to ecological building standards that
    Malmö had set for the district.

    The most striking part of Tango's design is the floor-to-ceiling
    windows of the courtyard-facing units: superb for brightening a room
    during a gloomy Swedish day, but a potential energy sink during
    winter nights. Triple-glazed windows with a layer of inert argon gas
    between the two outermost panes keep the heat in: Their R-value (a
    measure of thermal conductivity) is about 6.5, compared with 1.5 to
    2 for typical American double-paned glass. The units were tightly
    built, with wall-mounted ventilators to draw in fresh air and keep
    the rooms from getting stale or stuffy.

    Vacuum-tube solar collectors on the rooftops convert sunlight into
    heat for the units; a nearby wind turbine, meanwhile, supplies
    electricity.

     From the start, the plan was to optimize efficiency by taking
    advantage of information technology. Tango apartments are supplied
    with laptops that connect to the developer's broadband network;
    through a portal called Frontyard, residents can access myriad
    monitoring and control systems. Söderholm admits that there was a
    learning curve for what he calls "the cockpit."

    Frontyard allows owners to access a security camera to see who's at
    the front door, book a guest apartment in the development, and scan
    an electronic weather station that displays actual and forecast
    temperatures and wind conditions. Electronic keys can be set to
    admit visitors during scheduled times- a housekeeper, an overnight
    guest or repairman. There's an electronic bulletin board and a
    choice of how tenants can be notified-e-mail, text message, fax or
    voice mail-if the burglar or fire alarm is activated. These are the
    basics. But Frontyard also allows the Söderholms to turn lights on
    and off while away from home or to preprogram lighting schemes; set
    temperatures for every room and change them remotely (saving power
    if they're delayed); or preheat a room for a late-night return. An
    alarm lets them know if the temperature is off-target. Windows can
    be opened and closed electronically. The guiding notion: An
    energy-aware user is a more efficient user.

    None of Tango's features are in themselves revolutionary, but
    together they represent a benchmark. "It's the thoroughness of the
    application," says John Ruble, a principal designer at MRY. "Our
    building is a mix of highly ambitious sustainable measures-the green
    roofs, the energy-efficient glass-plus the electronics and
    information technology. We went very far with these things, but it's
    still experimental. There's a lot of stuff that needs to be
    studied."

    Experiments are under way in the United States. A 44-unit
    single-room-occupancy housing project in downtown Santa Monica
    generates power via giant photovoltaic panels on its exterior walls
    and a cogeneration system that turns natural gas into electricity.
    Coffee Creek, a 640-acre mixed-use development in northwestern
    Indiana, is being built from ecologically friendly materials and
    will feature photovoltaics and wind-generated electricity.

    Progress is slow-a lot slower than it would be, say, if energy
    prices in the United States were as high as those in Sweden. "Not
    very many architects are doing this kind of housing," says MRY's
    O'Connor. "It's very new and groundbreaking in a lot of ways."

    Trained as an architect, Raul Barreneche is a contributing editor at
    Architectural Record and Travel & Leisure. His book Tropical Modern
    will be published by Rizzoli/Universe this fall.

    Sidebar:

                            LIVING SMART, SWEDISH STYLE
    A. Sun & Wind Power: Rooftop vacuum-tube solar
    collectors-insulated to work in cold weather-convert solar
    energy to heat, which feeds into the Tango complex and a larger
    district heat system. Nearby wind turbines supply Tango with
    electricity. B. Grass Roofs: In a nod to traditional
    Scandinavian sod roofs, Tango's elevated greenlands provide
    added insulation, replenish oxygen and help slow water runoff
    during heavy storms. Grass surrounds each of the slanted solar
    panels, and is on other roofs too. C. Safer Soil: Before
    construction of Tango began, the city of Malmö treated the
    polluted soil on this former industrial site, then laid five
    feet of clean dirt on top. Around the site, meanwhile,
    bioremediators (trees and grasses that trap metals and
    pollutants) bolster the quality of the soil by absorbing toxins.
    D. Big Windows: Floor-to-ceiling windows are glorious but can be
    a heat loss problem. The Designers use French-made triple-glazed
    windows with a layer of trapped argon gas. Result: High
    insulation factors. Benefit: Sun-warmed air heats the tightly
    built units, and remote-controllable ventilation maintains
    temperatures. E. Intelligent Wall: A so-called intelligent wall
    runs through the development. A spinal cord for the data system,
    it allows residents to access, through a portal called
    Frontyard, many of Tango's heat, power, intranet and security
    systems by in-house laptop, remote computer or cellphone.
    Illustration by Garry Marshall

    -- 
    ***********************************************************************
    Amara Graps, PhD             email: amara@amara.com
    Computational Physics        vita:  ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
    Multiplex Answers            URL:   http://www.amara.com/
    ***********************************************************************
    "Living on earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip
    around the sun."   --Ashleigh Brilliant
    


    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon May 05 2003 - 06:50:09 MDT