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