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COMMENT
Greening the envelope
Senior landscape architect at Arup, Sally Armour discusses weaving health and resilience into our cities through green building envelopes
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ncreasingly, the human population is becoming more urbanised – and by the end of the century it is estimated that 7 billion will live in cities and towns. As cities become denser there is less space for ‘green infrastructure’ including parks, trees and other green spaces, which are vital for creating healthy cities and providing protection from climate change. So the need to explore new applications for green infrastructure within the built environment is imperative and our buildings provide a vast untapped potential. The ‘building envelope’ refers to roof space, facades and any other areas that connect inside to outside, usually representing 20- 25 per cent of a building’s total external area, so providing large underutilised surface areas within cities. Both new and existing buildings can be used to form green building envelopes and so provide significant space for green infrastructure which could be effective in limiting the depletion of green within cities. The potential benefits that green envelopes can provide are compelling – reducing urban stress, mitigating noise, slowing down and storing stormwater, cooling down cities and decreasing energy consumption. By moving away from more traditional and inwardly focused performance considerations for buildings, and shifting our focus towards green envelopes, we can harness nature’s inherent ability to reduce the challenges of air and noise pollution and urban heat effects to create a positive, healthier and better quality of life for city residents, workers and visitors.
Making cities more liveable
As we apply greater stress to our cities through increased urbanisa- tion and climate change, we need to make our cities more liveable and resilient. Green building envelopes can help by providing space for horizontal and vertical green infrastructure that provides ‘softer’ benefits in terms of well-being, improved quality of life, place-making, aesthetic enhancement and increased biodiversity. Green infrastructure on roofs and walls that enhances the public realm has the potential to create new destinations where people congregate, turning harsh urban environments into something more natural without need for large open spaces. They can also provide for urban agriculture and food production. Growing your own food has been shown to reduce obesity in adults by connecting people to healthy produce. Food
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK
ADF FEBRUARY 2017
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