Editorial | Building with climate change in mind

Noting the likelihood of more and more violent hurricanes in the age of global warming, the architect for policy activist, Patricia Green, earlier this month highlighted a“ new trend” of “expanse of glass” in Jamaica’s residential architecture, especially high-rise properties.

Ms Green’s observation concentrated mostly on the resilience and functionality of this design element in the event of storms and earthquakes. She called for research and evidence-based discussion on how Jamaicans should build for the changing environment.

It is not that Ms Green is against the instruction of modernist architectural elements to Jamaica’s architecture. Her concern is that “time-tested architecture and construction and resilience to earthquakes and hurricanes” features might, or are being, displaced for approaches that are not necessarily suitable to Jamaica’s circumstances.

Wrote Ms Green in a letter to this newspaper: “My historic research on the evolution of Jamaican and Caribbean architecture documents the use of small panes of glass in doors and windows to prevent harm in hurricanes, with combined timber jalousie or louvre shutters. Later contemporary derivatives resulted in aluminium- and glass-louvre window units.

“Traditional hurricane-risk mitigation included small roof overhang to prevent uplift. Thatched or shingled roofs were optimum steep-pitched hip, an equilateral triangle allowing equal forces with roof vents for pressure equilibrium and breathability in hurricanes.

“Look at the circa 1807 old courthouse building in front of the St Andrew Parish Church near Half-Way Tree. Importantly, traditional buildings were designed to breathe. Doors and room dividers had openings with fretwork or lattice infill for breezes to pass as a hurricane pressure release system. Tree planting acted as hurricane wind-breakers.”

Ms Green’s observation resonates with this newspaper for two significant reasons. Changes to Jamaica’s development orders and zoning rules in recent years have sparked a boom in the construction of multistorey apartments in Kingston and its environs. The trend is displacing the earlier movement to town house complexes from sprawling single-family bungalows. The latest is unlikely to be reversed.

CLIMATE WARNING

Second, as this month’s report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made clear, the climate is warming even faster than previously estimated, and some of the effects of a hotter earth are likely to be irreversible.

The aim of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, for instance, was to keep earth’s temperature from rising beyond 1.5 degree Celsius – against its pre-industrial levels – by the end of the century. But it now seems that within two decades, that barrier will be surpassed.

Said the report: “Global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the mid-century under all emissions scenarios considered. Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.”

In the Caribbean, significant attention is being paid to what this will mean, such as rising sea levels, and as Ms Green noted, more frequent and intense storms. We, however, wish to make explicit, with respect to architectural design and adaptation, one of the issues implicit in Ms Green’s observation. Given the generally hotter climate and what the IPCC says will be “increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes”, there is also the matter of how to keep people cooler in their homes as well as social issues that this might portend.

So while the question posed by Ms Green about the management against “glass peril” in the new high-rises in the event of extreme storms is relevant, so, too, are concerns about how these buildings are cooled and the economic and the implications of this.

ARTIFICIALLY COOLED

In many cases, it seems like the “expanse of glass” on the new high-rises are not designed to be opened, or it is impractical, because of location and noise, for them to be. The buildings, therefore, have to be artificially cooled by air conditioners, utilising expensive energy.

This absence of passive ventilation designs, to make use of natural ventilation and the cross flow of air, is not only an issue for the tallest buildings. Indeed, the design of several medium-height complexes, with respect to façade and window placement and style are reminiscent of northern European apartments. New middle- and lower-income, single-family homes also appear to lack the ventilation features noted by Ms Green. In that respect, they may well resist hurricanes and earthquakes, but unless air conditioned, they will be hot as hell.

Poorer people, even with a shift to renewable energy, will still find it difficult to afford these amenities, making it less likely that in a hot and humid country that is getting hotter, it will be comfortable to spend long periods inside their homes. This has the potential for exacerbating the social and economic divide in Jamaica and the consequences thereof.

In any event, an in-built burden of having to artificially cool homes represents an additional, and substantially avoidable, cost to the national economy. The resource might be more productively spent elsewhere. If that conversation has not already been started, policymakers and others should get it going.