Stephen B. Chambers Architects, Inc. specializes in the design of modern and traditional residential architecture, remodeling, and historic preservation. Our firm strives to assist our clients in finding the best solution in creating a home that meets their needs. Where a house already exists on the project’s property, we evaluate the possible solutions to the existing challenges in terms of the ‘Seven R’s” of Sustainable Design: Respect, Receive, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Restore, Remember. Quite often, out of respect for the available resources of embodied energy* and culture, our designs may reuse what is already built. It is possible to “green up” an existing property and rehabilitate it with newer technology with sensitivity and without destroying its character and contribution to the historic vernacular of a locale. 

In an online interview by Pam Kueber at Retrorenovation.com, Wayne Curtis, a renowned preservationist, makes the case that the greenest building you can design may be to reuse one that is already built.

The following essay is abstracted from the Kueber interview with Wayne Curtis, whose article on 'Embodied Energy' was originally published in Preservation, January/February 2008:

Show me the person who doesn’t love a green, environmentally responsible building.

Texas style dogtrotBut, amid our green-building boom, neglecting the old in favor of the new just might cost us dearly. Green buildings are good for you and good for society, and they’re absolutely everywhere these days—you can’t open an architecture publication without seeing a splashy spread touting some new sustainable project. But, the ‘green design’ movement, has largely ignored the inherent advantages of building reuse, including the primary one—embodied energy. The very first core of sustainability is: does this building still have value and will it continue to sustain its value? It doesn’t matter how much energy you save if you’re carting it off to a landfill in a generation.

Embodied energy is a term with which professionals in design and construction need to get increasingly familiar. In two words, it neatly encapsulates a persuasive rationale for sustaining old buildings rather than always building from scratch. When people talk about energy use and buildings, they invariably mean operating energy: how much energy a building—whether new or old—will use from today forward for heating, cooling, and illumination. Starting at this point of analysis, new often trumps old. But the analysis takes into account neither the energy that’s already bound up in pre-existing buildings nor the energy used to construct a new green building instead of reusing an old one. And that means not just learning the older, enduring styles of architecture, but also designing with the local environment in mind, siting homes for greater efficiency, and building houses that sit lighter on the land.

Front exteriorIn just a few years, the nonprofit U.S. Green Building Council (which administers the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program) has become surprisingly influential in shaping how new buildings are planned and built. Like Good Housekeeping and its seal of approval, this council has become the new best thing and adds another new term to our green vocabulary: LEED certified. Sustainability seems to have stolen some thunder and prestige from the preservation movement. Old and gently preserved is nice, but new and green is much better for the planet.

Preservationists and environmentalists have long shared many values. For starters, there’s the drive toward care and respect for our natural resources, both cultural and environmental. Both groups subscribe to the principle that minimal intervention is always preferable to major overhauls. Yet when it comes to green, there may be a widening chasm. New green buildings, brimming with the latest in modern technology, are perceived to be more highly valued; the old buildings, full of quaint, inefficient technologies and drafty windows, are passe’. This begs the question: “just how unsustainable and energy inefficient are those older buildings?” They were pretty darn smart, as it turns out. Older homes may not have been as stout and efficient as their newer and more modern replacements, but they were green in their own way. Older homes had no choice but to be green, otherwise, the owners might die from the heat in the summer, or develop frostbite and illnesses in the winter. Southern homes had high ceilings and louvered shutters; in the North, they featured thick walls and smaller windows. Sleeping porches provided coolness in summer, and woodstove-centered kitchens gave off warmth in winter. Today, new houses tend to be similar, wherever you choose to live. Shutters, for instance, have become facades, a detail reminiscent of a bygone era. Many are screwed onto new houses and often do nothing to protect against the wind or sun.

Folk Victorian in Marshall, TXBefore sustainability had a name, tradesmen incorporated sustainable elements into buildings. Working in sync with the environment was the norm, including siting, local materials, natural ventilation, shading, reflective roofing, cisterns, indigenous plantings—the list becomes long, and in many ways mirrors ‘new’ standards espoused today. And now, the whole idea of moving daylight deep into buildings is back in fashion. The term currently in vogue is “daylighting”—that is, maximizing natural light in a building with reflective tubes or fiber optics. It turns out that windows—even old single-pane windows—are responsible for relatively minor energy loss in most buildings.

Sustainability begins with preservation. Preservation certainly isn’t the solution to these problems, but it can be—and should be—an important contribution to the solution. Let’s take old buildings and put them back in use. It just might make them ‘greener.’

* Embodied energy is the total energy that a product/design may be said to “contain,” including all energy used in growing, extracting, and manufacturing it plus the energy used to transport it to the point of use. The embodied energy of a structure includes the energy embodied in all of its components, plus the energy used in construction. (David A. Gottfried, 1996)