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Appropriate Size and Growth

The recent period of building boom and rapid urbanization has prompted heated use of code words such as “high density,” “overdevelopment,” and new development with buildings that “overwhelm surrounding older communities.” Discussion of appropriate size and growth must include the planning issues regarding urban sprawl and the smart growth movement, as well as the programming of appropriately sized individual buildings. Buildings might change over time as their ownership and neighborhood context change. Design spaces and services to support new functions and reuse for easy and rapid spatial change.

Contents

1.Definition                                                
2. Use/Application
    a. Established Techniques
    b. Emerging Trends

3. Use an Integrated Approach
4. Resources

5. Associated Strategies

6. Case Studies

The recent period of building boom and rapid urbanization has prompted heated use of code words such as “high density,” “overdevelopment,” and new development with buildings that “overwhelm surrounding older communities.” Discussion of appropriate size and growth must include the planning issues regarding urban sprawl and the smart growth movement, as well as the programming of appropriately sized individual buildings. Buildings might change over time as their ownership and neighborhood context change. Design spaces and services to support new functions and reuse for easy and rapid spatial change.

In Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change, a forthcoming book published by the Urban Land Institute, a team of leading urban planning researchers reports that the key to mitigating climate change is less automobile-dependent development and that key changes in land-development patterns could help reduce vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.

Designing for Appropriate Size and Growth

Design buildings for flexibility and future growth and change. Buildings should:

• Be designed with right-sized spaces based on current and projected future needs
• Be flexible to accommodate changes to functional spaces within the building
• Be able to adapt to new functions and business methodologies not presently envisioned (Remember when there were no computers?)
• Accommodate future site changes that result from functional space changes
• Address new business technologies and changes to business practice
• Include built-in extra structural, mechanical, and electrical capacity in building element design to handle the addition of future equipment and infrastructure needs
• Be designed with fire protection capacity to accommodate future growth
• Optimize utilization of space while providing adequate circulation paths for future personnel, materials, and equipment
• Relate interior and exterior functions to facilitate the flow of people and goods through the building
• Be able to be recycled into new functions; for example, 19th century industrial buildings can become modern mixed-use and residential buildings with loft-type dwelling units, which can revitalize entire neighborhoods in the process

Architects are challenged to balance conflicting objectives in designing a commercial office building, such as:

• Allowance for future growth of personnel and electronic concentration, resulting in greater electrical and cooling loads and space for empty conduits and duct runs
• Spatial and infrastructure requirements for undetermined future technologies
• Owner/developer financial goal to maximize rental floor area and fill the allowable zoning envelope
• Resistance to use of more compact open office layouts for executive and upper/middle management staff
• Need for acoustical comfort and conversational privacy in the open office environment
• Need for visual and speech communication in the open office environment

Integrate new public and commercial buildings into the existing urban fabric by use of pedestrian-friendly scale and street façades. Reclaim former industrial waterfront and brownfield sites to create appropriately scaled redevelopment that unites with and revitalizes surrounding communities. Urban infill and brownfield development can reuse available embedded energy in existing transportation and utility infrastructure, thus reducing the energy needed to build new roads, utility plants, and utility lines, while also preserving green space.

Residential planning and programming encompass smaller buildings than commercial projects, but the process is complicated by the many functions occurring in a relatively small space. In addition, the designer must plan for growth and change inherently embedded into family life as adults and children grow older and their needs change.

The Smart Growth Network advances the following principles on compact building design:

• Smart growth provides a means for communities to incorporate more compact building design as an alternative to conventional land-consumptive development. Compact building design suggests that communities be designed in a way that permits more open space to be preserved, and that buildings can be constructed to make more efficient use of land and resources. By encouraging buildings to grow vertically rather than horizontally, and by incorporating structured rather than surface parking, for example, communities can reduce the footprint of new construction and preserve more green space. Not only is this approach more efficient by requiring less land for construction, it also provides and protects more open, undeveloped land than would exist otherwise to absorb and filter rainwater, reduce flooding and stormwater drainage needs, and lower the amount of pollution washing into streams, rivers, and lakes.

  Housing Developments in Ann Arbor, Michigan

• Compact building design is necessary to support wider transportation choices and provides cost savings for localities. Communities seeking to encourage transit use to reduce air pollution and congestion recognize that minimum levels of density are required to make public transit networks viable. Local governments find that on a per-unit basis, it is cheaper to provide and maintain services like water, sewer, electricity, phone service, and other utilities in more compact neighborhoods than in dispersed communities.
• Note the relative amount of disturbed land area and street infrastructure needed for these two 85-unit housing developments in Ann Arbor, Mich., pictured here. On the right, conventional single-family tract houses and lots; on the left, more dense townhouses and common open space.
• Research based on these developments has shown, for example, that well-designed, compact New Urbanist communities that include a variety of house sizes and types command a higher market value on a per square foot basis than do those in adjacent conventional suburban developments. Increasing numbers of developers have been able to successfully integrate compact design into community building efforts, despite current zoning practices (such as those that require minimum lot sizes or prohibit multifamily or attached housing) and other barriers, such as community perceptions of “higher density” development, which often preclude compact design.

The cost of building and leasing new space is driving business facility planners to seek strategies that help make commercial buildings more spatially and energy efficient, such as:

• Locating open office areas in perimeter zones to maximize worker access to daylight and views and reduce dependence on artificial lighting
• Placing closed private offices in interior zones with windows looking across the open office areas toward daylight
• Using shared workstation strategies such as hoteling (pro-viding office space to employees on an as-needed rather than on the traditional, constantly reserved basis, which reduces the amount of physical space that an enterprise needs, lowering overhead cost while [ideally] ensuring that every worker can access office resources when necessary) and encouraging worker telecommuting to the extent possible
• Trying to group smaller functional business/teams in distinct spatial clusters of workstations to reduce aisle and circulation space
• Using unconditioned exterior circulation and stairs where climate conditions allow

On the residential side, the concept that houses can be brought down in overall size and be made more livable and aesthetically pleasing has been beautifully demonstrated. In the Not So Big House books, Sarah Susanka, FAIA, presents new thinking about what makes a place feel like a home and identifies the characteristics that many people desire in their homes and their lives but haven’t known how to achieve. See www.notsobighouse.com.

The ability of new software to visually simulate the impact of new development on existing communities enables planners, developers, architects, and community members to model new development in a collaborative manner, to achieve appropriately designed new development, and to avoid unintended consequences.

A new way of thinking must be adopted in order to meet the goal of reducing carbon emissions associated with buildings.  Your solutions can begin by integrating four possible methods.  None works alone, and they are not all relevant in considering every strategy.  However, considering the following tactics is necessary:

• Reduce the overall energy use in your building
  • Appropriate building siting and sizing can help reduce the overall energy use.
  • Building size and systems can be reduced to make money available for further energy-saving materials, designs, and technologies.
  • Design for flexibility for adaptation to future changes and technologies
• Specify energy-efficient equipment and technologies
  • Use low-impact development strategies to reduce green land destruction.
  • Specify energy-efficient equipment to promote flexibility.
• Use renewable strategies and purchase green power
  • N/A
• Educate building owners, operators, and occupants
  • Educate them on functional and energy-saving advantages of appropriate siting and sizing strategies.