by Michael Smith
His Royal Highness, Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, has recently criticized the use of eco gadgets such as wind turbines and solar panels to justify inefficient buildings.
The Heir to the British Throne, who can be very outspoken on many issues and on the environment especially, has called on developers to use traditional materials with “eco-technology” and I doubt than anyone could disagree with him there.
As I have, personally, stated in the article “Back to the future” we must go back to the methods of the past in order to create a sustainable future and that also applies to building.
For years and years we have been playing around with huge glass frontages and even the so-called Earthships still have them and while in the latter case this is supposed to help the heating of the house due to the fact that is it a passive structure in general the big glass frontages do us and the environment no favor.
During hot weather and sunshine they are like greenhouses, increasing the heat inside the buildings to such a level that the building need to be cooled down significantly and during winters they cause, even if they are double or triple glazed, heat loss over a huge areas.
Recent studies in Canada have shown that the building of the late 19th and early 20th Century in the cities of Canada and the USA with their many smaller windows, set back into the walls, are much more efficient in heat and in cold than the glasshouses that are the modern office blocks.
The same, obviously, is also the case for buildings of that kind in Europe and elsewhere. Another point to prove that our ancestors knew a thing or two of heat preservation in winter and of keeping a building cool in summer – and that without double glazing. And let's face it, huge double glazed windows do no keep us cool in hot times; in fact the opposite is true.
Shutters in the front of windows in Europe, for instance, also are something that falls into the same league. No one of the modern architects and designers seem to have realized this until recently. In the cold regions of Europe the shutters on the outside of the windows are mostly intended to keep out the cold and to keep in the heat while in the hot climes of, say, Spain, Italy and Greece, the shutters are meant to keep out the noonday sun.
Old technology was not and is not, necessarily, wrong and obsolete. Far from it. There is much of that that we should employ again, mixed with modern materials and technology and HRH the Prince of Wales certainly is right when he says that developers should use traditional materials together with “eco-technology”.
© M Smith (Veshengro), October 2008
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Prince Charles says no to gadgets
