A new book by Professor C Alan Short, Professor of Architecture at the University of Cambridge, ‘challenges the modern practice of sealing up and mechanically cooling public scaled buildings in whichever climate and environment they are located’, with a significant focus on the healthcare estate.
Published by Routledge as part its ‘Building Research and Information’ series, (visit http://tinyurl.com/jktadn5 for ordering details and prices), The Recovery of Natural Environments in Architecture‘unravels the extremely complex history of understanding and perception of air, bad air, miasmas, airborne pathogens, beneficial thermal conditions, ideal climates and climate determinism’. It proposes ‘a recovery of the lost art and science of making naturally conditioned buildings’.
Topics covered range from ‘How did Architecture alone make the weather within until the reliance on artificial weather?’, to ‘Passive and hybrid hospital buildings’, and ‘Adaptation of the existing building stock’.
Professor of Architecture at Cambridge University since 2001, the author has a particular interest in passive and hybrid lowenergy design strategies for non-domestic buildings in different climates. He was the principal investigator for the EPSRC Adaptation and Resilience to Climate Change project, ‘Design and Delivery of Robust Hospital Environments in a Changing Climate (DeDeRHECC)’ (HEJ– June 2010), and the NIHR-funded Design Strategy for Low Energy Ventilation and Cooling of Health Buildings. He was appointed to administer and monitor the NHS Energy Efficiency Fund 2013-14 with the Professor of Sustainable Engineering, Peter Guthrie.
A summary of the book adds that it ‘uncovers inventive and entirely viable attempts to design large buildings, hospitals, theatres and academic buildings through the 19th and early 20th centuries, which use the configuration of the building itself and a shrewd understanding of the natural physics of airflow and fluid dynamics to make good, comfortable interior spaces’.
