Why is True Landscape Sustainability Ignored by BRE Assessment Tools?
Posted on January 25, 2012 by Romy Rawlings There have been 3 comment(s)
Is the truly sustainable landscape being ignored by the various assessment tools currently available?
According to the BRE website, BREEAM is ‘The world’s leading design and assessment method for sustainable buildings’. Which it may very well be, but therein lies the rub. Developed to measure, evaluate and positively influence the design, construction and management of buildings, the external environment around those very buildings does not appear to be subject to the same rigorous assessment.
Being building oriented, similar conflicts surround the Code for Sustainable Homes and unfortunately The Green Guide to Specification’s section on Landscaping is scant and occasionally inconsistent. While CEEQUAL deals better with the ‘macro-landscape’, opportunities for best practice at a more detailed level are again generally overlooked.
Addressing an extensive list of environmental and sustainability issues, BREEAM has worked wonders in a sector that until fairly recently paid lip service to critical issues such as the control of waste, use of finite resources, climate change, and the needs of wildlife. Key to BREEAM’s success has been the holistic consideration of a development’s impact upon its environment, and yet numerous landscape professionals are questioning the limited value placed upon the external areas that surround a building.
A BREEAM assessment uses recognised measures of performance, set against established benchmarks, to evaluate a building’s specification, design, construction and use. The measures used represent a broad range of categories and criteria, from energy to ecology. These include aspects related to energy and water use, the internal environment (health and well-being), pollution, transport, materials, waste, ecology and management processes.
Successful in providing clients, developers and designers with market recognition for low environmental impact buildings, a similarly transparent scoring system is now urgently needed in order to positively influence the design, construction and management of the landscape to quantitatively measure best practice claims.
The following suggestions might be an appropriate start:
- Appointing an ecologist or arts co-ordinator to a project gains a point - surely appointing a qualified landscape architect should be equally rewarded?
- Simply increase the availability of points relating to the external environment in BREEAM and similar assessment methodologies.
- Criteria might include CO2 sequestration and other benefits attributed to plants
- A better definition of an ‘adequate view’ from a building
- Recognition of the holistic health benefits of the outdoor environment
- Wayfinding systems
- Better coordination of the benefits of planting with other criteria such as:
- Secured by Design requirements
- Pollution (POL) e.g. noise attenuation by living barriers or
- Trapping of airborne pollutants by foliage.
- More detailed analysis of energy efficient exterior light fittings and their controls, particularly LEDs.
- Rewarding a client for allowing areas around a building not to be developed
- Such as changing the mindset of Open space = Overhead (unless it’s a car park)
To reinforce the points made above, please consider a BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ development where the building is entirely air tight and energy efficient. Yet were we to rely solely on the environment created by these most-sustainable buildings, there would be no life whatsoever due to by the oxygen production and CO2 absorption that is brought about by plants.
This article was created in collaboration with Mark Martin (Director) and Dan Cooling (Project Design Manager) at One Creative Environments Ltd.
Read more in BRE/BREEAM, Efficiency, Public Realm, Sustainability
3 Responses to Why is True Landscape Sustainability Ignored by BRE Assessment Tools?
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Peter Wilder says:
This is a very interesting discussion and one that I feel moved to respond on.
I have been working with the BRE since the design of the Innovation Park at Watford in 2007 which was in response to the then new Code for Sustainable Homes.
The original Innovation Park which was merely a collection of buildings was transformed into an organised collection of buildings that highlighted the relationship between building and landscape. Had it not been for the landscape elements such as the SuDS system, the porous paving, the rainwater recovery systems and the recycled content of the landscape products the demonstration buildings would not have achieved their Code Level 6 (carbon neutral) status.
The scheme at Watford implemented over 15 new prototype systems and yet few of them appear in the green guide. This is possibly due to the high cost of accreditation and verification of materials in a shrinking market or possibly because there is insufficient drive in the industry to assess landscape materials.
However, as a result of our work on the Innovation Park Watford and the BRE Scotland Innovation Park at Ravenscraig, we are now working with BRE on an Innovation Park in Beijing which will be assessed under Greenprint. This is a methodology which looks beyond the building and assesses a development against Climate Change, Resources, Place Making, Transport, Community, Ecology, Business and Buildings.
This is a step in the right direction to place more emphasis on the contribution of landscape and green infrastructure to the passive credentials of a scheme.
With a fair wind and an emerging green economy we should see manufacturers following suit by putting forward their products for accreditation in a more expanded version of the Green Guide, and who knows, perhaps lighting and street furniture will be as rigorously scrutinised as insulation or glazing in buildings.
Keep flying the flag!
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 2:01 pm
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Nigel Dobson-Smyth says:
I was much encouraged by Peter Wilder’s response regarding the lack of BRE guidance with regard to landscape sustainability matters. He seems to have a very positive approach.
But one criticism of the BREEAM approach is the narrow emphasis on those aspects of sustainability that are readily measured quantitatively. Particularly the energy expenditure embodied in the materials and uses of the structure.
While individual materials can be readily scored for embodied energy, the effects and benefits created by the combination of those materials into works of art are perhaps more difficult to evaluate consistently against a standardised yardstick.
For instance, in terms of long-term adaptability in an uncertain world.
Given the symbiotic relationship of most landscapes with the wider world and the importance of the existing local setting to most designs; how can the success of such qualitative relationships best be evaluated ?
How can landscape architects in general best assist in formulating, evaluating and promoting such standards?
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 8:58 pm
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Romy Rawlings says:
Thank you Peter and Nigel for your valuable responses.
My initial interest in this subject was sparked for a number of reasons:
An attempt to understand what we at Woodhouse should be doing to address our customers’ needs
A personal interest in the issues relating to sustainable landscape
The Landscape Institute’s desire (on behalf of its members) to better promote the inherent benefits of a truly sustainable landscape, through tools such as BREEAM, to potential clients.
What has become clear over the last year or so is that there is huge scope for improvement, but also a very real opportunity here for our profession and, of course, its suppliers!
Peter’s comments perfectly illustrate the potential across several diverse elements of a typical landscape, but who is best placed to drive this: the BRE, designers/specifiers or manufacturers?
In reality, it needs to be all of those for the latent environmental value of a well designed landscape to be understood. We must all begin to broaden our individual perspectives and drive forward those elements of best practice that already exist but have yet to be fully realised.
One last point – a fine example of a supplier who takes these issues very seriously and has made a significant investment in its sustainable credentials is Aubrilam, our French partner and manufacturer of timber poles.
Every product is supported by a full Environmental Profile and Life Cycle Assessment and independently audited by Bureau Veritas, and their approach provides a valuable template for other suppliers to our industry.Posted on February 1, 2012 at 4:48 pm
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