Creating comfortable and sustainable spaces is at the heart of modern architectural discussion. This concept extends beyond human comfort, inviting us to consider how we design environments – or “Pet Places,” if you will – that are both ecologically responsible and enhance the experience of inhabiting them. The Oskar von Miller Forum in Munich serves as a compelling case study in this evolving field, prompting reflection on how sustainable design shapes our perception of space and place.
The Forum, envisioned by Thomas Herzog, stands as a testament to Bavarian construction ingenuity, showcasing sustainable architecture’s potential for elegance and innovation. Its proximity to the Englischer Garten, with its inviting Eisbach stream, further emphasizes the connection between built and natural environments. The building itself is designed as a “manifesto,” educating residents and visitors alike about its environmental agenda through readily available information and guided tours. However, this constant mediation raises a crucial question: how does the overt emphasis on sustainability influence our direct experience of the architectural space?
The experience of sustainable space is hyper-mediated, each building scripted like some organically and ethically sourced food product.
This hyper-mediation, while informative, can be a double-edged sword. Unlike past architectural revolutions where new materials like steel or concrete intrinsically altered form, sustainable materials often lack a distinct visual signature. Sustainably sourced wood looks like any other wood. The environmental benefits of geothermal heating systems are invisible to the untrained eye. This absence of immediate visual cues necessitates a reliance on explanation and narrative to convey a building’s sustainable qualities. The inherent ability of form and space to communicate crucial information diminishes, replaced by a need for constant verbal and textual interpretation. This reliance on “words” can be frustrating, obscuring the direct sensory experience of the space itself.
Oskar von Miller Forum, a hub for interdisciplinary construction thinking, showcasing sustainable design principles.
At the Oskar von Miller Forum, appreciating the sophisticated sustainable systems requires active engagement with this non-spatial mediation. Hidden radiant cooling and heating, coupled with automated window shades, work subtly to regulate temperature. While inhabitants can adjust their immediate environment by opening windows, the overall temperature baseline is centrally managed. This might lead to a slightly different sensation of comfort compared to conventional buildings. However, knowing the Forum’s environmental commitment encourages a conscious adaptation – adjusting clothing, embracing the radiant floor – rather than immediately seeking a thermostat. This awareness transforms the experience of inhabiting the space.
The Forum’s design philosophy, focusing on individual component optimization, results in an assembly of distinct parts. While thoughtfully integrated, this pieced-ness lacks a unifying architectural language found in styles like neoclassical or Wrightian designs. This approach, however, is deliberate. By meticulously monitoring each component’s performance, the building aims to provide precise data on environmental effectiveness. The “appearance” of the building as an assembly becomes a visual manifestation of its commitment to detailed sustainable practices.
I’m interested in how buildings affect the experience of landscape — controlling that experience is one of the foremost responsibilities of an architect.
The outward appearance of the Forum prompts contemplation on how buildings interact with their surroundings. Architects bear the crucial responsibility of shaping our experience of the landscape, a particularly relevant concern in the context of sustainable design. The question arises: can sustainable buildings enhance our landscape experience in novel and beneficial ways? The hope for sustainable architecture lies in its potential to revolutionize the relationship between buildings and their environments, much like previous technological advancements have transformed architectural paradigms. However, this revolution is still unfolding, and architects are actively exploring new ways to express sustainable principles through form. The Forum’s component-based approach may represent one such path forward, but how does this approach ultimately impact our perception of the urban or natural landscape it inhabits?
Loblolly House, an example of contemporary sustainable architecture with replaceable and recyclable components.
The Loblolly House, designed by Kieran Timberlake, further exemplifies this focus on component specificity in sustainable architecture. Constructed in 2006, it was notable for its emphasis on replaceable and recyclable parts. Like the Forum, appreciating the Loblolly House deepens with knowledge of its sustainable features – requiring “non-formal mediation.” The author previously likened it to an “ugly pet,” suggesting that its beauty emerges not from conventional aesthetics, but from the extraordinary care and effort invested in its creation and sustainable function.
… something that, while ugly by normal aesthetic parameters, becomes beautiful because of the extraordinary amount of care and effort that has gone into seeing the creature to maturity, like nursing a sick cur from the pound to health, and finding you love the damn thing, which has somehow become pleasing to the eye. Here, beauty is conditional rather than universal, and exists in the eye of the beholder, rather than broadly. … The Loblolly House [is] about as homely a well-intentioned construction as is imaginable, something, in terms of aesthetic dimension, that only a mother could love (I say that with admiration).
A key distinction between the Forum and Loblolly House lies in their approach to unity. The Loblolly House embraces a seemingly random assembly of parts, contributing to its unconventional charm in its isolated Maryland location. In contrast, the Forum in Munich strives for elegance and coherence within its urban context, incorporating historical references and a limited palette to unify its components. Screening devices, like the solar array, further contribute to a sense of scale appropriate for its metropolitan setting. The Forum’s urban presence relies on perceiving it as a coordinated whole, a “modified ugly pet” – trained and refined.
Fredericks House, showcasing Glenn Murcutt’s approach to harmonious integration with the environment.
Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Education Centre, another example of Murcutt’s site-specific and harmonious architectural style.
Glenn Murcutt, the renowned Australian architect, offers an alternative approach to hyper-specificity, one that integrates disparate components into a harmonious whole. Buildings like the Fredericks House and the Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Education Centre exemplify this. Their seamless integration with their settings is achieved not through explicit formal gestures referencing the site, but through a deep understanding of the specific environmental and programmatic factors. Murcutt’s designs are the antithesis of “landform buildings” that mimic natural shapes. Instead, they appear to be constructed from standardized components, yet are profoundly site-specific in their response to their context.
Murcutt’s buildings do not represent anything. They seem constructed from standardized kits of parts. They are absurdly specific.
Murcutt’s famed specificity is illustrated by the Marika-Alderton house, designed for an Aboriginal community in Northern Australia. This un-air-conditioned house is shaped by the need for natural ventilation. Located between the sea and a lagoon, the house incorporates a dugong-watching space, crucial to the community’s cultural practices. The building’s height was determined by the reach of local goannas, ensuring safety for children watching for dugongs. The viewing space’s shading panel is precisely angled for the dugong season, and a ledge is calibrated to the arm length of children, serving as a dust-free food surface within easy reach.
Marika-Alderton House, designed with meticulous attention to site-specific details and cultural context.
Details of the Marika-Alderton House, showcasing the integration of functional and cultural considerations.
Despite this intense focus on detail, the Marika-Alderton house, like all Murcutt buildings, achieves formal unity, a quality absent in the Loblolly House and the Forum. Murcutt attributes this harmonious fit to the site accommodating the building’s “completeness.” His analogy of placing a brick at the ocean’s edge, gradually embraced by the sand, however, is a simplification. The reality is more complex than a simple object adapting to its environment.
Murcutt is notorious for the time he takes on a commission; some clients had to wait five or six years before he completed the design.
Murcutt’s meticulous design process involves extensive research over years, including site visits across seasons. He gathers data on climate, geology, flora, fauna, and cultural history, blurring the lines between quantitative and qualitative information. He immerses himself in the site, observing micro-wind patterns and animal movements, seeking “landed knowledge” – an innate understanding of the place that informs design decisions. This deep immersion, taking years, allows design choices to become intuitive and “natural.” Murcutt’s refusal to accept commissions outside Australia underscores his belief that such profound site knowledge is essential for responsible and harmonious design. His “brick” analogy downplays the depth of this site-specific understanding, contrasting with superficial site-specific gestures common in contemporary architecture.
A more accurate analogy for a Murcutt building is a “turtle” or a “tree.” Landscapes, while seemingly cohesive panoramically, are composed of diverse elements – trees, turtles, flowers, insects, rocks – each uniquely adapted to the same general conditions. An oak tree or a turtle in one ecosystem differs from its counterparts in another, evolving distinct characteristics to thrive in its specific environment. Yet, within an ecosystem, these diverse elements coexist harmoniously. Murcutt’s buildings, like these natural elements, are evolved “houses,” uniquely adapted to their specific Australian ecologies. Comparing the Magney House on the temperate coast and the Simpson Lee House in the Blue Mountains reveals this evolutionary adaptation of a singular architectural concept to different environments. Both un-air-conditioned, they directly respond to environmental parameters, shaping their form to ensure not just survival, but thriving human comfort. Murcutt’s design method centers on modulating a continuous living space with screening walls, roof and ceiling shapes, and ground relationships, all tailored to the specific climate and site.
Magney House, adapted to the temperate coastal environment of New South Wales.
Simpson-Lee House, evolved for the forested Blue Mountains, demonstrating adaptation to a different ecosystem.
Murcutt has tried to evolve house into a version of itself that will most perfectly survive in its specific ecology.
We perceive a Murcutt building as integral to its landscape, akin to a tree or turtle. This resonates with the architectural discourse grappling with place-responsiveness beyond mere visual contextualism. The “turtle” analogy is particularly apt. Unlike a fixed tree, a turtle can adjust its position, offering a closer parallel to a building’s responsiveness to its environment. While a tree might curl leaves like the Forum’s windows, a turtle can fully retract into its shell, suggesting a deeper level of active dwelling. The turtle, a self-contained, fascinating, and beautiful entity, embodies Murcutt’s buildings – whole creatures, organisms greater than the sum of their parts, requiring this completeness to truly belong to their place.
A Murcutt building is not an ugly pet. It is very much a whole creature.
Finally, considering the Loblolly House, Oskar von Miller Forum, and Murcutt’s houses, hyper-specificity emerges as a potential hallmark of sustainable architecture. However, this may be a misleading path. While a turtle remains a turtle, buildings must adapt to evolving programs and needs over their extended lifespans, crucial for minimizing their carbon footprint. Perhaps the ideal analogy is the turtle “shell” – a perfect form capable of accommodating diverse inhabitants and uses.
Program — that notorious driver of Modern form — will have to fit loosely into future buildings.
The Office Building 2226 in Lustenau, Austria, designed by Baumschlager Eberle, exemplifies this adaptability. This system-free building, maintaining a temperature range of 22-26 degrees Celsius, relies on passive heating and cooling principles. Heat from occupants and computers, solar gain, and nighttime ventilation regulate the interior climate. Hyper-specificity here lies in the generic section’s design, allowing for flexible program accommodation. 2226 reflects a trend in European architecture – a return to simple, regular forms, suppressing overt expressions of specific use or location. Despite its lack of formal eccentricity, it achieves a quiet monumentality, perhaps justified by its exemplary landscape performance in an era prioritizing sustainability.
Office Building 2226, demonstrating a generic yet highly sustainable approach to building design.
