Brian Cody

The Role of Technology in

Sustainable Architecture

What is “Smart”?

In a technological context, “smart” systems use Information and

Communication Technology (ICT) to optimize their performance by
adapting to changing conditions in a dynamic environment. The embedded
artificial intelligence of such systems is essentially a crude imitation
of human intelligence, which allows the system to make the necessary
“decisions.” Following on from this, a “smart building” is often understood
to be a building, in which optimized performance—usually measured in
energy, sustainability and economic terms—is achieved with the help of
an integrated physical and digital infrastructure. In these buildings, ICT
systems enable the collection, processing and production of information,
which is utilized to enable an ongoing optimization process with the
aim of achieving enhanced operational performance. Similarly, a “smart
city” is often understood to be a city, in which ICT systems are employed
extensively to help achieve improved performance.

“Smart,” used as an adjective to describe a person, implies properties

associated with intelligence and good judgment. An alternative
interpretation of smart buildings and cities, to the one outlined above,
could be one in which “smart buildings” and “smart cities” are understood
to be buildings and cities that, through intelligent design, provide spaces
with optimal conditions for human well being in its widest sense while
using minimum non–renewable resources. In this case, the adjective
“smart” is justified by the optimized performance, and the intelligence
is that of the designers, whose intellectual efforts enable the enhanced
system performance of these entities. “Smart” technology in the form of
simulation software is increasingly used in the design of buildings and
cities with the aim of producing a built environment which achieves a high
energy and environmental performance with a lesser need for technical
systems and a lower energy demand during building operation. In extreme
cases, the use of technology during design can eliminate the need for whole
technical systems in the completed building.

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 When is a Building “Smart”?

How can we recognize a “smart building?” Certainly the attainment of a

high building performance would seem to be a prerequisite condition. After
all, a building with a suboptimal performance can hardly be called smart;
in an energy context, the relevant performance is the energy efficiency or
building energy performance. Now, unfortunately the term “energy effi-
ciency” in the building sector is often misunderstood and low energy con-
sumption is often falsely equated with high energy efficiency. Improving
energy performance is thereby confused with a mere reduction in energy
consumption. In order to properly evaluate performance however, we must
consider the benefits and qualities obtained from the energy “consumed.”
In the context of the thermal performance of buildings, energy efficiency
can be understood to be the relationship between the quality of the internal
thermal environment and the quantity of the energy used to maintain this.
High energy efficiency is achieved by minimizing energy demand while si-
multaneously achieving optimal internal comfort conditions in the spaces
of the building. Energy efficiency is, simply put, the relationship between
output (benefit) and input (resources).

Unfortunately, the legal instruments currently employed to regulate the

achievement of energy efficiency of buildings deal solely with energy de-
mand or consumption and not with energy efficiency. In the context of a
research project, the BEEP (Building Energy and Environmental Perfor-
mance) method developed at the Institute for Buildings and Energy at
Graz University of Technology is the first evaluation method which allows
the true energy efficiency or energy performance of a building to be deter-
mined and thus compared with alternative design options or with other
Fig. 1 BEEP method for evaluating true buildings (fig. 1). The BEEP method, which quantifies the relationship be-
building energy performance
tween the quality of the internal thermal environmental conditions and the
quantity of primary energy required to achieve and maintain these, offers
significant advantages when compared to the other methods used to date,
as it also allows the physical limitations of the building envelope, construc-
tion and HVAC systems to be taken into account. The evaluated energy
performance (BEEP Value) has the physically meaningful units of com-
fortable hours per kWh/m²a (kilowatt hour per square meter and year)
primary energy demand.

How we as a society measure, evaluate, reward and punish the various

strategies and concepts employed to achieve energy performance will
strongly influence the future development of architecture. The develop-
ment of methods for the evaluation of energy efficiency in the area of the
built environment is therefore an important and thus far fatally underesti-
mated factor in the future development of the architectural discipline. Re-
sults of case studies examined using the BEEP method have clearly shown
that low energy consumption cannot be equated with high energy efficien-
cy and that the use of a sophisticated evaluation method such as BEEP in

240 | Cody
place of the methods currently in use would inevitably lead to a radically
different future development of architectural design. Above and beyond
this, energy efficient architecture must be understood as a triad comprising
minimized energy consumption, optimal internal conditions, and excellent
architectural quality. It is possible, with the BEEP method, to combine the
first two parameters and objectively determine the best combination. The
third parameter should also be evaluated; in recent years, this aspect has
suffered in the name of energy conscious building. This is a development
that our society cannot afford. Sustainable development cannot by defini-
tion proceed with a simultaneous loss in the architectural quality of our
built environment.

“Smart” Energy Design

The “Energy Design” of a building comprises the development of strate-

gies and concepts to capture and utilize the transient energy flows in the
building’s external environment in order to create optimal internal envi-
ronmental conditions in the building spaces and to generate renewable
energy for use in the building and/or for export to the surrounding urban
infrastructure. The overarching goals are to maximize building energy per-
formance and create buildings which are capable of meeting the challenges
of the future.

A building is designed to exist in a natural environment with continuously

changing conditions (temperature, humidity, air movement, light,
sound etc.) and provide the desired and more or less constant internal
environmental conditions within. Two approaches can be followed to
achieve this goal; the conventional twentieth–century approach of sealing
off the external environment as much as possible and employing mechanical
systems to provide the desired internal conditions; or the alternative
approach of deploying building form, construction and skin to capture and
utilize the natural external environmental flows to allow the creation of the
desired internal conditions. An example of the second approach, in which
— similar to the strategies employed in Asian martial arts—the energy
of the “attacking” forces are captured and utilized to achieve the desired
result, is provided by the competition entry for the Patna Musuem in
India (Architect: Coop Himmelb(l)au), for which a solar–powered cooling
system was developed (fig. 2). The external skin of a double skin concrete
roof including a selective coating is utilized to capture solar heat energy
which is transported away by integrated air ducts and used to power the
buildings cooling system, which includes dehumidification of the air using
a silica gel coated wheel. In a second system, the treated air flows through
embedded ducts within the inner concrete construction to activate the
exposed thermal mass before entering the space.

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Fig. 2 Energy concept for the Patna Museum
in India (Architect: Coop Himmelb(l)au)

It goes without saying, that the design of buildings such as these is complex
and requires more effort than the conventional design approach. Allowing
external forces to infiltrate the building in a controlled manner requires a
more sophisticated approach. Nevertheless the approach of working with
instead of against natural forces is, without a doubt, the future of sustain-
able building design. The Energy Design of buildings in practice is a design
process similar to the architectural design process, in which invisible energy
flows inside and outside the proposed building are manipulated to achieve
the design goal of an optimal internal environment. In place of the de-
ployment of standard solutions and the piecing together and arrangement
of standard components in specific configurations of mechanical building
systems, Energy Design applies the scientific principles of thermodynam-
ics, heat transfer, and fluid mechanics to develop solutions which achieve
these aims through the use of multi–functional building elements, which
simultaneously take on spatial, functional, and energetic functions. The
discipline of Energy Design requires a synthesis of creative design talent
and precise analytical skills. Dynamic simulations are used to assess and
verify the feasibility of the proposed concepts and to optimize and validate
the design solutions. Thus, the use of “smart” technology allows an ongo-
ing optimization process to help achieve the desired performance.

“Smart” Skins

The building envelope is of particular importance in the design of an en-

ergy efficient building. Alongside active energy production, the building’s
skin should act as an adaptable filter between external and internal envi-
ronmental conditions. On a current project, we are developing movable
elements, which, when in a closed position, form an air–tight connection
with the primary building façade and thus allow the transparent propor-
tion of the building skin to vary, down to 0% if the spaces behind the façade
are not in use or if the use of the spaces at a given time does not require
daylight. Such a variable building skin can react and adapt to both internal
and external conditions providing “Space on Demand”. Smart materials,
which can change their physical and/or chemical characteristics in order
to accomplish the desired adaption to changing conditions, are a further
possibility currently being studied.

For the Braun Headquarters Building in Kronberg, Germany, completed

and in operation since 2000, a high–performance double skin facade was
developed, which was provided with complete automatic control (fig. 3).

242 | Cody
The porosity of the skin is varied according to external conditions. The so-
lar control blinds in the façade cavity are automatically adjusted depend-
ing on the degree of incident solar radiation. Artificial lighting is also au-
tomatically adjusted depending on external light intensity. The offices are
naturally ventilated via manually operated narrow opaque ventilation ele-
ments (fig. 4). This concept not only reduced building energy consumption
and offered improved comfort for the building’s users but also proved the
economical feasibility of double skin façades in certain conditions. The ef-
Fig. 3 Building envelope concept for the
fectiveness of the high–performance double–skin façade allowed complete Braun HQ building in Kronberg, Germany
building systems, in this case the conventional heating system and the me- (Architect: Schneider + Schumacher)

chanical ventilation of the external offices, to be disposed of, and thus led
to considerable capital cost savings on the buildings mechanical services.
A network of capillary tubing integrated into a thin plaster layer on the
underside of the concrete slab, fed with warm water in cold weather and
cool water in warm weather, is the only system needed to provide comfort-
able internal conditions in the offices. The fact, that a modern transparent
office building can be optimally conditioned with such a simple system is
attributable to the energy performance of the building skin.

Fig. 4 Double facade concept for the Braun

When is a City “Smart”? HQ building in Kronberg, Germany (Architect:

Schneider + Schumacher)

Does a “smart city” have to consist of “smart buildings?” And if it does,

does that entitle the city to be regarded as a “smart city?” If we are willing
to accept the arguments above, obviously not. A city that is not achieving
a high performance can hardly be called smart. The performance of a city
depends on the performance of the many subsystems that comprise the
whole city system. The city must be understood as a system, as an intercon-
nected set of elements organized in a structural pattern and producing a
characteristic set of behaviors. In the research project, “City of the Future,”
we are studying hypothetical models for a future city with strategies based
on spatial and temporal densification and decentralized energy production
alongside urban farming. One key factor in these considerations is urban
density, and we are currently working on studies to determine the optimal
degree of density from an energy perspective. The measurement of what
we call, “real density,” in future cities will need to incorporate the large
areas of land required to generate renewable energy and the incorporation
of these areas into the external surface area of building structures will in
turn influence the determination of the optimal density.

Our research shows also that achieving real progress in sustainable de-
velopment will entail the radical restructuring of the physical infrastruc-
ture of society. Alongside spatial densification, strategies for temporal and
digital densification need to be considered. Work on a research project
concerned with the nature of the relationship between different forms of
teleworking and the total energy efficiency in society provided new insights
(fig. 5). In recent years the use of new forms of working has unquestionably

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 increased energy consumption. There is a potential however to use these
new parameters to generate radically new forms of building and transport
systems with the aim of increasing total energy efficiency. To study this,
we modeled the energetic structures of typical corporation and company
structures. A central issue was the effective use of space and time and in
the course of the project we derived a new unit to measure the degree of
utilization of our building stock: m³h (cubic meters and hour), the product
of space and time. The research results show that the implementation of
various teleworking models can reduce the total energy consumption of a
typical company structure by about 25%.

Fig. 5 Research project “The potential of

Teleworking to increase energy efficiency of
cities”

In this research, particular focus was placed on the utilization of syner-

gies between physical and virtual infrastructure, living and working spac-
es, and teleworking, among others. In the search for strategies for spatial,
temporal, and digital densification, new typologies for vertical structures
incorporating all the necessary infrastructural elements of society—in-
cluding even industry and agriculture, food production, and energy gen-
eration—were developed. These so–called, “Hyper Buildings,” function
like individual cells in a city model organism. In this cell structure, each
cell has the ability to work independently and function in a self sufficient
manner. However, when linked together, they mutually assist each other
so that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. The Hyper Building
itself is a structure which allows a population density roughly equal to that
of Manhattan, needs no external energy supply, no external water supply,
produces no waste, emits no CO2 and needs little or no external food sup-
ply. Space for residential, office and industrial use are provided alongside
parks and areas for agricultural, biomass and energy production. Linked
together they form a 3D–city structure, radically improving the quality of
life compared with cities of today and offering urbanity, nature, density
and diversity (fig. 6). Central to the concept is the synergetic integration of
Fig. 6 Research project “Hyper Building City”
the various systems and the use of symbiotic relationships between nature,
man and technology. The urban design of cities needs to be conceived of in
more spatial and three dimensional terms than has been the case up un-
til now. Circulation, mobility systems, and public spaces need not remain

244 | Cody
trapped on the ground plane. Various layers at different vertical levels are
conceivable in a truly three dimensional spatial arrangement of public
and private life. The obtainment of optimal density can lead to totally new
qualities in urban life and these considerations are not limited to the de-
sign of new cities in rapidly developing countries such as China and India.
With the knowledge that, in the course of the next fifty years, existing city
structures will drastically change on account of continual improvements
and renovations, it is imperative to develop a masterplan for all of our cit-
ies now, new and old, together with a vision of the city in fifty years time.
Why? Because every intervention we make between now and then, every
new building, every renovated old building is a fragment of the “City of the
Future.”

High Tech or Low Tech

A recurring question in recent times, and one which we have just started
to examine in research, is the question “High Tech” or “Low Tech.” Which
approach is more suited to help achieve a sustainable development of ar-
chitecture and urban design? A substantiated discourse on this question
has not yet been established in the scientific community and discussions
in architectural circles seem to be limited to purely stylistic concerns. On
the other hand, a certain tendency towards a preference for a low–tech
approach can be discerned amongst many architects in practice and in re-
search, and also amongst students of architecture. This leaning towards
low–tech would however seem more grounded on an emotional than intel-
lectual level. This development is somehow fascinating and, at the same
time, somewhat disconcerting for a society which depends so much on
technology in everyday life. One could of course conjecture, that it is pre-
cisely this dependence which fuels the current seduction with “Low–Tech.”

Why is low–tech architecture “in?” Is it marketing hype for a “new style?”

Is it because the approach seems to match the stylistic language of cer-
tain architectural goals? No one seems to want a low tech mobile phone, a
low tech car, or a low tech computer. Why then a low tech building? And
when is something “high–tech?” This question is not as easy to answer as it
might appear. To have a meaningful discussion about the merits of a high–
tech or low–tech approach respectively, we need to first arrive at a defini-
tion—or at least a loose understanding—of what is meant by these terms.
We are currently working on developing a methodology to enable us to de-
termine whether a building should be classified as high–tech or low–tech
depending on the amount and degree of sophistication of the technologies
employed in the building.

Imagine a low–tech building made of natural materials, simple and

affordable, which uses natural forces in a passive way to provide a stable
comfortable environment. A building which requires little maintenance

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 and which needs user interaction to function, thus supporting the develop-
ment of a “relationship” between the occupants and their building but also
between them and the external environment. And now imagine a high–tech
building, which “lives,” which “thinks,” which “learns” and knows what its
occupants desire and how best to achieve this, which interacts actively with
its environment, which provides maximum comfort levels, uses minimum
resources to achieve this and on top of this, supplies the surrounding infra-
structure with energy and water. A building, which uses the latest techno-
logical advances to reduce embodied energy and increase recyclability. De-
signed according to biological principles, a building, in which the skin, the
respiratory and nervous systems work together, combining natural forces
and technology, functioning automatically but allowing user interaction.

Which building would you like to live in? Which building would you like to
work in? Which buildings should we be designing? Is it our responsibility
to use the latest technology to achieve the highest overall performance? It
could be that your answer to these questions is not the same in every case.
A further question of interest is, whether a high–tech approach can be used
to reduce mass, material and land use due to buildings. A fundamental
question is: which approach is more compatible with a sustainable future
development. When we analyze case studies during the search for answers
to these questions, we are less concerned with the appearance of the build-
ing as a parameter in determining whether a building is high or low–tech
and more in the substance of the approach.

Smart Use of Smart Technology

Experience with real buildings has shown how important it is to place

people at the center of our considerations relating to the issues outlined
above. People, not buildings, are ultimately the users of energy. The
respective cultural context, in which a given building is located, is also of
major significance. Examples such as so–called passive houses in Austria,
which were designed without a “tactile” heating source in the spaces such
as a fireplace or a radiator or the use of so–called silent cooling systems,
such as chilled ceilings, commonly utilized in Central Europe, in parts of
the world, where air conditioning systems provide proof of their existence
and functionality by virtue of the associated noise, air movement etc.
have shown that despite perfect technical functionality, a chosen system
may not be fully accepted by its users due to culturally dependent user
expectations. It is therefore important that designers gather knowledge of
relevant user expectations within a certain cultural context and take these
into consideration during design, as these vary considerably throughout
the various regions of the world. Experience shows, that it is possible to
change user expectations, if this is desired or deemed to be necessary.
However in the majority of cases, such a process requires substantial time
and effort.

246 | Cody
All this however, is not meant to suggest in any way that technology is not
needed to achieve optimization of building energy performance. Alongside
applied technologies in facade and HVAC systems such as those discussed
above, technology can play a useful role in providing feedback. This can
occur at two levels. On the one hand, feedback loops can be provided in
a technical building management system. Necessary adaptations may be
carried out automatically or human decision making and action on the
part of a building operator may be requested Feedback can however also
be directed to building users, allowing them to make better decisions and
thus contribute to improved building performance. In fact, sometimes the
possession of such knowledge can lead to an increase in a building user’s
subjective perception of the comfort level, enabling reduced energy con-
sumption without the need for any further action. Experience shows that
people are willing to accept a wider range of environmental conditions,
if they are allowed to exert some influence on the climate control mecha-
nisms employed to provide the environmental conditions in which they
find themselves. Building systems should therefore in most cases enable
such influence, e.g. by providing the possibility to override solar shading,
natural ventilation, HVAC systems, etc. Technology can be employed to
ensure that the total building performance is maximized. Buildings can be
seen as living organisms and designed along these lines. Not a “machine
for living,” as proposed by Le Corbusier in Vers une Architecture, in which
it was assumed that all people had more or less the same needs, which were
to be met automatically by the building and its systems, but rather an inte-
grated, intelligent, sensitive, sentient and adaptive “living machine,” which
supports the individual life and needs of its occupants.

Author

Brian Cody is full professor at Graz University of Technology and head of

the Institute for Buildings and Energy since 2004. His focus in research,
teaching and practice is on maximizing the energy performance of
buildings and cities. He is founder and principal of the consulting firm
Energy Design Cody, which is responsible for the development of energy
and climate control concepts for construction projects all over the world.
Professor Cody serves on many advisory boards and juries and is also
visiting professor and head of the energy design unit at the University for
Applied Arts in Vienna.

Recommended Citation

Cody, Brian: The Role of Technology in Sustainable Architecture. In:

Wolkenkuckucksheim, Internationale Zeitschrift zur Theorie der Archi-
tektur. Vol. 19, Issue 33, 2014, p. 239–249, cloud-cuckoo.net/fileadmin/
issues_en/issue_33/article_cody.pdf [inquiry date].

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