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| Sunday, 20 March 2005 |
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Features |  |
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Home, healthy home by Chamitha Kuruppu
Building a house requires more than beautiful and modern designs says Dr. Upendra Rajapakse, veteran architect and senior lecturer at the University of Moratuwa, who believes excellence and innovation in 'built environments' will lead to a number of challenges in the years ahead. When planning your 'dream home', you give much thought to the latest designs, search the perfect location and hunt for the best building materials. But how often, if ever, do you give any thought to the health aspects of the house you are dreaming of? Latest studies say you should - because improperly built structures can cause sick building syndromes making you a victim of headache, nausea, dry skin, sore throat and many other illnesses.
Building a house requires more than beautiful and modern designs says Dr. Upendra Rajapakse, veteran architect and senior lecturer at the University of Moratuwa. According to Dr. Rajapakse the excellence and innovation in 'built environments' will lead to a number of challenges in the years ahead. Human consequences of our decisions and actions in respect of built environment such as indoor and outdoor thermal discomfort has already started to cause a major threat to human health and wellbeing, he says. "Increased outdoor temperature can induce heat strokes, of which people are complaining nowadays. This situation demands buildings to be separated from the external environment, and conditioned to maintain human thermal comfort. People in these conditioned spaces are the ones who are mainly affected by sick building syndrome." When it comes to architecture, it is a bad and unacceptable practice in Sri Lanka that the skin of a building geometry is a separator that creates an artificial environment inside the building, which prevents the user from enjoys the environment. Dr. Rajapakse believes that most urban areas in Sri Lanka are not user friendly. From a thermal point of view, it's difficult to maintain life in buildings with excessive heat and pollutants.
Lack of knowledge and opportunities, haphazard development of 'built environment' promotes urban forms that are unable to optimise wind flow and shading between buildings. The lack of deeper understanding, expertise and influence on public perception, modern urban settlements and buildings often erode the bio-diversity by losing respect for the natural capital such as growth in forests and fertile land, the natural absorption of air pollution and the regulation of climate and resource cycle of the planet. The most direct way to cope with these ecological consequences of 'built environment' is simply to explore 'sustainable design strategies' in town planning, urban design and building levels - the design that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generation.
Since the design of any building derives from considered responses of the user, location and climate, which are context specific, sustainable design favours locally applicable solutions thereby demanding involvement of local expertise. This allows local and national sustainable solutions to be developed and implemented within a global vision. Environmentally sustainable structures minimises energy consumption. Therefore it is necessary to conserve energy, restore bio-diversity and optimise human thermal comfort through passive means, minimise pollution of air, soil and water. This maximises health and safety of people. The construction cost of a house with an environmentally sustainable design will cost 5 to 10 per cent more than an ordinarily designed house, emphasises Dr. Rajapakse. But in the long run, the use of these strategies can reduce energy consumption by at leat 30-40 per cent, which is a great advantage at a time when there is a national energy crisis.
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