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Scholarly Research

[BOOK] Integrated Design in Contemporary Architecture

Kiel Moe
Tech_Book_Review_-_1.pdf
Published: Princeton Archtiectural Press 09/01/2008

‘Integrated Design’ is term that characterizes what architects and architecture students do when they incorporate the energy, site, climatic, formal, construction, programmatic, regulatory, economic, and social aspects of a project as primary protagonists from the beginning of a building design project. The result is often better building design and building performance on account of a frank engagement with these multiple, often complex, contexts that condition contemporary architecture. In doing so, these architects engender what are sustainable modes of practice. If architecture becomes more sustainable, it is because its practices and buildings will have fundamentally become more integrated. This book presents 28 current case study exemplars of Integrated Design. There is particular emphasis on the techniques and strategies that apply in North American code and economic frameworks that lead toward more integrated and sustainable building practices (in contrast to European examples that are off cited as precedents but simply to not apply in many North American contexts). The book includes recently and soon-to-be built projects that cut across the climatic, regulatory, economic, typological, and ecological contexts that are fodder for integrated design.

A primary premise of the 28 buildings is that energy, construction and formal strategies should be inextricably interlocked. The morphology of each building’s composition actively seeks to merge architectural intentions with constitutive parameters such as site, climate, energy consumption, materials, and construction. Each of the following buildings can be understood as a material device that captures and channels specific energy paths. As such, these projects clearly illustrate a key characteristic of integrated design that Reyner Banham discerned in his 1969 The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment between “power-operated solutions” and “structural solutions.” “Power-operated solutions” tend to add ever more energy and yet another layer of construction to solve each problem that arises in the context of building design. Alternatively, the “structural solutions” Banham distinguished inevitably merge energy and construction strategies with architectural intentions as key determinants of architectural form. They are “structural solutions” because the physical configuration of the building form and the fabric of the building itself induce certain energy performances. In short, the energy and construction solution are structured simultaneously. As such, these buildings are thermodynamic figures. In this type of compositional figuration, the behavior of immaterial building thermodynamics directly influences a building’s material morphology.

Finally, in contrast with the image of the singular heroic architect, the book describes the integrated design team structures that lead to well integrated design solutions as well. It is critical that architecture construct pedagogical and professional structures that position our students and professionals to expand their engagement with the integrated realities of practice in the new century. This is vital for the advancement of the economic, ecological, social, and formal basis of architecture, if not its mere perpetuation. Integrated design is at the core of this new vector in architecture.

Research Topics:

• Sustainable Design