Battling for the environment
In Poland, it would seem, such ideas have yet to find much fertile ground from which to grow, though that might be about to change.
"The modern buildings we live and work in rival such well known polluters as cars and manufacturing as sources of harm to the environment, adding greatly to deforestation, the risk of global warming, overuse of water, and acid rain," wrote David Malin Roodman and Nicholas Lenssen in their Worldwatch Institute report, Building Revolution: How Ecological and Health Concerns Are Transforming Construction back in 1995. Despite that title, now, nearly ten years on, it's clear that many, if not most, companies in the real estate industry have yet to be galvanized into minimizing the damage their buildings cause to natural resources. Eco buildings have gone up in parts of Europe and the US but they are still a fringe phenomena. In Poland, they don't, strictly speaking, exist at all.
"There aren't enough incentives," replies Piotr Tarczyński, group director of the consultant engineers Buro Happold in Poland, when asked to explain why the 'eco' concept hasn't caught on in Poland yet. "The system isn't formed in such a way as to benefit anyone who is trying to introduce new ideas."
He goes on to compare an experience his German colleagues had to one he claims typifies the Polish market. "A sizeable old building was being refurbished and converted into offices [in Berlin] and because the structure was very big and had thick masonry walls, they conducted a very detailed environmental analysis and concluded that the northern part of the building didn't need air conditioning because it would provide the right temperature throughout the year. The client was very happy with that because it meant that the whole life costs [of the building] would be reduced." In Poland, however, Tarczyński believes that that scenario is unlikely: "The first reaction from the client would be that his tenants would tell him that any building without air-conditioning is sub-standard."
He maintains that his firm was involved in one of the very few examples of an environmentally-friendly building ever to be delivered to the Polish market. The project was Sobanski Palace, an office development, which was an extension to the nineteenth century Palau Sobańskich on Aleje Róż and shares a rear wall with the British Embassy there. As structural, building services and facade engineers, Buro Happold won the Public Building/Office Category at the 1999 Association of Polish Architects Awards for its work on the project, along with the building designer A&D Wejchert Architect. Although, according to Tarczyński, the development integrates "natural ventilation, a lot of natural light and thermal mass (which means reduced cooling requirements), no one has tried to copy it and we're a bit disappointed that architects are not picking up these ideas," he adds.
Andrzej M Chołdzyński, however, an architect who lives and works in both Paris and Warsaw, claims that his interest in the sustainability of buildings stretches back to when he was studying for his diploma in Kraków at the end of the 1980s. In that particular city at the time, he recalls, "pollution was one of the most important factors in everyday life but the architects there were only interested in post-modern design, which was just form and color and which had nothing to do with the core problem: the environment. We were in one of the most polluted cities in Poland and I thought the issue should get priority." Kraków, of course, was and is Poland's most beautiful historical center, which, says Chołdzyński, was being "destroyed on a daily basis by nearby industry." Attempting, in his own small symbolic way to stem the tide of chemical filth that was eating away at Kraków's splendor, Chołdzyński's diploma design, he says, "was to be auto-sufficient in energy and though it was to use external water it was to do so in a closed circle, so that in terms of energy and water, it was almost self-sufficient, and this was fifteen years ago."
Post-study, one of Chołdzyński's most significant projects to date has been Warsaw's Stock Exchange building, which he designed in collaboration with Stanisław Fiszer, between 1998 and 2000. He admits that the building "is not energy self-sufficient, because it was too huge and complicated for the investor to try anything like this." But he adds that although the design might "not, strictly speaking, be called ecological, because it doesn't use solar energy, it does recuperate some of the energy which is put into the building as well as the heat from the air and water."
Back to the present, Chołdzyński is currently designing a four building office complex, which is planned for development near Warsaw's Okęcie airport and not far from Wiśniowy Business Park. Here the architect insists he is much closer to realizing the blueprint laid out in his diploma design of those fifteen years ago. "We will try to use some solar energy," he says, and adds that the rainwater that falls in the immediate vicinity of the buildings will be put to more ecological use than is usually the case. "In most cases," he explains, "people take the rain water from the paved areas and ask the local authority if they can use it for the sewage system but logically rain can be used for a green field. For this project, there'll be no drainage of rainwater because it gives life and allows greenery to grow around the building. It won't pour into a pipe and become sewage but be redistributed to the soil."
The development's chances of seeing the light of day, however, are put into grim perspective by another of Chołdzyński's designs, that of Targowy Water Park, which was to be a 4,000 square meter recreational park but whose potential investor didn't follow up with the bricks and mortar, let alone the water. This, it would seem, could be the bane of any attempt to make Poland's buildings kinder to anything else other than their developers' pockets or the average tenant's basic need to park themselves somewhere to do their work. 'No frills' offices are all the rage in these parts. Why choose anything else?
Both Piotr Tarczyński and Andrzej Choldzyński agree that standards of awareness need to be raised across the board. "The typical investor looks at how he can make money from his investment," says Tarczyński, "and he doesn't find it easy to concern himself with environmental design or the reduction of energy consumption. But though the initial cost of this might be quite substantial, the savings over the next twenty or thirty years do make such investments worthwhile." This can be achieved, he believes, by the European Union exerting its newly won influence: "There is an EU directive on the energy performance of buildings which will become law in 2006 and the main purpose of this is to limit buildings' fuel consumption. All buildings of over 1,000 square meters will have to undergo an energy audit and the results of this will be made public."
But the EU has already got itself involved in Poland's eco-building future. Its SARA (Sustainable Architecture Applied to Replicable Public-Access Buildings) initiative is supporting a bona fide project of this type, in the form of Tulipan House, which is planned for construction in Warsaw's Mokotów district and will be developed by the Dutch company Grontmij Real Estate. Though the tender for general contractors is to be held in the next few weeks, there are no plans for the beginning of construction until pre-leases have been signed, a situation which has been well known for at least a year. Negotiations are being hammered out with potential tenants, insists architect Piotr Ciegełko of E&L Architects, and though the company names have to be kept under wraps at this point, he suggests that they might come from sectors "where because of the high risk they normally present to the environment, they need to show that they are taking care of it in other areas." Tobacco companies, for example, fall into this category.
Tulipan House, it would seem, has every right to claim for itself the title of the first ever commercial 'eco-building'. Tenants will receive the air conditioning and heating they can expect from other office buildings in the city, but it will be supplied less conventionally. The designers have devised a cool storage system, which according to Ciegełko, "stores the cold during the night, when energy is over-productive and when you don't need to cool your building it's stored there. But when you do need to cool the building during peak hours, this is covered by chillers and the rational use of energy."
Of course none of this answers the question as to whether the building will be signed up by tenants. One of the sticking points in this regard is that the extra costs that the high-tech building materials incur will be passed onto prospective tenants in the form of rents. Though Ciegełko acknowledges that these won't be the lowest the city has to offer, he also stresses that they won't be inordinately high and this is because of the assistance the scheme will receive from SARA. In return for this help, Tulipan House will be expected to show energy savings of 30 percent compared to conventional buildings of the same type. According to SARA literature, the "average cost of implementing these actions is only five percent of the total building costs." The savings on energy outlay over the longer term, will be passed onto the tenants. All that is required from them is that they take a broader perspective of their expenditure, as well as accept some responsibility as to the well-being of the environment.
"We strongly believe in this project," says Cegiełko "because companies will increasingly need this kind of philosophy to market themselves: that they are friendly to the environment and that they care about their employees' welfare."
"The modern buildings we live and work in rival such well known polluters as cars and manufacturing as sources of harm to the environment, adding greatly to deforestation, the risk of global warming, overuse of water, and acid rain," wrote David Malin Roodman and Nicholas Lenssen in their Worldwatch Institute report, Building Revolution: How Ecological and Health Concerns Are Transforming Construction back in 1995. Despite that title, now, nearly ten years on, it's clear that many, if not most, companies in the real estate industry have yet to be galvanized into minimizing the damage their buildings cause to natural resources. Eco buildings have gone up in parts of Europe and the US but they are still a fringe phenomena. In Poland, they don't, strictly speaking, exist at all.
"There aren't enough incentives," replies Piotr Tarczyński, group director of the consultant engineers Buro Happold in Poland, when asked to explain why the 'eco' concept hasn't caught on in Poland yet. "The system isn't formed in such a way as to benefit anyone who is trying to introduce new ideas."
He goes on to compare an experience his German colleagues had to one he claims typifies the Polish market. "A sizeable old building was being refurbished and converted into offices [in Berlin] and because the structure was very big and had thick masonry walls, they conducted a very detailed environmental analysis and concluded that the northern part of the building didn't need air conditioning because it would provide the right temperature throughout the year. The client was very happy with that because it meant that the whole life costs [of the building] would be reduced." In Poland, however, Tarczyński believes that that scenario is unlikely: "The first reaction from the client would be that his tenants would tell him that any building without air-conditioning is sub-standard."
He maintains that his firm was involved in one of the very few examples of an environmentally-friendly building ever to be delivered to the Polish market. The project was Sobanski Palace, an office development, which was an extension to the nineteenth century Palau Sobańskich on Aleje Róż and shares a rear wall with the British Embassy there. As structural, building services and facade engineers, Buro Happold won the Public Building/Office Category at the 1999 Association of Polish Architects Awards for its work on the project, along with the building designer A&D Wejchert Architect. Although, according to Tarczyński, the development integrates "natural ventilation, a lot of natural light and thermal mass (which means reduced cooling requirements), no one has tried to copy it and we're a bit disappointed that architects are not picking up these ideas," he adds.
Andrzej M Chołdzyński, however, an architect who lives and works in both Paris and Warsaw, claims that his interest in the sustainability of buildings stretches back to when he was studying for his diploma in Kraków at the end of the 1980s. In that particular city at the time, he recalls, "pollution was one of the most important factors in everyday life but the architects there were only interested in post-modern design, which was just form and color and which had nothing to do with the core problem: the environment. We were in one of the most polluted cities in Poland and I thought the issue should get priority." Kraków, of course, was and is Poland's most beautiful historical center, which, says Chołdzyński, was being "destroyed on a daily basis by nearby industry." Attempting, in his own small symbolic way to stem the tide of chemical filth that was eating away at Kraków's splendor, Chołdzyński's diploma design, he says, "was to be auto-sufficient in energy and though it was to use external water it was to do so in a closed circle, so that in terms of energy and water, it was almost self-sufficient, and this was fifteen years ago."
Post-study, one of Chołdzyński's most significant projects to date has been Warsaw's Stock Exchange building, which he designed in collaboration with Stanisław Fiszer, between 1998 and 2000. He admits that the building "is not energy self-sufficient, because it was too huge and complicated for the investor to try anything like this." But he adds that although the design might "not, strictly speaking, be called ecological, because it doesn't use solar energy, it does recuperate some of the energy which is put into the building as well as the heat from the air and water."
Back to the present, Chołdzyński is currently designing a four building office complex, which is planned for development near Warsaw's Okęcie airport and not far from Wiśniowy Business Park. Here the architect insists he is much closer to realizing the blueprint laid out in his diploma design of those fifteen years ago. "We will try to use some solar energy," he says, and adds that the rainwater that falls in the immediate vicinity of the buildings will be put to more ecological use than is usually the case. "In most cases," he explains, "people take the rain water from the paved areas and ask the local authority if they can use it for the sewage system but logically rain can be used for a green field. For this project, there'll be no drainage of rainwater because it gives life and allows greenery to grow around the building. It won't pour into a pipe and become sewage but be redistributed to the soil."
The development's chances of seeing the light of day, however, are put into grim perspective by another of Chołdzyński's designs, that of Targowy Water Park, which was to be a 4,000 square meter recreational park but whose potential investor didn't follow up with the bricks and mortar, let alone the water. This, it would seem, could be the bane of any attempt to make Poland's buildings kinder to anything else other than their developers' pockets or the average tenant's basic need to park themselves somewhere to do their work. 'No frills' offices are all the rage in these parts. Why choose anything else?
Both Piotr Tarczyński and Andrzej Choldzyński agree that standards of awareness need to be raised across the board. "The typical investor looks at how he can make money from his investment," says Tarczyński, "and he doesn't find it easy to concern himself with environmental design or the reduction of energy consumption. But though the initial cost of this might be quite substantial, the savings over the next twenty or thirty years do make such investments worthwhile." This can be achieved, he believes, by the European Union exerting its newly won influence: "There is an EU directive on the energy performance of buildings which will become law in 2006 and the main purpose of this is to limit buildings' fuel consumption. All buildings of over 1,000 square meters will have to undergo an energy audit and the results of this will be made public."
But the EU has already got itself involved in Poland's eco-building future. Its SARA (Sustainable Architecture Applied to Replicable Public-Access Buildings) initiative is supporting a bona fide project of this type, in the form of Tulipan House, which is planned for construction in Warsaw's Mokotów district and will be developed by the Dutch company Grontmij Real Estate. Though the tender for general contractors is to be held in the next few weeks, there are no plans for the beginning of construction until pre-leases have been signed, a situation which has been well known for at least a year. Negotiations are being hammered out with potential tenants, insists architect Piotr Ciegełko of E&L Architects, and though the company names have to be kept under wraps at this point, he suggests that they might come from sectors "where because of the high risk they normally present to the environment, they need to show that they are taking care of it in other areas." Tobacco companies, for example, fall into this category.
Tulipan House, it would seem, has every right to claim for itself the title of the first ever commercial 'eco-building'. Tenants will receive the air conditioning and heating they can expect from other office buildings in the city, but it will be supplied less conventionally. The designers have devised a cool storage system, which according to Ciegełko, "stores the cold during the night, when energy is over-productive and when you don't need to cool your building it's stored there. But when you do need to cool the building during peak hours, this is covered by chillers and the rational use of energy."
Of course none of this answers the question as to whether the building will be signed up by tenants. One of the sticking points in this regard is that the extra costs that the high-tech building materials incur will be passed onto prospective tenants in the form of rents. Though Ciegełko acknowledges that these won't be the lowest the city has to offer, he also stresses that they won't be inordinately high and this is because of the assistance the scheme will receive from SARA. In return for this help, Tulipan House will be expected to show energy savings of 30 percent compared to conventional buildings of the same type. According to SARA literature, the "average cost of implementing these actions is only five percent of the total building costs." The savings on energy outlay over the longer term, will be passed onto the tenants. All that is required from them is that they take a broader perspective of their expenditure, as well as accept some responsibility as to the well-being of the environment.
"We strongly believe in this project," says Cegiełko "because companies will increasingly need this kind of philosophy to market themselves: that they are friendly to the environment and that they care about their employees' welfare."
