Building for the Great Transition

 By presta

How will buildings and urban systems be part of the Great Transition? The implementation of technological and design interventions to reduce resource consumption is well underway: from CHP to greywater recycling to energy captured from braking in vehicles. Many of these interventions share in common the theme of self-reliance: a rescaling of responsibility from centralised systems for water and power to autonomous and semi-autonomous systems at the scale of the building or block. The desire for autonomy is often thought of as one of human beings' key psycho-social needs. Interventions to facilitate the Great Transition should try and capitalise on the pride humans take in independence, sovereignty and control over how they live their lives, while communicating progress towards shared goals and outcomes for communities both local and global.

For individuals to develop greater understanding of how individual actions add up to collective outcomes, we need to apply what we know of the psychology of behavioural change: for example uncertainty (and especially alarmism) about the future can create the opposite effect that it is seeking - disengagement and avoidance - because the emotion of fear tends to provoke the evolutionary flight mechanism instead of active engagement. The formidable challenge is therefore to engage people in change, fulfil their desire for autonomy, and communicate the inherent uncertainty in the future, without alarming them to the consequences of inertia.

My brother bought my parents a smart meter and a mini-compost bin for Christmas. Both presents are idiot-proof, tactile objects in the heart of the family home. My parents can see how much power they are using, and how much waste they are diverting. Their relentless hunt for stealth, money-sucking electronic devices is a pleasure to them, not a chore. But more information does not always lead to better decisions making; the key is how this information is presented and organised. Communicating real-time performance has changed their behaviours (the bin also fills up quickly), and perhaps can catalyse further changes: investment in low energy lighting in their home, or a reconfiguration of the garden around a new composting feature. My parents are likely to stay in their small house, first built in the 1860s, for several decades. They are engaging in a process called retrofitting: improving sustainability of an existing asset.

While much of Asia and Africa will urbanize rapidly in the next few decades, it will not be practical or desirable (economically, socially, politically, or environmentally) to physically rebuild Western homes or raze entire settlements. New buildings and new cities are inherently more seductive and newsworthy than the existing built environment, but the sustainable buildings and cities of the future in fact already exist – they just haven't been retrofitted yet. To foster rapid evolution in how people use their homes, schools factories and offices, we need programmes which communicate effectively to engender pride in decisions and investments as mundane as roof insulation. It won't be glamorous, but the simultaneous execution of such individual actions towards a collective goal will impact personal and social well-being more than working on the top floor of the Burj Khalifa.

nef is increasingly seeking to apply its democratic participation tools to aid decision making in a built environment context, to foster higher well-being. We hope that buildings will “learn”, that their occupiers, managers and designers get smarter, and that we can understand the invigoration of the city square and the frustration of IKEA using both qualitative and quantitative research.

The organisations that secure the sustainable built environments of the future will probably be those that enable smart decisions through communication which is sensitive to human psychology. Google, perhaps the most impressive information organisers in recent history, encourages healthy eating amongst their employees by having two stacks of plates in their canteen – small and large – alongside some facts about the observed tendency of people to finish the food on their plate.

We're all going to need to consume with greater intelligence in the future: our dinners, our homes and our cities. To retrofit the systems and environments we’ve inherited, the generation that sees itself as responsible for the Great Transition will need to keep an eye on which tools for transition their wise parents are embracing.