The e-House: Michael McDonough's Most Excellent
Adventure
By Michael Reis
e-House 2000, designed by renowned architect Michael McDonough,
integrates both highly advanced, off-the-shelf products
and purely experimental technologies - all of which exist
on a sustainable platform.
The first high-tech, web-based, environmentally appropriate
house of the 21st century is currently under development
at the edge of the Catskill Forest Preserve in New York
State's Hudson River Valley. Called e-House2000, the house
integrates both highly advanced, off-the-shelf products
and purely experimental technologies. Its sculptural shape
features "view-catching" and "light-catching"
rooms, which are integrated into the building's stone stone-clad
passive solar shell. Building systems will be controlled
from a website using imbedded chip and monitoring controls,
and an experimental radiant heating and cooling system with
ground source heat pumps - one of the first of its kind
- will be the sustainable technologies centerpiece of the
building. Emerging building technologies include one of
the first autoclaved aerated concrete block wall systems
in the United States, in conjunction with structural insulated
panels (SIPs) and engineered lumber trusses. To get a behind-the-scenes
look at the "house of the new millennium," EDC
spoke with the architect, Michael McDonough.
What goals did you start with for the project? Simply put,
the goals were to create the house of the future through
a very specific conceptual lens. That would include everything
that I see happening in the future. The two major building
blocks that separate where we are now and where we should
be in 20 years are sustainable technologies and advanced
computing technologies, as in the Internet. I saw those
two being absolutely logical partners - technologies that
will inevitably work in tandem. I don't think you can have
any future without green building, and you can't have green
building without computing.
From there, I started breaking it into very specific sections.
There are 16 divisions under the Construction Specifications
Institute, and initially, for a year and a half, I researched
every component of a building of this type and size. I kept
it small, at 2,000 square feet, and I also had it as a work/live
space. I've been working in the SoHo District of New York
City in a live-work space for over 20 years, and I have
worked on dozens of private residences, so my approach comes
from a lot of experience. I favor small and flexible, future-proofed,
and set up for e-commuting. Then it was articulated, or
fleshed-out, as I went along.
There is a certain spiritual component to a home and a
workspace, and within that category, the approach to food
preparation is important. There is also the consideration
of views - not just daylighting from a technical point of
view, but how the light looks when it comes into the house.
I don't necessarily want to call it a technology, but I
don't think you can separate that from the design of a residential
building. That's one of the things that I see missing from
future house studies. There seems to be an idea that technology
is going to solve the problem, but the human factors and
cultural factors of design are [also] extremely important.
And that's what goes a long way to separating this project
from other future technologies projects.
Another one of the key goals was to make green glamorous.
To make inroads in consumer society, green has to be glamorous.
It has to be something people attach value to in and of
itself. It's all part of seeing the future house more efficient
and more fun - more desirable to live in. The house of the
future will be less costly to operate and a fulfilling place
to habitate in. Think of a great vacation in Mexico or France,
a small villa, a small fishing cottage - something with
character. Maybe it has a fireplace or a bread oven. Maybe
it has quirky details or geometry. That is also what the
e-House is advocating, but in a contemporary envelope. When
you wake up, you're greeted by the morning sun in the e-House,
no matter what season it is. That feels great and it is
energy efficient.
How were you able to achieve this effect with the morning
sun? As an architect, I have the luxury of designing the
house from the ground up. I can introduce design criteria
that reflect evolving value systems. If "form follows
function," for example, I can define function to include
view and solar orientation, i.e., morning sun in every room.
This translates into clerestory or monitor windows in the
building, and I can make their angularities reflect optimal
solar orientation. The bedroom, for example, has a "view
catcher." This integrates large, high-performance windows
facing north to a beautiful field with native grasses and
trees. Small windows face east, both at eye- and roof-level.
The geometry of this view catcher is slightly skewed to
get the first ray of sun on June 21st, the summer solstice,
and further skewed to shade large windows facing west. It
also has a small balcony for morning coffee. Lifestyle and
green architecture make for good partners.
What are some other examples of this? The house will monitor
itself and pay attention to its energy consumption. It will
open and close the windows based on the ambient temperature.
It's hooked in to its own weather station. It can turn on
the snow-melt system ahead of time by sensing the relative
humidity and temperature, efficiently melting the snow before
it accumulates, saving precious BTUs and keeping the front
steps from icing-up.
How does that work? The e-House will have a SCADA - Supervisory
Control and Data Acquisition - system in conjunction with
an Internet portal and management software. This means the
house acts as an organic entity, enabled through currently
available networking, hardware and software technologies.
It can be monitored and controlled remotely (via the Internet)
and will be capable of making low-level decisions related
to systems management. This would include load shedding,
or scheduling equipment on/off cycles to reflect optimal
operating or energy use conditions; cycling fresh air; monitoring
patterns of energy use within the building for post-occupancy
studies; identifying building envelope failures such as
flashing failure or foundation moisture buildup; and uninterrutable
power source cut-in during power-outages.
The overarching idea here is that today's home control
systems are often related to the "lazy person's"
approach to home management. [For example, people want]
to open the blinds with a remote control kind of thing.
Okay, that's fine. The e-House2000 system, however, opens
the blinds to warm the kitchen with morning sun, and closes
the blinds when the wind speed or outside ambient temperature
results in a significant heat loss. It's remote automated
energy conservation management.
What are some other innovations of the e-House? There are
"alternative technologies" and traditional crafts
that have been reconsidered and re-analyzed through the
sustainable lens. A good example of that would be the copper
roofing I chose. I was interested in that because you can
design a copper roof assembly for disassembly. It is easily
disassembled and recycled. It also has emotional content.
It's beautiful, and it ages well. You see the patina, and
you see the building aging.
How was the roof designed? The roofs and roof decks are
super-insulated with a radiant heating and cooling "sandwich"
at the ceiling, polyisocyanurate insulation, ventilation
space, waterproof OSB [oriented strand board], cellular
glass insulation, a radiant snowmelt sandwich at the roof
that incorporates recycled newspaper panels, and copper
sheeting at the roof deck and zinc-coated stainless steel
sheeting at the roofs. The entire thing is designed for
disassembly, and has an R-factor of over 65.
How is the house designed for disassembly? The organizing
principle here is despite the fact that the building is
built to last - the full life cycle of the materials and
assemblies are thought through in the design phase. The
building is designed to be taken apart, either as individual
assemblies or as a whole. Each assembly is evaluated using
green or sustainable criteria. Also, each assembly has materials
that have similar lifespans. The exterior wall assembly,
for example, has field and quarried stone, AAC [aerated
autoclaved concrete] block, and cellular glass insulation
that is moisture- and vermin-proof and guaranteed for 60
years. The roof assembly uses sheet materials that can be
removed more easily than asphalt products. Whenever possible,
screw connectors are used rather than nails. The ceiling
assemblies come apart for easy access. The wiring and networking
are installed in raceways for easy reconfiguration. The
concrete and AAC are essentially clean, "push-down"
construction. The SIPs unbolt. The foundations are gravel.
I always say that DFD interiors can be reconfigured with
a screwdriver. The e-House would require a screwdriver,
a pry bar and a long lever arm, but you could get it down
and reuse or recycle most of it.
How does the use of stone contribute to your goals? I decided
to use stone walls around the building. Within Ulster County
[New York] and the surrounding area, there is a very strong
tradition of building with stone. There are Dutch Colonial
buildings - farmhouses, inns, and so forth - and this is
a living tradition within the community.
The more I researched it, the more I came to the conclusion
that [the use of stone] could be examined as a sustainable
technology. First, it's a great windbreak, and it has a
strong frictional coefficient with regard to moving air.
It's not an efficient insulator, but it can trap air. When
the wind blows, it certainly affects the superstructure
of the house. The stone protects the house and makes for
great thermal mass relative to passive solar and shading
technologies. There's not a simple rule of thumb for analyzing
those components, but in the future, the way we look at
things is going to be expanded. It's going to be richer
and broader, and there will be a sense of cultural and technological
authenticity. The stone was harvested from the property.
The are a lot of fallen stone walls and local stoneyards.
The stone is used along with aerated autoclaved concrete
[AAC] block. It's an extremely lightweight concrete block.
It's aerated, which means air is pumped into it, and then
it is autoclaved - or baked - which causes concrete to expand
and create air-bubbles within the blocks. It weighs less
than half of a normal block, and the R- factor is between
10 and 30. There is enough thermal mass in the block to
prevent cold from escaping from within an air-conditioned
building. The block can be cut with carpenter's saw, and
it is put together with 1/16-inch mortar. A special bandsaw
can be shipped to the site to accelerate installation. A
laser-level is used for the base course, and the tolerances
are extremely tight. It doesn't retain moisture, and it
breathes well. I found the product through research, and
the Bricklayers and Allied Crafts union sees it as almost
a high-tech brick. I wanted to have both [AAC and natural
stone] in the house. The AAC forms superstructure of the
house, and the stone is part of a cavity wall. The stone
is a self-supporting, 11-inch-thick veneer.
Did you have certain levels of efficiency in mind, or did
they evolve as time went on? Basically, my approach was
to simply try and make the house as efficient as possible,
but I didn't say I wanted the R-factor to be a certain level,
for example. I certainly was guided by the New York State
code and the new IECC-ICC2000 code, and they did a lot of
thinking for me. I wanted to meet or exceed the codes. I
wanted a super-insulated house. For example, I took special
interest in the roof, because a lot of energy loss occurs
there. Where I exceeded the codes, I did so for a reason.
At the same time, you have to evolve a building that is
consistent within its assembly. Each part of the building
has to be consistent relative to other parts of the building.
For example, if you have a certain amount of glazing in
the house, the R-factor will be at a certain level no matter
what else you do. You can actually over-insulate a building
and waste money doing so.
Tell me about the architecture of the house. What was done
for aesthetic reasons, and what was done for environmental
reasons? It's impossible to separate the two. They are inextricably
interwoven. There were some areas where we were indulgent,
like the bread oven. I guess you could say that's a radiant
heat source, and it uses renewable fuel. But really, [it's
there because] we like making bread.
The way I design is to start with a very strict programmatic
analysis. I study the site and the ground. We did soil analysis
and we did solar analysis regarding photovoltaics.
I also went through maybe a dozen different [architectural]
approaches to the house. I tried a colonial design, and
I tried a building that was pre-fabricated. What characterizes
that evolution is asking the question over and over again
through different lenses - aesthetic; economic; technological;
low initial cost versus life cycle. Certain things kept
coming up: the stone, the fireplace, the view, the use of
AAC, high-efficiency windows, high-touch components. A one
point, it just sort of gelled. I look at things through
multiple lenses. It takes a little more time, but it's worth
it in the end.
How did you get people on board to support the project?
I built a website first. The whole idea of using the Internet
and computing is tied to the project in a very powerful
way, and I made a point of building the entire house in
three-dimensional reality on the computer - down to the
doorknobs and plumbing fixtures. People can go and visit
it, and it will be updated as I go along. I also basically
said, "I am the laboratory. Let's be partners in looking
at the future." It's important to talk to scientists
and engineers, but I also wanted to talk to people who were
installing things and were in the field. For example, if
I wanted to look at radiant heating, I would talk to engineers,
but also to the tradesmen who have installed it. I would
ask them, "If you could talk to the people who manufactured
this product, what would you say?"
My radiant heat people told me to design the loops to avoid
noise and to zone carefully. But that was just the beginning.
My computer people told me that we could improve upon the
home control systems currently in the market if we took
a new attitude toward integration of systems rather than
going for out-of-the-box systems; my heating people told
me to be aware that any system is only as good as its moving
parts, so look carefully at pump life; my photovoltaic people
told me that we should use the point of diminishing returns
as a design criterion; my wood-I-beam people told me that
significant economies could be achieved by paying attention
to the unique characteristics of manufactured wood products;
my insulation people told me that the listed R-factors of
polyisocyanurate are already derated and that the material
is completely stable after a few years, and my plumber told
me that I could get a new hybrid form of American chestnut
tree that is blight resistant. Never pigeon-hole your mechanics.
It's a bit of a change from [typical] "future house"
studies, because they're done in rarified circumstances
and in academia. That's fine for what it is, but I'm interested
in getting past those limitations. Goddard invented the
rocket by tinkering around in his backyard in Massachusetts.
A lot of great music starts in a garage. I like that rocket,
and I like that garage band. I see it as something we do
really well in America - invention as personal fulfillment
and play.
How did you go about selecting the different products for
the house? The first step was significant research and comparative
analysis. I looked at the longevity of the company; the
reputation of the company; and the commitment of the company
to environmental concerns and to innovation. I also looked
at whether or not they were excited. I spoke to some regional
sales managers, and they were thrilled to have someone ask
them these sorts of questions. That was important to me.
It's sort of the idea of forming a community - getting
people from all different walks of life, and having a communal
adventure in terms of exploration. Most people dealing with
sustainable technologies issues are highly motivated. They
do it because they care.
What is the timetable and future of the project? We hope
to have it ready by spring 2001 - contingent on the weather
and the labor pool. I will use it as a work/live and outreach
space, an R&D shop, and a virtual think tank. I want
to continue to explore technologies. The house is set up
for disassembly for a reason. If something doesn't work,
we'll take a different approach. There has also been some
discussion of museum tours and lectures. I've taught and
lectured for over 20 years, and as a result, I saw this
project as a natural extension of that activity. That's
been the nature of my practice, and I'm going to keep doing
that.
About the Housing Architect
Michael McDonough, award-winning architect and industrial
designer, consults worldwide on corporate futurism, personal
environments and product development. His architecture synthesizes
traditional and modern design, emphasizing new materials
and sustainable technologies. McDonough has received numerous
awards from the American Institute of Architects and the
Industrial Design Society of America, and his work has been
exhibited at a number of prestigious institutions, including
the Cooper-Hewitt Museum and Le Musée du Louvre.
A member of the faculty at New York University from 1978-1981,
McDonough has lectured internationally on architecture,
design, and art.
|
