Sustainable Office Design White Paper

Sustainable office interiors made simple

White Papers

Sustainable Office Design - Unlocking Performance & Productivity

By Beatrice K Otto

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GLOSSARY

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

A lightening quick tour of the jargon:

Biomimicry: science studying nature as a sourcebook for designing new materials, structures, processes and systems. A cornucopia of ideas and well-tested techniques.
Carbon credits: buying the right to produce carbon emissions from those whose production is below an agreed threshold.
Carbon neutral: operating in a way that does not produce net carbon emissions. This can be through making your own emissions 'neutral', or through 'off-setting', buying carbon credits from others.
Carbon footprint: the CO2 emissions you produce relative to any given activity or output.
Carbon off-sets: similar to credits, off-setting your carbon emissions could involve investing in a forest conservation project somewhere to mitigate the effect of your activities on climate change.
Climate change: the signals coming from the planet that human activity may have pushed things too far. Often referred to as 'global warming' although this suggests that things can only get warmer and doesn't allow for the rag-bag of climatic changes that could emerge from high concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
Climate neutral: having no negative effect on climate change.
Closed loop: the art of creating systems, from factory to global trading, that mimic ecosystems by moving from a linear to a circular flow of materials and energy. Think of a lake rather than a river.
Cradle to cradle: another term for closed loop, and a broader notion of life cycle thinking than the formerly used 'cradle to grave'.
Daylighting: maximising natural light through windows and other means such as light pipes (bringing natural light from the roof) and light shelves (bringing natural light from windows deeper into the building than the normal 3-4 metre perimeter). Daylighting reduces the need for artificial lighting and with it the demand for cooling. There's also growing evidence that humanoids like natural light and are more alert, content and productive than in artificial light.
Dematerialisation: reducing the ratio of materials to results, by using fewer or lighter materials, or finding new business models that put the emphasis on selling performance or benefits, rather than products.
Dimming controls: the ability to raise or lower lighting levels. Evidence suggests that people use lower levels of lighting than conventional wisdom has imposed on them, triggering considerable reductions in energy use.
Displacement ventilation: capitalising on the fact that heat rises to create ventilation systems that take excess heat up and out of vents or ducts in the roof.
Eco-efficiency: linking environmental and economic efficiency, this is a key strategy on the road to sustainability, but in itself will not lead there as it doesn't address some underlying systemic flaws in our production systems. Still worth pursuing alongside other strategies.
Ecological rucksack: the invisible (to the user) 'baggage' carried by most products in the form of the energy, materials and negative environmental effects that went into their manufacture and transport. This baggage can be hundreds or even thousands of times greater than the product itself.
Ecosystem services: the realisation that ecosystems provide many irreplaceable services to us free of charge, such as pollination by bees, flood prevention, air cooling and cleaning, soil conservation or water filtration. People are beginning to see the huge cost benefits of preserving these services. One example: New York State realised that fertiliser run-off was polluting its water supply and that it would cost billions less if they bought up rural land around the watershed and paid farmers an annual subsidy NOT to cultivate the land, than if they invested in conventional water treatment facilities. DuPont found that investing in wetland development acted as a water treatment buffer which not only encouraged biodiversity (and good brand reputation) but cost about 25% of the conventional treatment route.
Emissions trading: using market mechanisms to reduce carbon or other undesirable emissions. The EU Emissions Trading Scheme has quadrupled in value in a year to US$ 10 billion. It will soon be expanded to include new industries. The US has been trading sulphur dioxide for years and US companies have voluntarily established the Chicago Climate Exchange for a range of greenhouse gases.
End of life: the idea that products have a linear life, and once it's over, they die. This is being challenged by the notion that products, or at least components, can be reincarnated in many forms to create a series of productive loops.
End of pipe: closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Only the first step towards sustainability since eventually we should design problems out of the system, rather than trying to clean them up.
Factor 4, 10 or 20: reducing resource intensity (energy and materials) for a given outcome. To become sustainable the world needs to aim for Factor 10, that is the same results for 10% of the input. This means a bigger factor of improvement for developed countries, something like Factor 20.
Global warming: a commonly used term for 'climate change' (see above). 'Global warming' suggests a universal rise in temperature, whereas some parts of the globe may become cooler as the knock-on effects of climate change kick in. Hence, 'climate change' is probably more accurate in that it allows for a range of effects, including extreme weather events such as flooding, hurricanes and drought, and some regions potentially becoming cooler.
Greenhouse gas: a cocktail of gases, of which CO2 is the most well known, which can trigger a rise in average temperatures.
Heat gain: the way a building heats up such as absorbing sunlight, creating a need for cooling. By using pale surfaces, trees, natural lighting, or other heat reflecting means, heat gain can be reduced and with it the cooling load.
High performance buildings: a synonym for sustainable building, recognising that sustainable design leads to buildings using fewer resources and less energy with greater well-being and productivity.
Industrial ecology: (re)designing industrial systems to act like ecosystems in a closed loop manner. This allows the 'waste' from one industry or process to be the feedstock of another. Also known as 'industrial symbiosis'.
Life cycle thinking or design: considering the whole impact of a product or process, not just the bits you see. This could include labour issues, the energy and water that went into production, transport implications, manufacturing, use and disposal. The aim is to extend the useful life of products and components, ideally creating a closed loop system. There are hundreds of tools in 'Life Cycle Analysis' or 'Life Cycle Assessment' which let you measure impacts of materials or products.
Micro-generation: generating power in situ, within a building or neighbourhood. As well as creating renewable energy, micro-generation provides resilience; lots of mini 'power-plants' mean large scale black-outs are less likely, and they are more elusive as terrorist targets than big power plants.
Natural ventilation: fresh air and comfortable temperatures without machinery, relying rather on the physics of air flow and heat to create buildings that self-regulate.
Negawatts: when buildings become self-sufficient in energy, anything they produce that is surplus to their needs can be fed into the grid, so-called negawatts, that is, using a negative amount of energy.
Passive ventilation: similar to natural ventilation, passive meaning without machinery.
Rebound effect: making something more efficient can sometimes lead to increased consumption overall. For example, if people know that light bulbs are energy efficient, they may be more likely to leave them on, creating greater energy consumption than conventional bulbs. Therefore worth monitoring the use of more efficient systems.
Resource productivity: yielding more performance or benefit per unit of material or energy input.
Sustainable: all systems (including social, environmental, economic and cultural) flourishing harmoniously without waste, degradation, suffering or superfluity. The best of all possible worlds, but at least partially attainable if we apply the grey matter.
Whole building design: the integrated approach to making buildings more sustainable, allowing you to optimise the system and so simplify the parts of it.
Zero waste: an explicit goal of some organisations, together with 'zero emissions'.

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