Environmental Sustainability
The general concept of environmental sustainability refers to the necessary balance between human wants and needs and the capacity of the natural systems of the earth. Commercial buildings can be sustainable using sustainable design. The key principle of sustainable design is its focus on environmentally sensitive development, design and construction, which should produce an absolute minimum of pollution and aim to repair environmental damages of the past (DETR, 1997).
In commercial development, environmental sustainability can be achieved through sensitive construction practices. Site selection and planning should preserve a site's integrity through natural landscaping. Moreover, sustainable site planning for communities is found in strategies that reduce urban sprawl, renew existing infrastructure, and provide a better sense of community and identity to blighted areas. Furthermore, sustainable construction strives to conserve energy by providing buildings that minimize energy use and utilize renewable sources of power – efficient fenestration optimises the penetration of natural light, and dimming systems may be incorporated to control day lighting and maximizing lumen maintenance. Light spillage in exterior lighting may be minimised by using directional.
Renewable energy can be used in order to build in an environmental sustainable way. This refers to naturally occurring sources of power, such as solar, wind, and geothermal energy. Renewable energy resources can serve a variety of functions, including solar-powered hot water heating and wind-generated electricity. When it comes to construction materials, there are three main sustainable design goals: reduce materials use, use renewable resources that are environmentally friendly, and reduce construction waste. To reduce materials use, look to materials that do the same or more with less, such as engineered lumber, steel framing, and roof trusses. The use of renewable resources includes the recycling of building materials from post-industrial or post-consumer recycled waste. Material waste can be avoided at the construction site by using prefabricated construction systems and by means of accurate planning to avoid leftover materials.
In a sustainable design facility, the indoor quality should be physiologically and psychologically healthy. The advantages for the individual are obvious, but this can also positively impact facility owners by decreasing employee absenteeism, increasing productivity, and lowering the risk of potential lawsuits. Finally, low water use design, storm water management and wastewater treatment and reuse can help to create environmental sustainable projects (http://www.greenbuilder.com).
Two examples demonstrate that commercial buildings can be environmental sustainable: First, Stockley Park is regarded to be the foremost European business park. It is situated on the outskirts of Heathrow Airport and benefits from excellent transport links in the form of the adjacent M4 motorway and nearby rail links to London and the rest of the UK. It was opened in 1993 following a multi-million pound project to restore a wasteland of gravel pits and refuse tips which began in 1986. It took contractors 18 months to move four million cubic metres of rubbish, clay and gravel. The construction of the project on an environmentally devastated and technically challenging site is one of the main reasons why the project is a beacon of environmental sustainability. It was a clever decision which can be a successful example for other similar projects. The buildings of Stockley Park are designed to maximize the use of natural daylight and minimise the need for heating and cooling energy power. Moreover, in order to minimise construction waste on site, the construction company established waste transfer routes to ensure that wherever feasible, waste is sent for recycling or sent to a materials recycling facility. Also, all site staff are appropriately trained in environmental procedures through induction training that includes exposure to the relevant environmental issues. Finally, Stockley Park has created a successful transport plan which committed to reduce car use for commuting by twenty percent over the five year period (http://www.stockleypark.co.uk/).
In the case of Canary Wharf, the project was constructed using a range of measures to minimise the environmental impact of the construction activity, focusing on waste management, water pollution, and the use of renewable resources. Furthermore, the Canary Wharf Estate has succeeded in reducing the percentage of employees that arriving by car from twenty two percent to eleven percent (largely as a result of improved public transport links). Also, the Canary Wharf Estate succeeded in reducing construction site waste by reusing and recycling. In order to encourage all tenants to adopt best practise with regard to waste management, the Estate developed and implemented a campaign to increase paper recycling, and issue briefing documents to all retail and office tenants on good waste management practises (http://www.canarywharf.com/mainfrm1.asp).
Social Sustainability
Interface sustainability (2004) states that social sustainability is “focused on the development and process that promotes social interaction and cultural enrichment”. As such, social sustainability suggests that the preservation of historical and natural heritages and local culture should receive particular attention in building design and construction. Moreover, it requires the preservation of equal opportunities for socially disadvantaged and disabled people and that the costs and benefits of preserving these opportunities are distributed among different social and ethnic groups. With a view to the longer term, social sustainability entails reducing the costs of present-day development for future generations – future generations should have the same or enhanced social and environmental development opportunities as we do. What follows is a discussion of three instances of commercial development (two on a large scale and one on a smaller scale) where the principles of social sustainability have been successfully fulfilled. The first, the Bluewater shopping centre, supports social and cultural equality in the present-day while serving as a salient example of site-use that has positive ramifications both environmentally and socially. The second, Canary Wharf, is arguably the highest profile European specimen of inner-city regeneration and makes a substantial social contribution both now and in the future to a neglected and disadvantaged part of London. The third, the Inn of the Anasazi in New Mexico is an example of a commercial development that has enhanced the contribution of an existing building to its social and cultural milieu.
Bluewater is the largest retail centre in Europe housing over 330 stores. It was built in a disused chalk quarry, located near Dartford in Kent and comprises of a variety of shops, from designer outlets to low cost fashion and domestic goods. The centre has an array of social sustainability advantages by virtue of its design: it brings people together by offering a range of facilities that go beyond the boundaries of shopping: there are specially designed parking spaces allowing easy access to the centre for those with special needs; indoors, trained hosts are provided, whose services include sign language for the deaf and multi-lingual translation for foreign guests. A number of guides are also provided, published with enlarged print or Braille for those with sight disabilities. In addition the centre provides a hire service for manual or electric wheelchairs and electric scooters (www.bluewater.co.uk).
Bluewater also provides a number of services aimed at families, including baby care rooms, baby changing facilities, bottle warming facilities and a private mothers’ feeding room. All of the centre’s dining areas have been designed for pushchair access and all contain high chairs. Pushchairs can be obtained free of charge from the concierge desk and there is a fully staffed crèche and designated ‘kids village’ where children can be supervised while they play and learn (ibid).
The priority of social interaction is also reflected in a range of activities that are available for both adults and children. These include fishing, golf, cycling, boating, cinemas and a discovery trail sponsored by a major clothing manufacturer. Blue water also houses a unique quiet room available to guests, hosts and employees to reflect, pray or meditate and a community room has been implemented for non-profit groups such as schools and charities to hold meetings or give presentations free of charge (ibid.).
By contrast, Canary Wharf is a prestigious 35-hectare commercial and residential development in the East London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It comprises 23 office buildings with a floor area totalling 1,200 million square metres. In design terms, the development encourages social interaction by means of its three malls and leisure facilities which total 56,000 square metres. In addition the development has nine hectares of landscaped open space for its residents to enjoy ('http://www.canarywharf.com/mainFrm1.asp?strSelectedArea=Lifestyle').
The Canary Wharf Group (CWG) has established a Community Outreach Programme aimed at encouraging contact and involvement with the local community, authorities and support agencies through twenty-four social and environmental targets met between July 2003 and June 2004. These focus on both present-day and future social sustainability by aiming to promote the accessibility of Canary Wharf to the local community and to enhance education levels in the Borough. Specifically, the measures have included the formation of a football academy, local gymnastics club and hurdling squad, the appointment of a CWG local sports development officer and sponsorship of the local football league. The educational programmes are particularly innovative and include the establishment of seven after-school study centres in primary schools, the introduction of a construction apprentice programme and the formation of a wealth of nations conference to encourage private sector involvement in the local community. The success of the Outreach Programme is reflected in CWG’s receipt of the 2004 Corporate Social Responsibility award sponsored by Colliers CRE (ibid.).
The Inn of Anasazi is a fifty-nine room luxury hotel located off the Governor’s Plaza in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was redeveloped in 1991 from an unattractive steel and glass structure used as juvenile detention centre to an adobe style structure with an appearance that looks centuries old. All of the construction materials, furniture and art have been sourced from the local community, encouraging local residents to work together and preserve their culture. Staff are intentionally drawn from all three of the local cultures. Moreover, native, Hispanic and Anglo and are trained in conflict resolution - a service also offered to other community organisations free of charge (Hawken et. al., 2000)
In addition, employees receive payment to perform volunteer work for two hours per week aimed at promoting cultural awareness in the local community. Staff turnover is minimal, and the Inn holds regular seminars offering advice to other hotels in the area teaching them how to emulate their social sustainability success. The hotel has a celebrated gourmet restaurant and instead of being thrown away, leftover produce is donated to the homeless shelters to help feed the local homeless population (ibid.).
Together, these examples demonstrate that, either through clever forward-planning or sensitive redevelopment, commercial property can be used to sustain both social interaction people and cultural enrichment. In the case of Bluewater the interaction of people is encouraged through all the facilities offered by the centre and the implementation of access and mobility structures to obtain these. The formation of educational activities and the specifically designated community room all add to the preservation of cultural enrichment. Canary Wharf has been successful not only in obtaining social responsibility for its residents but also for the local community, highlighting that commercial property can reach far beyond its built boundaries. The Inn of Anasazi has been successful in encouraging different cultures to work together and has helped to spread its success by teaching others how to emulate it. Commercial property may therefore be socially sustainable not only in its own right, but also on a much wider geographical scale.
Economic Sustainability
In the case of economic sustainability, the operative assumption here is that ‘the sustainability of buildings should not affect the economic performance of the building [and property] sector and the national economy as a whole’ (Langford et.al., 1999:5). This assumption is particularly apt in the context of commercial buildings if we take into account the motives underlying their construction and ownership: a large proportion of major retail and office premises are owned by funds whose motives are characterised by the desire to generate both long and short term profits in the form of capital growth and rent. Economic sustainability therefore concerns the ability of a given building’s owners to maximise their revenue from that building over its lifetime.
As suggested in the discussion above, however, the economic aspect of the triple bottom line is intrinsically related to the social and environmental aspects. Environmental considerations such as energy consumption are reflected in the design of commercial buildings and, in turn, in the cost of constructing them (in the short run) and maintaining them (in the medium to long run). In so far as this is the case, the cost to the developer may be either increased or decreased by the inclusion of environmental considerations, depending on the building in question. In broader terms, the link between environmental and economic sustainability may be understood in terms of environmental capital. This is a ‘monetary expression of the depletion of natural resources and the deterioration of the natural environment in the process of material production or of other human activities’ (Langford et.al., 1999:6). In effect, a specific value should be attached to the depletion and deterioration of natural resources arising from the maintenance and construction of commercial buildings.
Second, social and demographic considerations determine the market for a given commercial building and, in consequence, the nature of its use and value. For instance, the demand for urban commercial premises was substantially affected by the tendency of post-war UK planning policy to focus on the decentralisation of people and jobs from the congested inner city areas’ (Goodchild and Munton, 1985:157). The demands made of commercial buildings are also determined by other aspects of social change, such as the concept of working from home (enabled in turn by the IT revolution), and the increasing mobilisation of the female workforce. The extent to which social and environmental considerations impact on economic sustainability will vary over time according to influents such as governments’ environmental policies and the manner of economic development regionally, nationally and internationally. A commercial building may therefore be economically sustainable by virtue of its fulfilment of environmental and social sustainability criteria, not least to the extent that these are often viewed by businesses as desirable ends in themselves. Given this and what follows, it comes as no surprise that the examples used above, in Canary Wharf, Bluewater and Stockley Park, are also shining examples of economic sustainability.
Other factors remain important, however, several of which are highlighted in the literature. Sayce et. al. (2004) describe eight factors that potentially impact on the value of commercial buildings and, by implication, their economic sustainability: Adaptability, energy efficiency, pollutants, accessibility of the property, contextual fit, water and waste management, and building quality. Three of these are of particular interest here (the others having been dealt with already) and may be readily split into two groups: First, adaptability and building quality; second, accessibility. To these two pairs is added a third, namely ‘innovative management’.
On the demand side of the market for commercial property, business culture and working style require office buildings to accommodate high levels of both transience (in terms of tenant turnover) and volatility (in terms of work setting change). In practice, this means that services and space planning elements may have to be adapted on a much more frequent basis, and that developments in IT may render commercial buildings’ technological infrastructures obsolete with remarkable frequency (BCO, 2004). Accordingly, a lack of adaptability is identified as a major cause of commercial building depreciation. Baum (1993) argues, moreover that configuration, “the horizontal and vertical layout of a building, which acts largely through functional obsolescence… [makes] a building less useful as requirements change” (cited in Sayce et. al. 2004:5). Building quality is related to the general concept of adaptability in so far as configuration (plan layout, floor to ceiling height), internal specification (services and finishes) and external appearance (Baum, 1994:31) impact on how readily the building may be updated. Additionally, high building quality may adversely affect the cost of updating a building, especially if much of the additional expenditure has initially been directed towards its IT infrastructure. In terms of these two factors, the ideal economically sustainable commercial building would benefit from a neutral architectural appearance, generous clearance under floors and above ceilings to cater for future upgrades to services such as electrical trunking and air conditioning, non-structural external facings and readily movable internal walls on comparatively large floorplates. A number, if not all, of the buildings at Stockley Park fulfil precisely this brief (see, for instance, www.3roundwood.co.uk; www.2roundwoodavenue.co.uk; http://www.2longwalk.co.uk/2findSpace/index.asp), while simultaneously providing a significant degree of aesthetic differentiation from building to building. Similar principles have also been borne in mind in the commercial buildings at Canary Wharf. Equally, Great Portland Estates’ Metropolis House, in Central London, is pending completion of an extensive renovation programme that takes advantage of these features of its construction.
Building accessibility relates to the readiness of access within the building and from outside the building. On one level, in so far as disabled access is concerned, accessibility relates closely to adaptability. On another level, the ability of employees to commute to a building is a major factor affecting its sustainability in the long term. In this respect, it is important that a building is in a location well served by public transport and major roads. Depending on the market at which the building is aimed, adequate car parking may also be a priority. Out-of-town shopping and business parks typically cater well to these needs. Stockley Park, for instance, provides ample car parking, is immediately adjacent to Heathrow Airport and the M4 motorway and is within easy reach of train and underground links (www.stockleypark.co.uk). Access was an equally important consideration in the case of Canary Wharf, and indeed the development received a marked boost in terms of economic sustainability following the eastward extension of the London Underground Jubilee Line which improved the ease of access to Central London.
In the event that a given commercial building fares poorly with regard to the factors outlined above, its economic sustainability may be enhanced by a general notion of ‘innovative management’. In some cases, the degree of transience and volatility in the commercial property market, or indeed a demographic or economic shift, may render an existing building obsolete. Where the structure of the building is sound, and, more specifically, where it is impossible to demolish it (due to English Heritage listing, for example), the building may often benefit from a change of use. One such example is the former headquarters of the Department of Housing and Social Security (DHSS) at Elephant and Castle, Central London. Following the relocation of the DHSS, the listed building was converted to residential use, and remains in considerable demand as an apartment building. In other instances, a building’s owners may be forced to employ innovative tactics to let an otherwise awkward proposition. For example, Tower 42, the former headquarters of the National Westminster Bank in the City of London has been very successfully let by its present owners, Greycoat, to a number of different tenants (www.tower42.com): The building’s small floorplates (approximately 300 square meters) lent themselves poorly to large-scale corporate activity, but were very well suited to the transient market for serviced offices.
Summary of Findings
The ‘Triple Bottom Line’ presents some very strong arguments for commercial sustainable building development. Each of the three sub-sections; the economic, social and environmental factors are intrinsically important to the theory of sustainability, and are so intertwined it is quite difficult to separate them from each other entirely. For example, the social and environmental factors carry their own advantages, yet can often contribute to economic profitability, further consolidating the three individual factors into one.
All three factors carry their own importance, and contribute to the theory of sustainability in such a way that it would be redundant if one of the Triple Bottom Line was excluded.
In today’s Western society, a cynical but perhaps realistic view would suggest that the inclination to implement sustainable practice in commercial buildings is fairly low primarily because many believe it is not economically viable. Therefore the task in hand is perhaps to focus on the education of the economic benefit of sustainable building, as this seems to be a key inhibitor of progress in the field. There seems to be confusion and lack of clarity of peoples understanding of the economic aspect of sustainability, while the environmental and social issues enjoy widespread consensus of their benefits.
Future legislation may make sustainability in commercial buildings necessary rather than optional, and perhaps such legislation is required to fulfil the benefits and requirement sustainable commercial buildings have to offer. Social, as well as Government pressure may also speed up the process of implementation. Many companies, such as those involved with Canary Wharf, under the pressure of measurements such as BREEAM, have gained considerably in terms of image from focusing on social sustainability. Again, education is a key factor here as growing awareness of commercial sustainability will force developers and occupiers to satisfy public demand.
Luckily, while the implementation of commercial sustainability has been relatively low thus far, the notions of sustainability are backed internationally as shown at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. The environmental problems are ongoing and remain a strong motivation for action, and as new technology and ideas develop, sustainable commercial building should flourish.
For example, a survey of many investors and their advisers has revealed that individuals feel committed to environmental improvement but look to the UK government to take a regulatory lead (Parnell and Sayce, 1999).
