Innovation friendly architecture building code??

For four decades Building Codes have been considered the State of The Art 'Best' when fact they are the safety net for all those participants in the building trade who do not know or can see the reason for improved and smart baseline performance.

Code as is - is the innovation damper process as builders and developers and alike see that as their top normative, Bottom line dollars. It does not reflect smart thinking like what I was taught in UK in my first 3 years of architecture education in the early 70's - think, research and act based on best new knowledge and technology. In US the mantra is for the developer - not a dime more cost than needed - as it does add up in large projects. BUT the cost of running the built projects are prohibitively and unnecessarily expensive and the occupant comfort suffers because of this mentality.

People who have successfully done smart Passive or near passive buildings, large or small, NEVER GO BACK to OLD WAYS. The results are breathtakingly beautiful for the occupants - OCCUPANTS - which to my mind like for doctor the patient, is the goal, as it should be? There are builders in Austria and Germany who do not do anything BUT Passive buildings!!!

Not only is the benefit felt in the first instance with higher productivity, the savings over 30 period account to the same cost as the built building. It has been proven time and time again that the actual savings due to employee physical health and happiness (less turnover) is ten fold to 'built and running' savings.

If we were allowed to return to healthy way of doing buildings, where we had enough time to say, there is a better way for long term benefit, rather than copying and pasting code and using the numbers as is, - our clients, users and cities would be infinitely happier, we would develop new technologies and USE THEM!!!!

Over the years I have seen so many smart products and methods being offered from different sources, but neither architects or engineers (even the best) can use them due to the lowest cost professional fee from our end, and lowest cost builder / method approach.

In order to 'break loose' we need to have some developer to show the way. For him or her to beat the competition enough that the rest of the community absolutely have to join the reasonable way forward.

Our current President is of the old school as the selling of the project is about prestige and finishes, where the cost of running the building falls to the occupants first (after they sign the lease), society second, and then the planet. In US alone this way of building costs trillion in wasted energy and equipment each year... and that is roughly twice the cost of our military budget.

Regards

Tapani Talo, AIA

www.Talo-GreenPassiveArchitect.com