Ivan Harbour is the architect of Madrid airport and the chief designer of prestigious architectural projects in New York, Washington and Europe.

In a workshop called Future Cities Lab, Natallie Gatenio and Jason Kelly Johnson (classmates from the University of Michigan) developed the idea of the energy farms.

The sick building syndrome

In connection to Eco Week 2009 in Athens, where there were presentations, films, and seminars, I spoke with architect Eri Poulyanaki about the advantages of bioclimatic architecture. Eri Poulyanaki explains that the eco-architectural principals cannot be applied on all already built buildings.

For example, the buildings in Athens cannot be reconstructed in a way to save energy, because they are very close to each other and this does not let sunrays in and it makes the application of these architectural principals pointless. But bioclimatic architecture can be practiced during the planning and construction of buildings outside the cities.

“Today we use insulation materials, which are plastic and do not allow the toxic particles in the air and the humidity in the buildings to leave. Airing out buildings is not enough, because the stale air is very harmful and it causes the incorrect function of the respiratory system, skin diseases, headaches, and cancer. If we add to all this, the fact that Western people spend 80% of their free time inside, we can understand that his affects all of us,” shares Eri Poulyanaki.

Eri Poulyanaki is an architect and works with bioclimatic architecture. She has worked with the association of architects, who share the ecological construction “Anelixi” ideas and right now she has her own architect firm, which develops projects on Crete.

She says that “according to a research done by the Athenian University on 2000 randomly chosen buildings – private homes and offices, shows that in 70% of them there is at least one type of a pollutant. Some of the main forms of pollutants are the use of electric appliances and smoking but also the construction materials themselves.

Bioclimatic architecture aims to adjust buildings to the different climate conditions and to the environment. The goal is to save energy by securing thermal and optical comfort for citizens. When we speak of optical comfort we mean covering the needs of light in a room by using sunrays. Thermal comfort is the need of a person to have a constant temperature in the house, which is about 18⁰C-20⁰C.”

“The bioclimatic architecture is the one, which respects and uses what is given by nature. It is nothing more than the right architecture,” says Mrs. Poulyanaki.

The biggest percentage of construction materials, which are used in the developed countries are products of the “heavy” industry made out of petrol. “The construction business is at guilt for 50% of noxious gas emissions and causing the Greenhouse effect,” adds the architect.