Integrating Services and Environmental Control

Richards Medical Research Laboratories – Louis I. Kahn, Architect. The brick shafts on the periphery of the Richards labs hold stairwells and HVAC ducts, providing an effect reminiscent of the ancient towers of San Gimignano, Italy that Kahn admired. (photo by Smallbones)

Consistent throughout Bill Kleinsasser’s many iterations of his self-published textbook SYNTHESIS are his reminders about how the architects’ work reveals what they have considered and whether they have accounted for everything necessary to create good places for people. Certainly, the successful integration of the technical systems that support a building’s purpose is essential to a thorough consideration of its design. 

Neglecting to adequately account for and integrate these systems can lead to inefficient and problematic buildings. This neglect can be a result of a misalignment of priorities, poor communication among the members of the design team (architects and their engineers too often work in separate silos), or simply a lack of knowledge and experience on the part of the architects.
 
In the following, somewhat wanting excerpt from SYNTHESIS, Bill strove to succinctly express the importance of considering the needs of a building’s technical systems. In my opinion, Bill could and should have written more to expand upon the necessity of aligning aesthetics, spatial design, and fundamentally the project’s organizational structure with the technical demands of a building’s service and environmental control systems. He certainly could have utilized a case study to illustrate how exemplary projects successfully integrated a myriad of technical systems. Nevertheless, his fundamental premise is clear: Design synthesis requires consideration of many essential concerns if a building’s design is to be unified, eloquent, and complete.
 
Technical Systems
Select and design environmental control and other systems that will appropriately serve required spaces without waste or confusion by:

• Determining spatial intent and the kind of services needed.
• Selecting appropriate systems.
• Diagramming the essential disciplines of each system; that is, diagramming their controlling characteristics vis-à-vis organization of spaces.
• Integrating the requirements of the spatial system with the essential disciplines of the service/environmental control systems. Service/environmental control systems may include those for heating, cooling, ventilating, lighting, water supply, waste disposal, drainage, electrical service, communication (television, radio, TV, computer), special circulation (elevator, escalator), fire protection (sprinklers, smoke detection), and special laboratory services.

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As I’ve mentioned previously, Bill never hesitated to use the words of others to illuminate the frames of reference he defined as essential to the creation of truly good architecture. He included the following quotations from Louis Kahn in his fifth edition of SYNTHESIS to better convey the necessity of respecting the technical systems as organizational decisions are made:
 
“I do not like ducts, I do not like pipes. I hate them really thoroughly, but because I hate them so thoroughly, I feel they have to be given their place. If I just hated them and took no care, I think they would invade the building and completely destroy it. I want to correct any notion you may have that I am in love with that kind of thing.”
 
“CLIENT:  Well, now that we have the general form, we have to put in all the guts and see if we can fit them in.
 
ARCHITECT:  If they don’t all fit in easily and properly, then we have the wrong form.”
 
“Engineering is not one thing and design another. They must be one and the same thing.” (Louis I. Kahn)