The document discusses several examples of "fake eco-propaganda" in architecture and urban planning. It analyzes buildings like the Strata Tower in London that touted green features like wind turbines but failed to deliver on energy savings. It also examines the 2012 London Olympics that promised to be the "greenest Olympics ever" but ultimately emitted over 3 million tons of carbon dioxide. The document argues that while sustainability efforts can achieve reductions, high-profile projects often overstate their green credentials and end up producing more emissions than projected due to issues in design and implementation.

1. Save the Nature to Save Us: Fake Eco-Propaganda
Save Nature to Save Us:
Fake ECO Propaganda
Cultural Context Essay
By Nicolas Salas Leon
ID W1422770
4ARC526.2 Cultural Context 2b:
Contemporary Issues in Architecture and Urbanism
BA Architecture
Nicolas Salas – W1422770 University of Westminster 1

2. Save the Nature to Save Us: Fake Eco-Propaganda
Save Nature to Save Us: Fake ECO Propaganda
In this Essay I will discuss the ability in which Humans, us, are trying to become
more ecological to prevent the disappearing of Nature and its sub-species as a
final result to save our planet. However, for the recent days, modern-society has
become more dependent to the value of money, society and selfish. Now days,
those moral values of saving the nature to save the Planet has become more like
a “Save the Nature so we can save money in our bills”. Also, there has being a
massive increase in the investment of renewable energies, green roofs… etc.
which, in some ways, has to be re-study. By twenty fifty, environmental
pressures and pressures on natural resources are already affecting lives,
societies and businesses around the world. It's a challenge that forces all of us to
think differently about how we create real, lasting value today. This is the
challenge of sustainability.
The recently build Strata SE1, also known as the “Strata Tower” in London, is a
148 meters with 43 storey building in Elephant and Castle, Southwark in London.
It was designed by BFLS and it is one of the tallest residential buildings in
London by having more that 1,000 residents living in its 408 flats, in which 280
being empty. Started in 2007 and completed by 2010; also, having a cost of over
£113 millions.
This particular building has three wind turbines at the top of the building, which
was mean to form one of the top ecological auto-sustainable of the century.
These 9 meters turbines are rated at 19 kW each turbine and be expected to
produce about 50MWh of electricity per year; to compare it with an everyday
situation, a normal UK household uses around 4,500KWh per year; giving a such
a result that this building could sustains over 11 houses per year. It was mean to
provide this electricity to power up the common areas of the building, which is
about the 8% of the energy needs of the building.
The average flat price in Elephant and Castle is between £240,000 and £1.25m;
however, for our surprise, the £2.5m three bedrooms penthouse can only be
occupant by wealthy occupants as just 98 are classified as “affordable housing”.
By these means, only posh folks of the upper floor choose as they feel in power to
do so; and they choose to over 70 times making the Turbines stop working
simply because they find the noise and vibrations intolerable.
Furthermore, there are complains about 8%, about the lamentable outcome
given the massive investment into making the building a symbol of
environmental progress.
The Guardian said, “this amount of wind-generated energy would be sufficient to
run the building's electrical and mechanical services as well as the lighting,
heating and ventilation of its public spaces”. However, Jeremy Faludi
(sustainable design strategist and educator) did a research at Project Frog and
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3. Save the Nature to Save Us: Fake Eco-Propaganda
Stanford sustainable design instructors, who called this project “a projection
ridiculous”, and quote, “HVAC and lighting will likely be three-quarters of the
building's energy use”.
Resident Mr Nathan Wheelhouse said: "When I left my house the other morning
it was 28C at 7.30am — it's tropical in there. The cold and hot water pipes flow
next to each other. I feel like I'm in an eco experiment that has gone wrong at the
design stage. I only moved in two weeks ago and I am not enjoying it". As they
also claim the single boiler down the side of the building is overheating their
flats.
“A skyscraper is an energy-greedy building form, both in terms of construction,
and the power needed to take people to their front doors in a lift. To top one off
with some wind turbines are the worst sorts of green-washing.” Mentioned by
Ellis Woodman, the Daily Telegraph’s architecture critic, as he wasn’t impressed
with the whole concept, even though if the turbines did work.
So, even though London people who occupant the Strata Tower knew the “Good”
effect of the three big Turbines on Nature, which at the end of the day saves our
own bill payments; we decided to cut it down and think about ourselves
accommodation instead of Clean-Eco-Efficient-Building.
Further with these concerns, even through the intention was to prevent the
pollution emotion into the Wildlife, the designers of the Strata SE1 seems that
have not really thought about the “avian mortality”. Wind turbines are becoming
more and more popular and within it, the amount of flying fauna that is getting
killed by it. Many ecologists, biologists, ornithologists, and environmentalists at
large have spoken out against wind power on the grounds that it presents too
great a risk to avian wildlife. Recent studies show that the amount of killed flying
animals has rise this century by the increment of wind farms.
The theory is that it was sold to the public as the resource to save the Nature and
become greener in a try to save the Earth from our own pollution. However, this
is just a “very good selling” propaganda but what the really was, it is one of the
best ways to increase the size of our pocket. Also, there is a more cheerful
method of marketing by just replacing “bird” by “avian” and “wildlife”; also,
“turbine” by “farm”, “facility” and “energy”. Isn’t it fascinating?
This is not the only case in which the in-power-people sell us a sub-idea passing
from a self-judging propaganda which makes people feel culpable of the huge
amount of pollution that we emit; therefore, to cleanse the conscience we start to
increase the investment in renewable energies such as Solar, Wind, Thermo,
Hydro… etc. or cooling down the building by having a green roof.
Green-roofs are becoming more and more popular in the architectural design of
buildings, mostly in high buildings. They have been utilized in Europe for 30
years and are quickly gaining popularity in the United States. A green roof is a
specially engineered rooftop that supports plant life as a result to cool down the
building and make the City greener. These Eco-roofs have a cost of £200/ m2
for
a fully planted intensive roof in which the cost for any reinforcement needed to
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4. Save the Nature to Save Us: Fake Eco-Propaganda
the structures in an additional price to this, which also sums the very long time
to build. Also, there is a lifetime maintenance, which has to be covered by
someone; the maintenance usually is the gardener, engineer’s inspectors and
highly cost of repairing if damage. In which, damaging in the green roofs can lead
to a serious problems like water or pesticides and fertilizer leaks.
The point of a Green Roof is to help companies, house owner, or anyone who has
one, save energy with their electricity bills as the plants retain most of the UV
light and heat from the Sun. Green roofs provide partial solutions to several
environmental problems, which are common in urban locations including:
storm-water management, reduction of pollution, improved air quality, and
quality habitats for insects and birds.
In our modernized society we produce too much CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) and if it
is not causing global warming, the excess levels certainly do not help the
problem. One way to get rid of excess CO2 is to grow more plants. Plants take in
CO2 and using photosynthesis they convert it to carbon and oxygen. The oxygen
is released into the air and the carbon is used to grow plants parts.
However, these advantages have ended up with a different result in the real
situation. The reduction of pollution cannot be achieved with a normal grass-cut
cover, which is the now-days most used in green roofs, as the amount of filtering
of CO2 into O2 is minimal.
Also, growing grass also produces CO2 in which scientists talk about the
controversy of the terms ‘carbon sink’ and ‘carbon source’. A carbon sink is a
system that stores more carbon than it produces. A carbon source is a system
that produces more carbon than it stores (ex automobile). Therefore, for the
benefit of the environment we need more sinks and less sources. This happens
during the photosynthesis during day (CO2 into O2) and night time (O2 into
CO2).
Maintaining grass produces carbon (or CO2). Running the mower, watering the
lawn, and even the fertilizer we apply all produce CO2. The mower burns
gasoline and converts it directly to CO2. In order for you to have water, the
municipality must pump it around, and filter it – this all requires energy and the
production of energy produces CO2. Fertilizer needs to be mined, then processes
and then delivered to your door. There are lots of engines burning fuel to make
this happen.
But all these are not only the fail into a “Garden roof” or “Green roof”, as 95% of
the building, which has these roofs, do not allow the public or even the owner of
the building to step inside this Top-gardens. The are different reasons why this
happens such as not enough structure to hold persons, which then leads to a
question asked by most of the building users “is it save to be underneath it?” or
from the environmental professionals “can there not be place more plants than
the existing ones?” These reasons are a bit ironical in an urban and society
aspects, as in cities, we are tired of hearing the words “we are killing the Nature
as we build more.” And continues with a “we should bring the Nature to us”.
These means that we want to have more green in our cities so we can enjoy and
feeling it not only by seen it but also by touching it.
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5. Save the Nature to Save Us: Fake Eco-Propaganda
Here then are the impact in public as I quote from a neighbor next door “So if I
can’t get into the garden roof, what is it for all the Green-propaganda in Cities?”
and they bring a fact that no-many people have thought “we talk about being
greener in the Urban but the only way you can get close to it is by looking at the
satellites images”.
This is a very powerful thinking as leaving aside the effect in nature, we are just
showing off in satellites images when compared with other cities as “our” city
looks greener and “others” looks silver and shinny under the Sun; as it is the only
way to appreciate them. Therefore, here is the sub-idea passing from a self-
judging propaganda where, as we do not see the Nature unless we get out of the
City, we decided to cover the City with plants to just hide the reality like a kid
covering himself with a blanket to ward off nightmares.
Stepping aside the fact that we try to blend Nature with architecture, it is true
that the research of decreasing the CO2 emissions are giving its results. However,
it seems that when we try to show off this results in a large scale, we end up
screwing the results in a vast scale; which ends up delivering a huge invoice to
the Mother Nature.
In the Olympics games of 2012 there was a building expectation of being the
“Greenest Olympics ever” by ensuring that they were fully sustainable and
carbon neutral. It was sold that the Olympic Park would be based on the notion
that if the entire world’s population lived a typical British lifestyle, people would
require the resources of three planets; and so they called their concept:
“Towards a One Planet Olympics”. It was included in the design green building
measures like water recycling, halving the carbon footprint of all construction
projects, and sourcing 25% of each project’s materials from recycled sources.
However, as the games were getting closed to the official date, they have been
noticeably distancing themselves from their original greener-Olympics and being
paying more attention on “reducing” and “mitigating” the carbon footprint of the
games.
The EDF energy company announced the plans of sponsoring the Olympic games
by providing 24MW of clean-energy produced by wind power. Also, it will run a
power plant with biomass boilers on-site which will combined in addition with
heating and cooling; in which will have the ability to switch from natural gas to a
lower carbon and renewable fuel source.
The problem comes when now days the “Eco-Green-Olympics” is producing 3.4
million tons of CO2; just to give an idea of this massive pollution system, a human
produce 0.5 tons of CO2 by just breathing, which means that the Olympic park is
producing the exact amount of 6.8 millions of humans per year. If these values do
not attract your attention, I do not know what it will.
Also, for our surprise as role-model of ECO-Architecture and technology, the
London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games said “Our first objective is
to get a handle on our climate impact and then work out how to avoid our
emissions” in a very vague talk about the cutting emissions. In which does not
even make sense as the Climate impact/change is happening in a more or less
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6. Save the Nature to Save Us: Fake Eco-Propaganda
scale by our emissions; therefore, by cutting down our emission we are actually
helping to reduce the Climate change.
This “fake” propaganda is not far different from the previous ones about being
ECO and saving the nature but then fail in its purpose. It was sold to not only the
public as users, but to the entire world who bought the ECO- idea for the Olympic
games and choose London for that reasons. As the entire world approves and
chooses this Greenerest-Olympics architecture, and it did fall in a fool when
everyone now talks about its massive pollution contribution to the Earth.
It seems like a never endless road. This other case by Lord Foster architects,
who build the 7 More London at the riverside, which was design in a way to save
energy by the use of glass for all the offices; glass is great because it allows
natural light in, limiting the need for electric lighting and saving up to the 55% of
the energy needed. However, the big disadvantage is that it magnifies the heat of
the sun, creating a need for energy-sapping air-conditioning; which ends up
using more energy that it saves; giving a result of an used of the 185% more of
the energy required.
Here then the factor of the design process; is it that the designers are not paying
attention to the Sun positioning and the type of glass? Or is just an arrogant way
to show off a shinny-mirror-building-facade? Both of these questions are linked
to the Now-days-Modern-society which just wants to impress the viewer but
most of the time, hide its feelings, emotions, personalities… you name it; and in
the architecture way: trying to save our planet.
A Londoner says “…and I was submerged by a sea of glass” referring to the high
crystalized buildings around him describing what it was “a futuristic experience”.
Therefore, here is the controversial fact to pin up: we are trying to look like
futuristic movies: full of glass and shinny silver metal but at the same time, we
want to look greener; of course from just a satellite image.
In conclusion, it is fully true that there tons of good-ECO-architecture out there,
working as it should and generating green-energy making the Earth a better
place to live in. Solar panels are getting thinner and transparent so we can place
them like windows in a result of a more efficient way of producing; However, the
fact that we still producing massive amounts of CO2 in building that should be
ecological is by far one of the most worry concerns that we could have now.
Also, there are no limits for this black hole, as we keep believing that we are
doing it “just fine”. The massive Eco-propaganda of the Strata SE1 still these days
on the streets when people passing by the building appreciate the vast turbines
and the still believing that its is one of the iconic-ECO-buildings. However, just
the fact that people “notice” the turbines are because they are stop, and by this I
mean that they are not working; so how is it then a ECO-icon. Or the fact that
even now, some articles says that the Olympic Stadium is one of the most
modern-future-architecture building; however, how is it modern? It could be the
shape of it but no it is called “Greenest” Olympics as per its not very publicly
mention of the vast amount of CO2 emitted per year.
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7. Save the Nature to Save Us: Fake Eco-Propaganda
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8. Save the Nature to Save Us: Fake Eco-Propaganda
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