Design and Construction of Bioclimatic Wooden Greenhouses, Volume 1 E-Book

Gian Luca Brunetti

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 609

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

This book is the first of four dealing with bioclimatic design and construction by focusing on the most basic and polyvalent of modern environmental systems: the bioclimatic greenhouse, the "Swiss-army chainsaw" of architecture. More specifically, this first volume focuses on preliminary bioclimatic design of greenhouses, laying down fundamental principles that are also likely to be invaluable in designing, in more general terms, bioclimatic and low-energy architecture, with low environmental impact. This multi-volume book covers both free-standing greenhouses that can naturally heat and cool themselves, and lean-to greenhouses that support the natural heating and cooling of buildings; this includes both agricultural greenhouses and greenhouses suited to host people. As a result, it is a trans-disciplinary work deriving its areas of concern from a broad range of study areas, spanning from environmental, to constructional, to structural, drawing the clarity of the approach from the fact that the topics are presented by a single author with a single voice and a designer's mindset. To achieve this, the book adopts a composite set of explanatory strategies and communication registers - including extensive support by 3D construction drawings and examples - and presents not only stateof-the-art solutions, but also experimental ones.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Foreword

Introduction

1 Basic Concepts

1.1. What a greenhouse usually is – and what it could be

1.2. The historical trajectory of greenhouses

1.3. The main design factors: shape, orientation and envelope characteristics, in the context of local microclimates

1.4. Solar gains and air retention as conditions for the greenhouse effect

1.5. Solar gains and thermal losses

1.6. Thermal storage

1.7. Passive ventilative cooling

1.8. Dissipation of heat towards the sky

1.9. Dependence of solar control on the radiation type

2 Fundamental Relations Between Greenhouse Features and Climatic Factors

2.1. General considerations

2.2. Greenhouses for cold, cool and temperate climates

2.3. Considerations on greenhouses for cold climates

2.4. Framing the theme of greenhouses for hot climates

2.5. Shadehouses and nethouses

3 Fundamental Complements for Solar Greenhouse Design

3.1. On passive heating of greenhouses

3.2. On the role of solar gains

3.3. On the main passive heat transfer strategies in solar greenhouses

3.4. On the role of thermal masses for passive greenhouse heating

3.5. Passive cooling of greenhouses

3.6. Evaporative cooling

3.7. Greenhouse features deriving from use and typology

4 Advanced Complements for Solar Greenhouse Design

4.1. Considerations related to shape

4.2. Considerations combining shape and construction

4.3. Ventilative considerations related to shape

4.4. Position of the shading devices

4.5. Movable thermal insulation

4.6. Microclimates in solar greenhouses

4.7. Walkways, in growing greenhouses

Conclusion

References

Index

Summary of Volume 2

Summary of Volume 3

Summary of Volume 4

Other titles from iSTE in Civil Engineering and Geomechanics

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Chapter 1

Table 1.1.

Thermal radiation emitted from the ground, sky emissivity and rad

...

Table 1.2.

Sky emissivity and thermal radiation emitted from the sky at diff

...

Table 1.3.

Foliation period and shading coefficient of some plant species. A

...

Chapter 3

Table 3.1.

Pressure coefficients on the façades and roof of a simple buildin

...

Table 3.2.

Coefficient W at different altitudes above sea level and at diffe

...

Table 3.3.

Table of the heat index readapted from the U.S. National Oceanic

...

List of Illustrations

Chapter 1

Figure 1.1

Scheme of a hothouse, from the second half of the 17th century (f

...

Figure 1.2

In the foreground: orangeries at the chateau of Versailles. Desig

...

Figure 1.3

Central gallery of the orangeries at the chateau of Versailles. P

...

Figure 1.4

Orangerie at the Villa Reale in Monza, Italy. Designed by Giusepp

...

Figure 1.5

Neoclassical orangerie by Robert Adam at Croome Park, Croome Cour

...

Figure 1.6

Glazed roof in an early greenhouse drawing, 1714. Copper engravin

...

Figure 1.7

Study for a botanical greenhouse, John Claudius Loudon. Today, th

...

Figure 1.8

Another study about greenhouse shape by John Claudius Loudon. Thi

...

Figure 1.9

Study for a pineapple greenhouse by John Claudius Loudon. Like th

...

Figure 1.10

Hothouses by Charles Rohault de Fleury in the Jardin des Plantes

...

Figure 1.11

Charles Rohault de Fleury, section of the hothouses in the Jardi

...

Figure 1.12

Crystal Palace, 1851. Joseph Paxton and Decimus Burton

Figure 1.13

Ridge-and-furrow construction solution adopted in the Crystal Pa

...

Figure 1.14

Construction scheme of the wall structure of the Crystal Palace

...

Figure 1.15

An example of a ridge-and-furrow construction in a historical an

...

Figure 1.16

The Palm House in the Royal Kew Gardens, London (1841–1849). Dec

...

Figure 1.17

Project of an attached solar greenhouse in the Encyclopedie of D

...

Figure 1.18

Example of a solar greenhouse built in the first half of the 20t

...

Figure 1.19

One of the several realized projects for a solar Ark by the New

...

Figure 1.20

Lean-to solar greenhouse in Belgium. Photo: Arnes Buric, License

...

Figure 1.21

Scheme of a botanical solar greenhouse equipped with solar refle

...

Figure 1.22

Ground-level plan and transversal section of the house in Regens

...

Figure 1.23

Row houses in Freiburg (social housing settlement “Lindenwaeldle

...

Figure 1.24

View of the BedZed ecovillage, Sutton, London, designed by Alan

...

Figure 1.25

Exploitation of direct solar gains in the solar housing “Platbus

...

Figure 1.26

Maison Latapie, Floirac. Lacaton and Vassal (1993) (see: https:/

...

Figure 1.27

Maison Latapie, interior view of the greenhouse. Photo: Alan Has

...

Figure 1.28

House in a greenhouse, Saint-Mars-de-Coutais. Frank Gerno and Ma

...

Figure 1.29

Views of the house side-enclosed greenhouses by Patrick Partouch

...

Figure 1.30

Social housing in Mulhouse. In this case as well, the constructi

...

Figure 1.31

House Temoin, in Laval, France, designed by Cécile Gadoin and An

...

Figure 1.32

Large-scale commercial greenhouse lit with artificial light near

...

Figure 1.33

Qualitative representation of the relations between bioclimatic

...

Figure 1.34

Example of thermal airflows at the landscape scale, in valleys a

...

Figure 1.35

The electromagnetic spectrum. The solar radiation is the curve o

...

Figure 1.36

Relation between the angle of incidence of solar radiation and g

...

Figure 1.37

Some airflow strategies exploiting ground channels or a basement

...

Figure 1.38

Solution creating the premises for natural convection in a close

...

Figure 1.39

A variation of the solution for obtaining a passive closed air l

...

Figure 1.40

A fan protected by a mesh in a hand-made wooden greenhouse. Phot

...

Figure 1.41

Integration of fanned vents in the gable walls of polycarbonate

...

Figure 1.42

Section of a fanned vent with a top-hinged insulated cover (see

...

Figure 1.43

Solar apertures and thermal-loss angles of thermal masses locate

...

Figure 1.44

Diurnal thermal capacity (i.e. thermal capacity that is effectiv

...

Figure 1.45

The main possible heat transfer strategies for solar gains in gr

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Figure 1.46

Ventilation fan aimed to move the air horizontally around the pl

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Figure 1.47

Arrangement of horizontal airflow fans for extensive greenhouses

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Figure 1.48

Stack effect ventilation movements in greenhouses having an asym

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Figure 1.49

Stack effect in an atrium and (left) a tall greenhouse (right).

...

Figure 1.50

Luminance distribution on the sky dome in the case of cloudy sky

...

Figure 1.51

From left to right: specular reflection, diffuse reflection (Lam

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Figure 1.52

Greenhouse apertures and solar apertures in winter (above) and s

...

Figure 1.53

Primary design parameters of a solar greenhouse

Figure 1.54

Influence of the height of solar greenhouses on their recommende

...

Figure 1.55

Some of the main possible shapes of a solar greenhouse, derived

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Figure 1.56

Studies of greenhouse shapes by John Claudius Loudon, 1818 (from

...

Figure 1.57

Dimensions at play in the two cases taken into account.

Figure 1.58

Comparison of the geometrical criterion for obtaining the term a

...

Figure 1.59

Example of a solar polar diagram superimposed onto an environmen

...

Figure 1.60

Example of how the top edge of the obstructed part of the sky va

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Figure 1.61

Example of a solar cylindrical diagram (created with the softwar

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Figure 1.62

Process for defining a parallel solar view in a 3D modeler (Sket

...

Figure 1.63

Types of shading devices and their effects, related to different

...

Figure 1.64

Effect of a horizontal shading device on a window towards the eq

...

Figure 1.65

Effect of a horizontal shading device on a window towards the eq

...

Figure 1.66

In the image on the left, the issue of solar-thermal asynchronic

...

Figure 1.67

Shade cloth on a pergola, forming a semi-opaque horizontal devic

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Figure 1.68

Horizontal obstructions in the vertical plane. Despite the fact

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Figure 1.69

The shading effect of an overhang composed of frontal shading fi

...

Figure 1.70

A horizontal shading device constituted by frontal fins parallel

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Figure 1.71

Example of a grid constructed with differentiated fins, and suit

...

Figure 1.72

Example of a vertical shading device in a façade. Photo: George

...

Figure 1.73

Venetian blind. Photo: public domain

Figure 1.74

View of the west façade of Mill Owners’ Association Building in

...

Figure 1.75

An example of a solution addressing the shading needs of a windo

...

Figure 1.76

Shade-cloth on a construction site. This type of shade-cloth dif

...

Figure 1.77

Trellis in a walkway in the Gardens of Generalife in the Alhambr

...

Figure 1.78

A row of deciduous trees can constitute a simple and effective f

...

Figure 1.79

Another effective solution for obtaining a green frontal shading

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Figure 1.80

Example of a wooden trellis mounted on a zincked steel frame. Th

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Chapter 2

Figure 2.1

In an all-transparent greenhouse, the solar aperture of the opaqu

...

Figure 2.2

The wind should never work against the stack effect, which is, in

...

Figure 2.3

The wind should always be put to work in the same direction and v

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Figure 2.4

In this example, the conflict between wind-driven flow and stack

...

Figure 2.5

As in Figure 2.4, here the inlets and the outlets are symmetrical

...

Figure 2.6

As in Figure 2.5, here the wind-driven flow at the top inlet cont

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Figure 2.7

Creation of depression at the rooftop by elongation of the flow p

...

Figure 2.8

Another example of creation of depression at the rooftop by elong

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Figure 2.9

Yet another example of the creation of depression at the rooftop

...

Figure 2.10

The two opposite different roof slopes of a solar greenhouse, in

...

Figure 2.11

A good placement of the ventilation openings for a satisfactory

...

Figure 2.12

A simple shadehouse for tomatoes

Figure 2.13

A small nethouse tunnel

Figure 2.14

A shadehouse built with a pergola-like structure

Figure 2.15

A shadehouse in Lisbon (“

Estufa fria

”). These shading dev

...

Figure 2.16

Strategies for using an attached shadehouse (on the left of the

...

Chapter 3

Figure 3.1

Position of the backdraft dampers in an air loop between an attac

...

Figure 3.2

Schematization of the effect of thermal inertia combined with “in

...

Figure 3.3

The wind flow can be channeled and directed by the position of th

...

Figure 3.4

Signs of the pressures around a cubic shape in plan (left) and ve

...

Figure 3.5

The relation between the slope of the upwind part of a roof and i

...

Figure 3.6

Outlets higher than the inlets do not create conflicts between th

...

Figure 3.7

Outlets lower than the inlets create conflicts between the stack

...

Figure 3.8

Analog of in the case in which the ventilation exchange between g

...

Figure 3.9

Here, a situation similar to that featured in Figure 4.15 is show

...

Figure 3.10

Here, the same situation of Figure 3.9 is shown, but in plan. Al

...

Figure 3.11

Plan views of three wing-wall solutions. From top to bottom, the

...

Figure 3.12

Basic scheme of a skylight vent/window openable by pulling a rop

...

Figure 3.13

Mechanically controlled row of awning windows (in a greenhouse i

...

Figure 3.14

A fairly common combination: on the roof, awning windows command

...

Figure 3.15

Row of awning windows controlled in groups and kept in position

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Figure 3.16

Awning window in a greenhouse in the garden of the Natural Histo

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Figure 3.17

Awning windows as bottom inlets and awning windows as top outlet

...

Figure 3.18

Awning windows as bottom inlets and awning windows as top outlet

...

Figure 3.19

Section of the buildings in Solihull, UK, designed by Arup and P

...

Figure 3.20

Scheme of the airflows in one of the chimneys in question for tw

...

Figure 3.21

Factor c with respect to W and ET

0

Figure 3.22

In this bioclimatic (psychrometric) chart plotted with Climate C

...

Figure 3.23

Section of traditional wood frames (rafters, mullions) featuring

...

Figure 3.24

Scheme of a downdraft cooling shaft. Derived from drawings by Gi

...

Figure 3.25

Downdraft cooling chimneys at the EXPO 1992 in Sevilla.

Figure 3.26

Global Ecology Research Center, Stanford, California. EHDD Archi

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Figure 3.27

Scheme of the downdraft cooling chimney (right, in section and p

...

Figure 3.28

Scheme of a downdraft cooling tower combined with a greenhouse.

...

Figure 3.29

Scheme of indirect convective exploitation of radiative cooling

...

Figure 3.30

Thermal “bulb” described by the isotherm lines in the ground as

...

Figure 3.31

Parallel view of a Chinese-style modern agricultural solar green

...

Figure 3.32

Sloping the top part of the back wall reduces the minimum distan

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Figure 3.33

Prince Edward Island Ark, Cape Cod (Massachusetts), 1976, design

...

Figure 3.34

Charles Darwin’s greenhouse, Downe, Greater London. An 18th

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Figure 3.35

Interior of Darwin’s greenhouse. Photo: Pam Fray, 2009. The tran

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Figure 3.36

Another historical example of a restored lean-to solar greenhous

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Figure 3.37

Ventilated opaque roof configurations built with wood: (a) light

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Chapter 4

Figure 4.1

Side enclosure in a historical greenhouse at Keswick Norfolk, UK.

...

Figure 4.2

Scheme of a gutter connected to a downpipe at the eave. The side

...

Figure 4.3

Gutter and downpipe serving a collection tank in a self-built gre

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Figure 4.4

Vertical section of a self-built house insulated with straw bales

...

Figure 4.5

When the attached greenhouse and the building share the same heig

...

Figure 4.6

Full-height openings can behave like two separated openings in co

...

Figure 4.7

Solutions for equalizing the difference in temperature between di

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Figure 4.8

Typical situations involving ventilative cooling due to stack eff

...

Figure 4.9

Situations involving stack-effect-driven flow paths typical of mi

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Figure 4.10

Shortened details section (the building is nine stories high) of

...

Figure 4.11

Analogue of Figure 3.8, in plan. The air flow, due to mechanical

...

Figure 4.12

The indoor flow paths are mainly determined by the inlets. This

...

Figure 4.13

The indoor flow paths are determined by the inlets. This figure

...

Figure 4.14

Wind-rose obtained with Climate Consultant. This example refers

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Figure 4.15

Influence of the openings in a shared wall on the indoor flows i

...

Figure 4.16

Influence of the openings in a shared wall on the indoor flows i

...

Figure 4.17

Analogue of Figure 4.16 in plan

Figure 4.18

There are three alternative strategies for addressing the object

...

Figure 4.19

Loose shade cloth on a growing bed (photo: Caryrivard, 2009, Cre

...

Figure 4.20

Tensioned shade cloths used like canvases can work as frontal sh

...

Figure 4.21

Top-packable external Venetian blind (copyright: public domain).

Figure 4.22

A properly chosen ordinary grid, like this zinked steel grid, ca

...

Figure 4.23

A perforated steel sheet can be used as a partially transmissive

...

Figure 4.24

Like the perforated sheets (previous image), wire meshes are not

...

Figure 4.25

Possible obstructive geometries of equator-exposed (south in the

...

Figure 4.26

Placement scheme of some internal thermal curtains hung to slide

...

Figure 4.27

Microclimates in a solar greenhouse in the winter. 1. Radiant-co

...

Figure 4.28

Left: scheme of a cold-sink pit in the context of a solar greenh

...

Figure 4.29

The most basic dimensional criteria for designing the layout of

...

Guide

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Foreword

Introduction

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

Conclusion

References

Index

Summary of Volume 2

Summary of Volume 3

Summary of Volume 4

Other titles from iSTE in Civil Engineering and Geomechanics

Wiley End User License Agreement

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Series EditorGilles Pijaudier-Cabot

Design and Construction of Bioclimatic Wooden Greenhouses 1

Preliminary Design

Gian Luca Brunetti

First published 2022 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

ISTE Ltd27-37 St George’s RoadLondon SW19 4EUUK

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030USA

www.iste.co.uk

www.wiley.com

© ISTE Ltd 2022

The rights of Gian Luca Brunetti to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s), contributor(s) or editor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of ISTE Group.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022941273

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA CIP record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN 978-1-78630-851-1

Foreword

This a work for which we have been waiting for a long time, because it confronts the problem of sustainability without starting from general energy-saving principles and the ways in which Prometheus stole energy from the Gods (nature), but, more simply, from a device that not only embodies in itself the general terms of the problem, but also, and above all, has the capacity to extend its domain to numerous disciplinary areas: architectural design, building energy, construction materials, aesthetic perception, natural lighting, ventilation, physical well-being, regulations, etc. The greenhouse becomes almost a pretext to traverse new ways through which humans discover hidden forces in nature waiting to be freed. In this work, an explicit, strong desire for pacification with nature can be recognized, combined with a desire to make the generous properties of nature emerge, to build a sincere and determined dialogue that does not require “active” procedures and external energies, but produces what it needs simply by extracting from itself what it already has in itself, hidden in the mechanism of transformation of solar radiation into heat energy.

But all this, which is internal to a rigorous scientific path, cannot help to have significant consequences not only on the manner in which urban artifacts are used, but also, and above all, on their spatial organization, on the languages and new materials that this experience carries with itself, thanks to the fact that it involves all of the procedures of architectural design, at all scales.

Today, it is difficult to imagine what the next new forms of living and inhabiting will be. But what we can expect is that they will be structures in which thermodynamics, in its diverse applications, will play a significant role. It is completely natural that, in the new tendency, the energy issue will have to enter into a dialogue with all the forces boiling up in the design world, and that – and above all – it will have an essential role in the considerations that are born around the concept of place, in which the historical–social experience will also find reasons in those physical variables that belong to the concept of environment. These are variables that can be measured and compared, and that can influence the thermal gradient triggering the signal of well-being.

After all, this work on greenhouses already shows, in some historical examples, that the phenomena linked to site position, orientation, slope, material, etc. are often related to rules born from simple laws of nature such as gravity, transmission of solar radiation, seasonal cycles, wind, ground, transmissivity, isolation and storage. In this manner, in architectural design, a process takes a shape such that the interrelations that are born between a simple object of design (the greenhouse) and a broad disciplinary range are the product of a series of contaminations in which beauty and function put into discussion analogical references spanning from simple envelopes conceived for botanics and agriculture, to exposition places, to house-integrated greenhouses, to greenhouses as spaces.

But how much of the living space of humans is a design theme? For now, we are witnessing some bold experiments in which architecture tries to go beyond the simple addition/filter of a greenhouse body to become an integrated structure, up to the point of transforming the living space. The transparencies of Mies van der Rohe, dissolving the limit between inside and outside, complexify themselves, for example, within the projects by Lacaton and Vassal, up to the point of becoming devices capable of climatizing environments that renounce neither the landscape nor well-being. We are witnessing multiple attempts that not only try to answer the simple energy quest, but also have the courage to reflect on the ways in which a new language in architecture is being formed. More and more frequently, new forms deriving from technological and formal experiments put the novel ways of living on trial; and with them, the materials and spaces mix up the traditional functions on the basis of new hierarchies and relations.

But where do the new forms come from? What tensions are sustaining and orienting them?

We often see bizarre and gratuitous proposals that arise from an obsessive need for new and unusual formal structures; a need that gets exhausted by itself. This is an old thread, involving the concept of autonomy of architecture and the very complex relation of architecture with the evolution of society and its representation. Today, we are witnessing a mutation that involves both the world of digitization and that inherent in the energy issue and its reflection on environmental problems. It is entirely legitimate that we ask ourselves how these changes can impact not only the forms that support the reasons for economic choices, but also the new cultural sensitivities that assign the task of reconsidering the relationship between artifice and nature to human intervention. Then, mitigation interventions such as greenhouses do not simply add themselves to the existing artifacts, as so often happens, but become an architectural project by themselves, proposing themselves as a new form in which temperature and light, heat storage and transparency, ventilation and exposure produce a new order.

This is a research path in which the legacy of the past plays an essential role in the verification of proposals whose principles (and not just forms) arise from real experiences and theoretical reflections. Paxton’s cathedral, or palace, represented a real revolution, where an ancient basilical scheme was realized in iron and glass, flooding the indoor spaces with light: a magic, even though the technology entailed significant problems at a thermal level. This experimentation, however, precedes the theme of urban galleries (W. Benjamin), which extends the search for the artificial space that will later produce the magnificent typologies of “urban living spaces” of the 19th century. All of the artifacts such as park greenhouses or the wide glass surfaces of curtain walls represented a sort of karst river that re-emerged in virtue of that research, which leaves the task of indicating strategies aimed at saving energy to architecture and urbanism. While remaining within its own disciplinary domain, architecture is called upon to propose and experiment with new models in which thermodynamics becomes the new “stone guest”.

The analogy with the fracture produced by the Modern Movement in relation to the great urbanization processes is completely spontaneous. From the criticism of the 19th-century city, proposals arise that extend to all problematic and design scales that found – in relation to artistic experiences – new forms that are also new lifestyles. The Frankfurt kitchen, with its determinate functional analysis, also becomes a formal prototype that can be taken as a symbol of a different role of the architecture of modernity. The design that, at the beginning of the century, enters in strict relation to social and economic problems, producing a new idea of living in its spatial organization. Today, the search for alternative energy sources, both active and passive, plays a fundamental role in understanding the new trends, even if the results appear under-trace and are supported only by a few sectorial magazines.

Although this research is considered marginal or niche, however, with difficulty, some attempts are being made to experiment with spatial structures and architectural artifacts that interact with the organization of urban settlements wherever the energy that feeds both public and domestic uses requires a different balance. The design process presupposes a new relationship with the laws of thermodynamics from which the first attempts at new propositions emerge, which are initially expressed through the simple assembly of the new devices on already tested shapes. This is an understandable path that sees the birth of new architectural experiences, starting from the acquired structures that, little by little, morph from chrysalis, until the new shape and new colors of the butterfly appear. From simple “parasitic” objects that cling to traditional volumes, greenhouses try to decline all their possibilities: they insinuate, envelop, include, collect what existed, and, in doing so, they give it new life. Little by little, we witness the birth of new and original formal structures.

This research by the author is a sort of game in which, by privileging a small phenomenon (the greenhouse), he lets himself be led, as in a laboratory experiment, to the observation of the complex effects of which it is a part. Effects that never forget that intertwining between the environment and the landscape which, in the pervasive ideology of the concept of sustainability (now abused and often distorted, in many sectors of culture and production), has produced many confused and contradictory visions that have not found a balance between the concept of place, with its history and its beauties, and the concept of physical space, with its quantitative figures. This is a combination that cannot be trivialized by removing one of the two terms or by privileging only one aspect of the question but, on the contrary, must be assumed by accepting the magnificent intertwining, in which the aesthetic values of the landscape coexist with the measurable and quantitative aspects of the environment. The coexistence in question moves within a complex territory with strong roots in reality and unitary characteristics, and arises from an explicit design contribution where the tension towards construction aims to overtake the tired reproposal of models repeated up to the point of preventing any new contribution. Architectural design brings together all of this, which, despite its autonomous linguistic research, cannot exclude itself from transforming an economic and social problem into a set of formal structures in which the greenhouse device becomes one of the magnets that can contribute to introducing order and form into contemporary architecture. The design process combines the different inputs into a single proposition in which the heterogeneous values of the shape coexist with those of the measure. This can be understood from the way in which the author revisits the shapes of the greenhouse over time: the internal light, the scent of lemons, the humidity and the warmth of the environment. But all this without giving up a performance approach in which the accuracy of the device is measured and evaluated for the effectiveness of the results.

In his incipit to “The Man without Qualities” (1930–1942), R. Musil, a man of letters and engineering, describes a normal natural phenomenon as “a beautiful day in August”, starting from the two points of observation, apparently irreconcilable, but which concern the same object: the point of view of the natural sciences and that of the human sciences, so that we discover that artifice and nature, science and poetry, belong to the same domain. It is as if emotion could have its counterpart, its projection, into the world of accuracy.

Over the Atlantic, a barometric minimum was advancing in an easterly direction towards a high looming over Russia, and for the moment showed no tendency to dodge it by moving north. Isotherms and isothers behaved properly. The air temperature was in normal relationship with the average annual temperature, with the temperature of the hottest month as with that of the coldest month, and with the monthly aperiodic oscillation. The rising and setting of the sun and moon, the phases of the moon, Venus, the rings of Saturn and many other important phenomena followed one another in accordance with the predictions of the astronomical yearbooks. The water vapour in the air had the maximum tension, and atmospheric moisture was scarce. In short, with a phrase that, although a little old-fashioned, sums up the facts very well: it was a beautiful day in August of the year 1913.

The poetic image of the “beautiful August day” presupposes a particular physical–environmental condition that is necessary, but not sufficient, to convey that feeling that is the perception of the landscape, because the observer’s emotion is lacking.

The author of this work analyzes and describes the greenhouse as a positive, existing fact, the principle of which, before residing in a definite type, is born from its specific properties (orangeries, exposition space, vegetable garden, building prosthesis, factory, tunnel, etc.), which define different forms of functional and special modality. That this greenhouse was a bright and welcoming space is something that is said by us.

The author endeavors to give us back that “machine of everything” (Raphael), characterized by how it produces heat and preserves it. It is up to designers to interpret those principles and find solutions compatible with today’s scenery. The author leaves the multiple possibilities open, without defining forms, but rather inviting us to experiment, within the measure, new and courageous solutions suited to accepting uncertainty and hybridizing those forms and measures that have stolen some properties from palaces and factories. After all, the procedure that the author defines as based “on waves”, studies this phenomenon as a sequence propagating in time and space and involving a succession of problems and themes spanning from historical experiences (which fixate the fundamental problems) to the most recent experimentations, always making the greenhouse emerge as a part of a process rather than a type in itself. What is put into play is not a classification experimentation based on the canons of formal typology and covering all the problematic functional range of cases embedded in handbooks of proven proposals for professional use, which would require conceiving the artifact as a given structure, subject to simple contextual tricks, already ready for use and, after all, always equal to itself. On the contrary, the author’s aim is to let a wide field of possibilities emerge, made of analogies open to multiple opportunities and combinations.

In this framework, the designer is invited to reflect on the scientific role of “passive” energy strategies as components of a research that, in itself, certainly does not demonize the “active” ones, but that, controversially, re-evaluates the passive ones for the radical nature of their natural energy and for their being ever-present where the sun gives its radiation, with almost no requirement of technological investment. The “device” of the greenhouse, in this way, gets isolated and analyzed in itself and in its specific identities, with the awareness that it is, in any case, a part of that more articulated complex responding to the issue of energy saving and its possible strategies.

The theme of the greenhouse, its solar gains, heat losses, ventilation and accumulation, is analyzed here with commitment and rigor, as well as in calculation criteria and simulations: a very delicate operation when we cross ventilation and temperature, humidity and light, to verify the level of well-being which constitutes, then, what is of most interest. But what appears most significant here is certainly the method of investigation, on the basis of which the study does not start from the most general premises of the energy problems, for deriving the greenhouse device, but, on the contrary, from the given object, as if it were an archaeological investigation, a found object of which we try to reconstruct the meaning and value of use. An object that found our author in the moment of his formation, and which insisted on being a central research fact. What is it, what is it for, how does it work, with what materials? It is the object “greenhouse”, a specific physical and material datum suggesting a culture, a historical moment, a technology and the role it played in human relations.

From the experimentation of the broad windows of the orangeries, to the crystal envelope of Paxton’s cathedral, up to geodesic domes, the greenhouse passes from the functional role linked to botany and exposure to that of an artificial habitat in which humans find their due comfort. A simple functional device can transform itself into a living space in which humans can coexist with an exuberant nature, and also into a large public space hosting multiple functions (exhibitions, galleries, commerce, gardens, games and meetings, etc.). Poor materials such as wood, iron and glass, typical of industrial buildings, trace metaphors today that derive from the large sails that formed the habitat for the cultivation of rare essences, and in this mantle of light, all the charm of a space that is a garden inside the house and in the city remains, as well as an easy and low-cost resource to manage.

Remo DORIGATI

September 2022

Introduction

I have had the intention of writing a book about bioclimatic greenhouses for a very long time, but I only really began to work on it when I found myself completing it by just writing down (and drawing) what I already had in mind, rather than rehearsing the contents before beginning to write. The reason why I waited so long is that I felt the task was going to be tough, due to the myriad connections that greenhouse design has with lots of things in both architecture and nature – which is something that I have strived to give an intuition throughout the text.

The depth and pervasivity of these connections is the main reason why I became fascinated with greenhouses in the first place, since the old days of my PhD research. Indeed, back then I had already realized that I was more interested in gaining a broad knowledge about a specific thing (e.g. a complete view of a relatively simple object, like a greenhouse), rather than a narrow competence (like, say, roofings or air conditioning systems) regarding a complex object (like a complex building), despite the fact that the structure of modern knowledge is closer to the latter. But I have to admit that the fact that I tend to be a contrarian has also contributed to fostering my interest in greenhouses. Greenhouses, indeed, are perfect for a contrarian, because they defy expectations: they draw out a lot from almost nothing, to the point that even their domain boundaries are difficult to define. Indeed, a greenhouse can be many things. It can be something heating a house, or it can be the house; it can be a place where plants thrive, or the harshest of places; it can be a food-producing device in a factory, or a building “parasite” on a 24th floor; it can have the aspect of an inorganic double façade, or of the darkest and moistest shadehouse.

Inferring the general from the specific, however, requires a lot of cross-disciplinary competence. Indeed, managing the many functional aspects governing the environmental behavior of a greenhouse involves such an intertwined knowledge that, once grasped, we can understand most other bioclimatic building types and systems. My hope is that this work can facilitate the path towards that end, and help the reader to go beyond what they may ordinarily receive.

The aim of an integrated understanding is the reason why I have organized the content of this work in “waves” overlapping each other – as you may find in a narrative – rather than in compartments – as you might find in a handbook. As a result, the focus of these chapters and volumes transitions progressively from geometrical considerations related to solar gains and heat losses, to heat transfer and storage, to natural ventilation and cooling strategies, to the functional consequences of different types of use of greenhouses, to construction criteria, to greenhouse typologies, to calculation and simulation criteria, to examples of good practices; and these transitions occur in a recursive manner, again and again. Each time, hopefully, gaining some depth and momentum.

The goal of this line of attack is to make this work capable of standing for a thorough reading, while at the same time capable of tolerating some skipping, or direct landing into specific parts.

Regarding the targeted readership, I often find myself realizing that, because I am an architect by education, most of the time, involuntarily, I often end up speaking above all to architects, hinting at a knowledge that I believe we may share. But because I also happen to be (I have always been) interested in everything (as some architects sometimes are), I am hopeful that this work may succeed in delivering information that is also suited to a broader readership.

The contents of this work have been organized in four volumes and four thematic areas: Volume 1, preliminary design; Volume 2, design and construction of structures and systems; Volume 3, design and construction of envelopes; Volume 4, architectural integration and quantitative analyses. In the first volume – the present one– the broadest design choices regarding greenhouses are analyzed. Choices including: what shape should a greenhouse have, and why? How should it be oriented in space? Where should it be transparent, and where opaque? How can it be shaded? Where should it be openable for ventilation, and how can it be operated?

There are two notices. The first is about the content of novelty of some of the presented materials. In each volume, I have included, along with sedimented contents, some experimental contents drawn from my own research activity. The reader will be made aware of the experimental contents at the appropriate places. An example of experimentality, in the case of the present volume, is constituted by the passive solar performance ratio presented in section 1.9.1.4.3. The second notice is about the reference listings. The main possible options, when I wrote this work, ranged from referencing the references in the notes, or citing them at the end of each chapter. Both solutions had their pros and cons. So I ended up choosing a hybrid approach, in which the references have sometimes been cited alongside the text, and in any case in an “On references” closure at the end of some sections; then they have been re-listed in full in a final “References” section at the end of each volume.

I would like to conclude this introduction by thanking Professor Remo Dorigati (Politecnico di Milano, Milan) for writing the foreword for this work and Professor Joe A. Clarke (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow) for writing the afterword in Volume 4. It is an incommensurable honor for me to have this work of mine opened by Professor Dorigati and closed by Professor Clarke. I admire them both so much. To both of them, I offer my gratitude.

1Basic Concepts

1.1. What a greenhouse usually is – and what it could be

“For the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail” (Maslow 1966). There is a lot of truth in this sentence. But we may also consider that there is a positive side to having only a hammer: the fact that this compels us to learn how to draw the most out of our tool, to learn it so well that we become one with it. We could recognize this reality more easily if we accepted the fact that most of us, most of the time, are a bit like the man with the hammer, not only outside of our areas of expertise, but also within them. In other words: I believe that learning to do everything with a hammer is less dumb than it may seem. What the man doing everything with a hammer does, ultimately, is not trivial. It is nothing other than extrapolation; that is, extending the application of a specific knowledge into a broader context. It is a case of abstraction of the purest kind.

However, the fact that not all nails are equivalent should also be considered. This is especially true for intellectual matters, where advanced and multi-faceted analogues of the hammered nails exist. This is particularly relevant for greenhouse design, due to the multi-facetedness of the knowledge areas involved (from architectural design to building physics, to building mechanics, to agriculture), which almost leaves no alternative to relying on such kinds of multi-faceted “nails”.

The consequence of this multi-facetedness is that a thorough grasp of greenhouse design can constitute both a starting point and a reality check for developing a broad and generalistic architectural design knowledge. After all, if we know how to design a greenhouse, we are in a good position to design many other things as well. This is because a greenhouse can be many things: indeed, it can be something attached to a house, something enveloping a house, something which is a part of a house (a room, an atrium, an entrance, a topping). It can even be a house itself, or a farm, or a crop-growing facility, or a combination of all of those things.

This belief is the reason why many of the technical solutions presented in this work could be usefully applied, even outside the specific domain of greenhouses – for example, into the more general domain of wooden construction. But we may wonder: if greenhouse technology is such a powerful idea, why does it not occupy a more prominent role in today’s architectural world? There are several answers to this. The first answer is that the question itself is not so well-posed, because greenhouse envelope systems are already ubiquitous in architectural design. Only, they are often tagged with other, fancier definitions, like curtain walls of double façades. The second answer is that greenhouse systems are mainly passive solar systems, and passive solar systems are difficult to “advertise”, as well as proselytize about, due to the fact that they do not belong to the domain of disruptive technologies, but to that of incremental ones: technologies that produce advantages over the competing ones, but not of orders of magnitudes – which is not sufficient to disrupt the market orientations.

The third answer is that the clarity of the objectives of solar greenhouse design is likely to have suffered a deterioration during the last years (30 or 40), as an effect of a self-referential reliance that seems to have taken place in the literature about the topic in the last decades. This can happen whenever some technical knowledge is not hard-wired in a strong discipline and is handed on from generation to generation, hardly ever inputting new, fresh content in the process. When this occurs, there is, indeed, the risk that the richness of the original message gets levelled out a bit more at each pass.

In architectural greenhouses, this cultural “maintenance-mode” phase is likely to have begun around the end of the 1980s. This is because, since then, it has been as if the technical literature about bioclimatic design began being rewritten over and over again, each time losing something.

Passive greenhouse design has followed this trajectory earlier than other solar passive technologies, partially because some of the knowledge on which it is based was not sufficiently mature, even at its climax (during the 1970s, indeed, optimism about the possibility of greenhouses often hampered the improvement of design solutions), and partially because the passive technologies have slowly become, during the years, less and less fashionable than the active ones – above all, the approaches based on the utilization of mechanical heating and cooling powered by cheap photovoltaic energy.

Within the domain of housing, in particular, the fact that passive heating and cooling technologies have progressively lost ground against active technologies has significantly been due to the audacity of the “selling” tactics on the side of active technologies, which have been promptly combined with super-insulation, which is where most methods are now headed. These tactics have gone so far as to end up re-branding active technologies into passive ones, by morphing the concept of “active” into that of “passive”.

Considering the current state of things, the present work does not limit itself to building upon modern progress, but also strives to recover some valuable knowledge related to passive solar architecture that, due to neglect, is currently at risk of oblivion. It does this in the belief that this knowledge can be useful both for supporting the design and construction of true passive, mechanical-plant-free greenhouses (and, more generally, buildings), and promoting some specific construction techniques aimed at self-building. The implication of this combination of approaches is extending the domain of what a greenhouse can do, by integrating the principles of house-in-a-greenhouse and greenhouse-as-house into it. These ends have been pursued by combining a constructional approach to design, targeting appropriateness and constructibility, with a performance-based approach supported by measurable indicators.

On references

Maslow, A.H. (1966). The Psychology of Science. Harper and Row, New York.

1.2. The historical trajectory of greenhouses

The premise for the mass appearance of greenhouses on the historical scene was the availability of mass-produced glass sheets that occurred after the first phase of the industrial revolution, around the beginning of the 19th century. But greenhouses existed long before that. The first orangeries, indeed, dated back to the 16th century. Only, before the industrial revolution, greenhouses, at least in continental Europe and until the French revolution, mainly constituted a niche socio-cultural phenomenon left to the aristocracy – or the bourgeoisie, where the latter was strongest, as in the Netherlands.

In truth, the first orangeries were not even the first devices adopted to protect plants and allow them to be cultivated in climates colder than their natural ones. Movable wooden shelters, not made of glass, built before the winter around the plants as they entered their winter “sleep” phase, were the earliest widespread solution. Also, glass was actually not the earliest material possible for creating the greenhouse effect. Earlier alternatives were not as efficient and convenient as glass, but they nonetheless existed. Notoriously, thin slabs of gypsum or mica stone were used for the Roman emperor Tiberius in the specularia to make the watermelons mature, even out of season (Pliny the Elder, around CE 74), and light fabrics were used for centuries before the industrial revolution to enclose the winter shelters for plants, while allowing some light into them (Woods and Warren 1988).

It is, of course, very true that the availability of glass made a huge difference in increasing the thermal and lighting effectiveness of greenhouses. But in spite of that, due to the high thermal transmissivity of single glass panels, high-end horticultural greenhouses up to the 19th century mostly relied on additional heating contributions by mechanical plants (furnaces). In that case, if the temperature to which they were raised during the winter was warm, they were defined as “hothouses” (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1Scheme of a hothouse, from the second half of the 17th century (from: Evelyn (1676))

The orangeries (shelters for growing oranges and lemons, both requiring warm climates) were the first standardized greenhouses. Their early appearance is due to the fact that they could be built using exactly the same technologies used for buildings – windows set in masonry walls – and any specialized device. An orangerie, indeed, constructionally, was nothing more than a room equipped with unusually large windows, oriented as much as possible towards the equator (i.e. south in the Northern Hemisphere), to maximize the collection of solar radiation and the greenhouse effect (see Figures 1.2-1.5). Orangeries were usually designed very much like buildings extensively glazed in the southward exposures, and were usually kept detached from the main inhabited building (see Figure 1.5) (see, for example, Campbel 1715–1725).

During the 18th century, glazing a greenhouse roof was possible, but unusual (see Figure 1.6). Glazed roofs became more frequent at the end of the 18th century; up to the point in which, in Britain, at the beginning of the 19th century, the distinction between greenhouses with and without glazed roofs evolved in the terminological distinction between greenhouses (glazed at the roof) and glasshouses (or conservatories – unglazed at the roof).

At that time, the fact that the roofs of orangeries were not glazed was largely due to the technical difficulty of making glass roofs water-tight, but, as the technologies evolved, fundamental examples of solutions for water-tight glazed roofs began to pop up. Prominent examples are the numerous glazed galleries built in France (mainly in Paris) as early as the second half of the 18th century (Ache 1968), after which glazed roofs began to take over internationally.

Figure 1.2In the foreground: orangeries at the chateau of Versailles. Designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart and built between 1684 and 1686. They replaced the original design by Le Vau from 1663. Photo: Lionel Allorge, 2015, Creative Commons License

Figure 1.3Central gallery of the orangeries at the chateau of Versailles. Photo: Djampa, 2013, Creative Commons License

Figure 1.4Orangerie at the Villa Reale in Monza, Italy. Designed by Giuseppe Piermarini around 1790, and built between 1818 and 1848. Photo: Albertomos, 2009, Creative Commons License

Figure 1.5Neoclassical orangerie by Robert Adam at Croome Park, Croome Court, Worcestershire, England (around 1760). Photo: Elliott Brown, 2019, Creative Commons License

Figure 1.6Glazed roof in an early greenhouse drawing, 1714. Copper engraving by Schwoebber (from: Pfann (1715))

Figure 1.7Study for a botanical greenhouse, John Claudius Loudon. Today, these studies seem strikingly modern and conformant to passive solar requirements (from: Loudon (1818))

For about half a century, since the first decades of the 19th century, when the effects of the industrial revolution became stronger, greenhouses, built with primary structures of cast iron and secondary structures of iron or timber, were used by the wealthy classes in Northern Europe (in the first place, England and Scotland), more for their capacity to delimitate microclimates without blocking the solar radiation

than for that of heating themselves passively thanks to the greenhouse effect. But after that phase, slowly and progressively, greenhouses began to be used increasingly as utilitarian places for vegetable farming, plant exposition, people hosting expositions and fairs (up to the world exhibitions), occasional gatherings (see the glazed galleries on the Champs-Élysées in Paris), train stations and markets. It is a trajectory that, during the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, largely coincided with the development of the new architecture of iron (in the first place) and steel (before the turn of the century) (Lemoine 1986).

For a long time, the exploitation of the greenhouse effect, as mentioned, was not at the core of the heating strategy of greenhouses. In the botanical greenhouses of the first decades of the 18th century, for example, the heating function was often pursued by conveying hot air or vapor through underground galleries under the greenhouses themselves, and the hot air or vapor was heated by burning wood or coal, without any objective of saving energy or limiting pollution emissions.

The most innovative greenhouse designer of that period was the English botanist John Loudon, who was also active as a journal editor (see Figures 1.7–1.9).

Figure 1.8Another study about greenhouse shape by John Claudius Loudon. This shape anticipates that of modern Chinese solar greenhouses to a surprising extent (see section 3.7.3.2) (from: Loudon (1818))

Figure 1.9Study for a pineapple greenhouse by John Claudius Loudon. Like the study above, these drawings anticipate modernity (see section 4.6.1) (from: Loudon (1802))

At a construction level, the two leading glazing solutions that emerged in this period and the following decades were, on the one hand, the pragmatic mullion-and-transom system (the ancestor of today’s ever-present stick system, aimed at the construction of curtain walls), pioneered by the Irish builder Richard Turner, and successfully implemented in many instances over the European continent (see Figures 1.10, 1.11, 1.16), and, on the other hand, the inventive and sophisticated ridge-and-furrow system, of which the botanist Paxton was the principal proponent (see Figures 1.12–1.15).

Figure 1.10Hothouses by Charles Rohault de Fleury in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, built around 1834–1836. Photo: Steve Silverman, 2014, Creative Commons License.

The grand international opening and most famous application of the ridge-and-furrow system took place in the Crystal Palace (see Figures 1.12–1.14), which hosted the Great Exhibition of 1951 in London. The ridge-and-furrow system extracted the most advantageous performances from the leaky types of sealants and gaskets available at the time. After some years, however, as the reliability of the sealants, gaskets, glues and waterproofing components kept improving, the ridge-and-furrow system began to fade out of favor with designers and builders, due to its complexity (and secondarily, in retrospect, probably also due to its low thermal efficiency, the reason of which, in turn, was that the alternation of ridges and furrows increased the thermal loss area of the envelope without increasing the solar gains correspondingly).

Figure 1.11Charles Rohault de Fleury, section of the hothouses in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. The greenhouse section with a curved front is surprisingly similar to that of a modern solar greenhouse. Nonetheless, these greenhouses were heated with remote burners (from: Meyer et al. (1966))

Figure 1.12Crystal Palace, 1851. Joseph Paxton and Decimus Burton

Figure 1.13Ridge-and-furrow construction solution adopted in the Crystal Palace

With time, the stick system ended up prevailing, evolving into the curtain-wall stick system during the 20th century, and leaving a deep mark on the history of architecture. Few constructional patterns in the history of modern architecture have had more success than this one. Retrospectively, it can be said that the stick system was tough to beat.

The large-sized botanical greenhouse consolidated itself as a cultural expression between 1830 and 1870, and from then on, it underwent all the phenomena of exhaustion and transience that are typical of fashions. The production of stock greenhouses for the middle classes began in that context, during the second half of the 19th century. But before the turn of the century, the greenhouse had already fallen out of favor with the dominant classes. A sign of this is that, as the large-size greenhouses of the 19th century decayed under the injuries of time, weather and fires, many of them were not maintained or replaced, but outright dismantled.1

After the described trajectory, in the 20th century the usage of greenhouse systems remained confined to vegetable growing for a long time, under the scrutiny of botanists, rather than that of architects and engineers. Indeed, the glass surfaces used by many seminal works of the Modern Movement in that period (e.g. the Bauhaus School Building in Dessau, by Walter Gropius, and the Farnsworth House, by Mies Van der Rohe) were derived from a “genetic” mold that was different from the agricultural one. They were drawn from an aesthetic mold, founded on transparency and aimed to modify the envelope surfaces by operating directly on the inhabited rooms/spaces, rather than shaping the glazed volumes into the domain of climatic transformation.

Figure 1.14