Sustainability vs. Luxury: Can McMansions be green?

The housing boom of the 90’s brought the explosion of “McMansions” across U.S. suburbs leaving us with hundreds of thousands of examples for a new wave for upper class living. While the recession may have created a lull in the construction of these shrines to excess, there is no data to suggest that Americans have outgrown their hunger for raw square footage and the public perception that space equals societal stature. The idea of a green home two, three or four times the size of the average house is a bit of an oxymoron with notions of efficiency and excess instantly butting heads, but perhaps there are ways for the lives of the luxurious to follow a more sustainable path.

I decided to include a project done by myself and architectural colleague Antonio Dellomo that served as a first pass at confronting some of these issues. The project was submitted to a competition requesting the design of a Bahamian, coastal residence for a wealthy family but came with strict program and square footage requirements (10,000 square feet.) Many things that we would have scraped out of a real design (two employee apartments, two guest apartments, six covered garage spaces, etc.) were nonnegotiable for the proposal. We saw this as a great opportunity to explore whether or not sustainability and luxury could realistically mix.

Admittedly, targeting the homes of the rich is not a priority for greenies. Where creating green solutions for a middle class family of four would be making a new model for tens of millions of homes across the country, the families building homes north of 6,500 square feet are probably less than 1% of the population. However, in a consumer based society it is important that those who spend and use the most per capita can be brought in as examples for directing the marketplace towards sustainable goals.

Aerial view looking Southeast with green roofs paired with tiered bioswales to the west.

Starting With the Site

The first issue is that building sustainably in the suburbs is an uphill battle. As an inherently inefficient model, suburban living taxes the environment in many forms such as greenfield development, the long running of utilities, expanding coverage areas of emergency services and road construction and maintenance. A first step could make these houses of such mass into net producers rather than drains on society. With more house and more land, these homes should be able to produce more. Whether it be fresh water, power, compost or even food, there can be a model that places these homes as providers. This house began with numerous measures to filter storm water and an orchard that offered a continuing supply of produce.

Responding to the site is tremendously important. Having the ocean on the Northern side of the site was a blessing, allowing us to leave the façade unencumbered and open as possible to capitalize on ocean breezes for natural airflow and cooling. One could think that having the ocean on your property would limit the need for worrying about stormwater runoff, but actually the problem is only worse with seaside development responsible for growing amounts of beach erosion. The dramatic slope of the site lead to the creation of a series of tiered bioswales that, when coupled with the green roofs of the house, provided natural filtration of stormwater and its regulated release after rainfall. Coastal ecosystems are always fragile. These living surfaces help stitch the native environment back together from the disturbance caused by construction.

View from stairs in the hallway looking North through the connected spaces of living room and dining room with the recreation room below. The central atrium stands on the right hand side.

As we sit on the cusp of a new age for efficiency, to just incorporate sustainability into a building may be missing out on an important opportunity for placing these measures in elegant, informative ways that help people recognize their function and importance. For all our progress, most people are still far behind in knowledge of sustainable alternatives and why they are so necessary. Green strategies should not always be tucked away in the wall, but when possible revealed for recognition and consideration.

Spatial Programming

Designing the house around an open atrium harnessed not only its numerous environmental benefits but its potential as a didactic element as well. Historically, American homes often had rooms oriented around the hearth—seen as the center of family living. This hearth is a four story tube of glass, open to the light of the sky with mechanically operated transom windows on each floor to regulate airflow and a rainwater catchment tank at the base. With troughs of hanging plants on every floor, it is impossible to use the house without passing by this column of air that instantly links one back to how the house functions within the surrounding landscape.

The heart of the first floor rested on the goal of flexibility—a plan that could respond to variations in occupancy, both size and type, that changed with the prospect of family guests and large entertaining functions. This meant a balance between the connectivity of the modern “free plan” and a classical model of isolated rooms for different functions. Entry immediately puts one into a system of linked, overlapping spaces (foyer, library, dining room and living room) that can accommodate a number of activities with a varying number of participants.

The same line of logic organized the ground level with stairs connecting both the living room and main hall down to the poolside lounge with direct access outside.  Building the home into the slope helped nestle more of the concrete structure underground—closer to the cooler temperatures of the earth and farther away from the sun. As a result, more of the solar heat gain can be transferred into the ground.

Circulation space should also be thought of as flexible in nature, performing more than just a means of passage. Corridors on the second floor are used to help daylight penetrate deeper into the plan and move air naturally throughout the house. These spaces can expand and contract to create nooks, alcoves or even rooms like the child play area that is visually linked to first floor rooms through the central atrium. As I have often said, education is one of the main tools we have to help society progress towards sustainability. Situating the play space next to an icon of a sustainable mechanical system creates daily interaction with ideas of efficiency.

View of sunken living looking West with tiered bioswales beyond

The fact that there is a third floor at all breaks with the trend of luxury tropical homes that prefer the sprawling feel of compounds. Contrary to very concept of suburban living, density is one of the more inherent tracks to efficiency. Building out instead of up creates redundancies in structure, building materials and mechanical systems, all resulting in a net increase of cost. The third floor also provides for higher ocean views, direct access to the green room for recreation and a higher Southern elevation to shade more of the home from peak sun and subsequent heat gain.

This building section depicts airflow taken from the North and induced by the vertical stack of the evaporative cooling atrium.

The central icon of the atrium provides the core of the effort for reducing the building’s energy load. Natural light reaching more spaces means less power used for artificial lighting which is often over 20% of a home’s power usage. By placing the rain water capture tank at the base, the evaporation of water adds to the updraft through the atrium and pulls air from each floor to induce airflow. This is complimented by openings on the Northern, ocean side that accept the breeze through the home rather than rely heavily on air conditioning. The green roof, solar hot water arrays, and a deep, well insulated South façade all contribute to less heat gain while turning more of the sunlight into energy.

Naturally all of these things can occur in addition to things that green architects assume are par for the course such as sourcing building materials locally, using paint and adhesives with low Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) content and utilizing energy efficient equipment and fixtures. Ultimately, we did not win the competition (the jurors proved to be less interested in sustainability than we were) but nevertheless it gave us an excuse for a preliminary investigation of an inevitable conundrum for American consumers.

[As a note, this should be considered as more of an in-depth sketch rather than a full design. Designing a sustainable home takes much longer than the two weeks we had to get from a blank piece of paper to final boards leaving numerous things that are not in the final form or calibrated for perfection. The goal is merely to suggest possibilities for how projects of this type can be realized.]