Sustainability and design choices: an interview with Lone Wiggers by Alvaro Ponce de León
Sustainability and design choices: an interview with Lone Wiggers, Partner at C.F. Møller
After an extensive and brilliant professional career at the renowned Danish firm C.F. Møller since 1991, Arch. Lone Wiggers has amalgamated various reflections, experiences, and even technical solutions throughout her nearly 33 years at the company, 27 of which as a Partner.
During the recent lecture during the YACademy Wood Architecture class in April 2024, it was surprising and even encouraging to notice a strong focus on carbon emissions performance in Arch. Wigger’s building design practice.
Already in the early parts of the presentation, the lecture highlighted the importance of Site, Functionality, Culture, Identity, and CO2 as parts of the design phase, exploring various ways to reduce embodied and operational carbon emissions in different scenarios, allowing for a closer understanding of how building design impacts later carbon emissions.
In this context, the use of wood as a construction material represents a very appropriate alternative, considering its lower environmental impact but also its optimal construction characteristics, which is visible in the Offices of a former Paper factory in Odense and an Event space in a former Machine Hall in Copenhagen.
From all the shared information, wood construction, low carbon design, and sustainable building performance seem to be relevant aspects to focus on during the entire design process, to achieve better architectural quality. This led to the presentation of new design practices that involve the use of new tools such as Low Carbon Assessment (LCA) and solar and daylight tests to improve energy consumption and comfort performance in future projects.
The subsequent interview, conducted by alumnus Alvaro Ponce de León with Arch. Wiggers, focuses on these latest sustainable design tool practices presented and successfully applied to wood construction.
A: Simulation is sometimes frustrating because when you simulate you realize that it is not the result you want.
L: Yes, but you have to do it many times. This is exactly right. So if you want to talk about how to use simulations as a design tool, I can do that, but I can't really tell you exactly the name of the program you use.
A: There are many programs. For daylight only, Insight, DIALux, Design Builder and others.
L: Yeah, but it's an important thing. And we also have to document it, and for our competitions, we do it, so that we can make sure that you have a full development of the design of any architectural product - this competition design. You have to simulate the daylight and document that you have enough daylight for the rooms to respond to your requirements.
A: Like making a facade design, then simulating it. Testing it may help designers to improve into a much better design composition allowing them to evaluate whether a type of glass would need to be changed (as an example), considering there are many glasses that block more light than others. Or even modifying the glass size or shape, it's a very funny part of the process. It's like a real-time result.
L: But you saw the facades presented, where you have the larger openings and the lower labels with more shade, you can open more. You also get less heat in, but it's much more levered and much faster in the rhythm at the higher altitude where the daylight comes in, because you don't need as much daylight, and you also need to shade a little more of the heat. So, for that reason, there's literally a line on the facade that is responding to this daylight condition. Simulated, yes, but that's reflected in the actual design choices.