Environmental Surfing for Health, Productivity and a Resilient Future

Presentation from the 8th VELUX Daylight Symposium that took place in Paris on 9 October 2019 by Vivian Loftness.

Energy and environmental effectiveness demands a critical commitment to celebrating the culture and climate inherent to place, to sailing over yachting, to surfing over jet skiing. To achieve carbon neutrality we need nature’s renewables – daylight, natural ventilation, natural cooling, passive solar heating. We need systems that are turned off as long as possible – buildings that ‘surf” through hours, days, months and seasons. We need advanced systems and indeed the Internet of Things (IoT) to maximize human engagement with natural conditioning.

Environmental surfing captures both the skill and the excitement of designing and operating our buildings and communities with the full complement of nature’s resources – abundant, renewable, and varying over time of day and season. Surfing reflects the thrill of working with nature as it changes, embracing the variations of time and place. The beauty of buildings that environmentally surf goes beyond energy, water and carbon, however, to support health, productivity, and a higher quality of life.

This presentation will introduce the strength of the research linking the design creativity of mixed mode ‘environmental surfing’ to our sustainable access to affordable energy, human health and productivity, and the regenerative powers of nature itself.