Green interiors
From Sanctuary issue 10. More articles like this
By Jenny Brown
Excerpt: Most of the attention paid to sustainable houses these days is on the external envelope: “bricks and mortar”, cladding, roofs, footings, and how it all comes together. Most green home builders and renovators roughly understand the principles of passive solar, cross-ventilation, insulation, rainwater and greywater harvesting. They are aware of the pay-offs to the environment and their hip pocket. As the pundits say, “it’s not rocket science”. But when it comes to fitting out interiors, the knowledge base is murkier.
This is despite interiors being fraught with environmental hazards. So many surfaces, appliances, furnishings, fittings and fixtures coalesce to make up a house interior that it’s not uncommon for a house with great passive design being let down with a poorly thought-through fitout. This is not as it should be. Interior design is where ecologically responsible building gets really personal. It’s been common knowledge for over a decade that sick buildings can have a detrimental impact on human health and psychology. Escalating levels of childhood asthma are being linked with high levels of toxic vapours that “off-gas” from walls, carpets, cabinetry and the hundreds of other household items – most especially when they are new or wet – but in some cases long after their installation.
“Have you ever really smelled a plastic shower curtain?” asks Robyn Galloway. The Melbourne-based designer and founder of ESO, the Environmentally Sustainable Objects Group says there are so many VOCs (volatile organic compounds) in modern consumer goods that in enclosed spaces their potentially toxic gases can recombine in ways that haven’t yet been calculated. Some VOCs are natural. Others, end products of petrochemical chains, are manifestly unnatural. “Some buildings,” says Ms Galloway, “take 10 years to stop off-gassing because VOCs are contained in formaldehyde, glues, standard particle boards, solvents, paints, timber sealants, vinyls, plastics, in household cleaners…in almost anything you can name. Without question we’ve been living in toxic environments.”
“VOCs,” says head of interior architecture at the University of New South Wales, Dr Kirsty Mate, “are not as dangerous as asbestos but they are listed by the World Health Organisation as human carcinogens”. VOCs, most notoriously present in some compressed timber fibre boards (aka particle boards), are just one of the known hazards pushing responsible sectors of the furniture and interiors industries to rapidly redress their manufacturing processes. “There has also been quite a drive from the general public. The industry is trying to improve its product because it is, after all, connected to its bottom line. Newer particle boards, for instance, have a lower level of VOCs and some have a zero formaldehyde content.”
Though informed designers and manufacturers have been onto greener options since the early 1990s, Kirsty Mate says the revolution currently sweeping through her industry is becoming so entrenched and exciting “that it is one of the most innovative, creative and progressive things happening anywhere”. We’re a long way from when Dr Mate was told by colleagues that “it’s just a fad”. Environmentally-conscious interior design and architecture is also “starting to lose that dowdy image”. There are countless brilliant innovations and ideas being adopted and adapted right across the world. One of her favourites is cardboard kitchen shelving: “It could replace particle board, could last for a few years and it can be recycled”.
