P. Fisk III
Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, Inc.
Austin, Texas 78724, U.S.A.
The contextual framework within which passive solar design occurs is rarely if ever looked at.
Questions of water use, material availability, and the overall ecological and social impacts seem
paramount only when the topic of passive solar technologies occurs in conjunction with another
newly formulating discipline--that of appropriate or intermediate technology or older and more
accepted methodologies, such as those contained in ecological land planning. This paper borrows
from several of these adjacent disciplines in hopes of measuring the tremendous potential of passive
solar through a truly regional understanding. Based on work at our Center, we find that this approach
achieves the following:
(1) Enables the various technologies in the passive solar field to become major determinants
in the future of a new, more relevant architectural and community form;
(2) Extends through combinatorial possibilities and pattern generation, the wide application of
passive solar;
(3) Demonstrates through mapping that this relatively new concept can be incorporated and
utilized into the more accepted disciplines, such as ecological land planning, regional
analysis and economic development strategies, and micro-climatic and site analyses;
(4) Becomes an excellent educational, user and research approach to enable one to
understand the field in terms of what passive solar does and does not do.
|
