Elemental

These are my links for February 7th through February 27th:

• Why and how I blog « Robert Kyriakides’s Weblog – Great post from Robert explaining how he manages to blog so prolifically.
• Expedition’s blog » Think Up Mondays – Chris Wise et al are trying to create something useful out of the recession: "For one year, the employees of Expedition will be dedicating their Monday’s to thinking. Thinking about thinking, thinking about what we do, thinking about how we do it, and why. Think Up, the impetus behind this year of Mondays, is an educational company formed within the auspices of the Useful Simple Trust. The remit is large, but so is the ambition: to use the opportunity that the economic downturn has presented us with to think up a new raison d’etre, and modus operandi as engineers, and to train ourselves into shape."
• Study shows 30% above ASHRAE energy efficiency difficult to reach in buidlings, 50% unreachable- 2/24/2009 12:16:00 PM – Building Design & Construction – "Findings show that although significant energy efficiencies can be achieved (varying by climate zone), reaching a 30 percent reduction above the ASHRAE standard is not feasible using common design approaches and would exceed a 10-year payback. The study concluded that achieving a 50 percent reduction above the standard is not currently reachable. "
• buildoffsite – An industry-wide campaigning organisation that promotes greater uptake of offsite techniques by UK construction.
  Buildoffsite is an alliance of clients, developers, designers, contractors, manufacturers, suppliers, government, advisors and researchers.
  Goal – A ten-fold step-change by 2020 achieving a 100% increase by 2010
• Summary — ManuBuild – "The ManuBuild vision is of a future where customers will be able to purchase high quality, manufactured buildings having a high degree of design flexibility and at low cost compared to today. For the first time, inspirational unconstrained building design will be combined with highly efficient industrialised production.
  ManuBuild targets a radical breakthrough from the current "craft and resource-based construction" to "Open Building Manufacturing", combining ultra-efficient (ambient) manufacturing in factories and on sites with an open system for products and components offering diversity of supply in the market. "
• Passive design primer for offices – Building Sustainable Design – Excellent article from an ex-colleague, Doug King: "Finally, I’d like to introduce the idea of “passive survivability”. This is a concept that will become far more important as we start to feel the pinch of declining fossil fuel resources and over-stretched utility infrastructure. One of the first effects of energy demand exceeding supply will be rolling power cuts, as happened in London’s West End during July 2006. While some businesses may be able to operate with emergency generators, for many the impact could be catastrophic as deep plan buildings will be uninhabitable without artificial lighting and ventilation. Some buildings may have to shut down during the power cuts and for a business, having sent staff home, a whole day’s production may be lost. Passive buildings, on the other hand, should continue to be habitable, albeit with reduced comfort levels, and the backup power supply will only be required to maintain the office equipment."
• Le Corbusier – creator of the modern world – Times Online – Great article – I have an aversion to Le Corb after my history of architecture lectures at Leeds Uni, but I'll be pottering off to the Barbican with every other architect and engineer in the UK in the next few months…
• BREEAM: In USE – The successor to the old BREEAM M&O assessment (management and operation) – In Use, has been announced. No sight of the manual yet, so can't really comment. Looks like it will tie up with DEC's…
• What if Jane Jacobs had directed "Slumdog"? | Congress for the New Urbanism – "Despite their appearance of mess and squalor (and struggles with sewage and public health), the world's major ghettoes are in some ways quite green. Residents often live where they work, rolling up sleeping mats each morning and dispensing with petroleum-fueled commutes. Even garbage is picked clean of all reparable items or tradable commodities, making places like Dharavi the world's ultimate recyclers."
• Architecture: Stephen Bayley discerns the shape of things to come | Art and design | The Observer – "The UK's first Passive House, designed by Bere Architects, is now being built in Camden, North London. It will, perhaps, be a little bit like living on the Northern Line: what fresh air there may be is pre-heated through subterranean channels. Other problems? Ecological perfection will demand a quality of detailing hitherto unknown to our native builders. And there will be no flinging open the windows to greet the new green dawn. That way you squander your patiently retained heat."
• Wind turbines on Bahrain WTC start turning – "The BWTC's turbines are predicted to provide 11-15% of the power needed to operate the offices of the 50 storey twin towers."
• 5 Emerging trends from the recession | Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist – "Generation X is the first generation in the US ever that will earn less than their parents. And Generation Y has an incredible amount of debt due to baby boomers pushing up college costs and housing costs while real wages went down."
• Meteonorm – Global Solar Radiation Database – What is it? – METEONORM 6.1 (Edition 2009) is a comprehensive meteorological reference, incorporating a catalogue of meteorological data and calculation procedures for solar applications and system design at any desired location in the world. It is based on over 23 years of experience in the development of meteorological databases for energy applications.
  METEONORM addresses engineers, architects, teachers, planners and anyone interested in solar energy and climatology.
• Imagine – "‘Imagine’ is a database which captures school design best practice from around the world.
  Architects and researchers from the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield [BDR] have conducted a critical analysis of over 150 schools, highlighting excellence in design according to different themes. It considers integrated ICT, environmental design and flexibility for space and learning.
  This resource is aimed at providing inspiration for creating innovative teaching and learning environments called for by the Government’s Building Schools for the Future initiative. Research for this database is sponsored by Balfour Beatty Education and Partnerships for Schools. New research is conducted every three months to ensure the database is kept up-to-date and topical."
• Building Enclosure Technology and Environment Council (BETEC) – JBED: Journal of Building Enclosure Design – Free pdf's of back issues of this US/Canadian publication are available here. In Winter 2007 issue there is a good article on the UK experience of air tightness from Nigel Potter of BSRIA. Lots of good data scattered throughout the issues.
• Unversity funding will be linked to their carbon performance | Education | The Guardian – via lagavulin: "From 2011, Hefce will link the money it doles out for capital projects to universities' carbon performance. The smaller the reduction in carbon, the less funding they will get."

mel starrs News air, ashrae, Blogging, BREEAM, cities, construction_industry, consultants, data, database, design, efficiency, Engineering, gen_X, gen_Y, Jane_Jacobs, Le_Corbusier, manufacturing, MMC, offsite, passive, passive_survivability, passivhaus, payback, recession, renewables, Schools, slums, statistics, tightness, UK, weather, wind

This post is inspired by a conversation I had on Twitter on Sunday afternoon with @dbourbon, @SuButcher and @Revit3D. Yes, I know I bang on about Twitter far too often, but seriously. LOVE it. Revit3D wrote a blog post which I have tried to follow up here.

The conversation started along the lines of debating why some practices (both architectural and engineering) were failing to use 3D software. Is it fear of the unknown? Is it the pain of learning something new?

I have a theory based on my own experience of the timeline of engineering software over the past 10-20 years.

• Firstly, I believe 2D CAD was a red herring of sorts. 2D CAD was not a design tool (architects might argue that it is, but I define a design tool as something with some kind of calculation engine in there somewhere). It was (and is) a drafting tool. Engineers and architects who were used to the old skool way of drafting a sketch to be worked up on paper by draughtspersons, used the same way of working when 2D CAD was introduced. An experienced engineer’s time was too valuable to be wasted learning new IT skills, and so , in general, they didn’t.
• Those who were young and inexperienced were sometimes given the time to experiment with CAD (my brain is still hard wired to AutoCAD LT 98 – I get very frustrated when Google SketchUp doesn’t have the same buttons in the same places). But still, was not a design tool.
• Some engineering tools, such as Hevacomp and Cymap, started to introduce 2D design tools – the ability to draw a line on screen, define for instance, air volumes, and come up with ductwork sizing and fan sizing calculations. A fantastic time saver, especially if there are a number of redesigns. However, many steered away from this and still used good old paper and pen mark-up with a ductulator to hand. Because, if you had to mark up the sketch anyway to give to the CAD technician, what was the point of doing it on screen? (are you beginning to see what happened here?)
• About the same time (early nineties) we had the last recesssion. Many of the Gen X engineers who might otherwise have become IT savvy dropped out and the hole can still be seen in the data.
• The next iteration was IES and TAS. But a strange thing happened. Who was supposed to use these tools? They were first and foremost design tools, but they looked a bit like CAD. So, the young (cheap) inexperienced engineers were encouraged to go off and teach themselves how to use the software. Nothing wrong with this, persay.

However, in effect I would argue we ended up with one group who could drive the software, but didn’t know what the destination was supposed to look like, and another group who saw a black box of tricks which spewed out the wrong answers (their experience often trumped the output from the software, which inadvertently was suffering from ‘rubbish in, rubbish out’ syndrome as the ‘drivers’ didn’t always understand where they supposed to be going).

Now this is a massive generalisation, and there were some practices who embraced the technology head-on. However, I also still know some practices who swear by ductulators, paper and pen, so not everyone is moving at the same speed here.

As Gen Y move into the industry, their expectations are for 3D tools which do everything from the one ‘box’. It’s a natural expectation and indeed the way that BIM is moving.It’s a little like the leapfrog effect one sometimes sees in technologies in the developing world, where for example, the mass ownership of landlines is eclipsed by the use of mobile phones.

But how do we deal with the gap between those who “get” BIM and those who, either consciously or unconsciously, have got left behind? I don’t know the answer to that one, although I do believe in leading by example.

Any thoughts – please leave a comment either here or over at Revit3D’s blog.

mel starrs Opinion architect, AutoCAD, Building Information Modeling, Computer-aided design, Engineering, twitter

These are my links for February 2nd through February 7th:

• Andrew Winston – What;s Your Heresy? – Andrew asks some heretical questions. My own would be "what if the current economic conditions are the new normal – how would that impact the construction industry?".
• British Town Demonstrates World’s First Garbage Truck Powered by Garbage – The vehicle will collect garbage from 25 newly installed split bins and take it to the Energy from Waste power station and recycling center nearby. The power station burns the garbage to generate electricity, and the truck recharges at a charging post to be ready for the next day's route.
  The garbage truck is a modified Smith Edison 3.5-ton Ford Transit with a 40 kWh lithium-ion battery pack. The vehicle has a top speed of 50 mph, a 100-mile range, and takes about six to eight hours to charge. The only reported downside is that the quiet electric truck may present safety issues for unsuspecting pedestrians.
  Besides powering the garbage truck, the Energy from Waste station also pumps about 10 megawatts of electricity into the grid per day. All the power is generated from burning local garbage.
• A battery to catch the wind | Forum For The Future – The Dutch are excellent engineers (necessity of living below sea level, I guess). This looks ingenious: "How can offshore wind generation still deliver on wind-free days? The answer, according to a group of Dutch businesses led by energy consulting firm KEMA, is a battery in the form of a man-made island close to four miles long and 2.5 miles across.
  Energy Island would be constructed between 15 and 20 miles off the Dutch coast and would form a sea wall ring holding water back from a centre that would be dug down to 40 metres below sea level. Water would be allowed to flow in to drive turbines, producing power. It could then be pumped out using wind energy once the wind turbines turned again."
• Environmental writing since Thoreau. – By Johann Hari – Slate Magazine – Great review of yet another book to be added to my wishlist: "The rational environmentalists stand at the midpoint between the utopian delusions of the global-warming deniers—something will come along to save us!—and the utopian fantasies of the romantics. They believe our crisis is not spiritual at all, but physical. Human beings didn't unleash warming gases into the atmosphere out of malice or stupidity or spiritual defect: They did it because they wanted their children to be less cold and less hungry and less prone to disease. The moral failing comes only very late in the story—when we chose to ignore the scientific evidence of where wanton fossil-fuel burning would take us. This failing must be put right by changing our fuel sources, not altering our souls."
• Sustainability in Practice: Water-efficient loos – "Finally, UK manufacturers have caught up [with European firms]. It's great that we now have the choice not only of a 6/4 litre dual flush, but also in the lower volume, 4/2.6 litre [category]."
• Free work devalues profession, says RIBA – Building Design – Same goes for engineering and sustainability consultancy: "The RIBA has issued a warning against architects offering work for free during the recession, an approach it claims will devalue the entire profession.
  Vice president of practice, Jane Duncan, wrote to members last week to warn that cost-cutting would set architects back years.
  “I am most concerned about architects cost cutting and buying in work, as they did in the 1990s, when it became easy for clients to take advantage and seek ‘free’ work,” she wrote.“The more of us that do this the more the profession is undervalued when we come out of recession. It took years to get paid even reasonable fees.”

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The regional materials credits in LEED are interesting. Obviously written with the US in mind, “regional” is defined as a 500 mile radius. For London this extends as far as Denmark, which could be fairly handy if you’re looking for triple glazed windows or funky radiators.

I suspect if you were in the north of Scotland this would extend to mainly the sea. Bladderwrack huts, anyone?

BTW, I used this handy website to create the image.

There’s an interesting juxtaposition to the 100 mile diet which is obviously much more onerous. I’ve toyed with the idea of a 100 mile diet before, but given the massive centralised distribution infrastructure of food in the UK (Abel and Cole are as much affected as Tesco, so just because it’s organic doesn’t mean it hasn’t been driven half way round the UK), it’s very difficult to implement. The definition of local food varies in the UK:

Sustain (The Alliance For Better Food and Farming) offers the following definitions for local food:

• produced within 30 miles of the point of sale (PoS)
• produced within 50 miles of PoS
• in towns and small cities produced within 50 miles of PoS
• for large cities produced within 70 miles of POS
• produced in the county.

Enough of food, back to materials. The intent of the LEED credit is: “to increase demand for building materials and products that are extracted and manufactured within the region, thereby supporting the use of indigenous resources and reducing the environmental impacts resulting from transportation.”

So, is this desirable, possible or feasible for the UK? What is the equivalent measure in BREEAM?

Local materials is something which pops up in a number of manifestos, including BioRegional’s One Planet Living (#4 Local and Sustainable Materials – Destructive resources exploitation (eg in construction and manufacturing) increases environmental damage and reduces benefits to local community).  The topic is expanded further here:

The embodied energy, durability, toxicity and ecological footpring of materials should be a standard construction consideration, going beyond the UK Government’s current understanding of “zero carbon homes”, which only includes post-build emissions.

Thirty percent of road freight in the UK carries building materials across the country for no good reason. Government building projects should follow local sourcing policies, and local authorities should provide similar policies to developers in pre-application planning discussions. Local and regional reclamation strategies are an easy way for government to promote the use of sustainable materials.

Governments should also make sure they only use the best available materials on their own projects, both as a matter of principle, for example by only using FSC cerified timber, and in some cases to help develop nascent markets such as in limecrete. Set minimum reclaimed materials content for planning briefs or include reclaimed materials in the government procurement system.

There is obviously a lot more here than just using “local” materials – “best available materials” could be interpreted in a number of ways, and cost is an issue which isn’t factored in.

So what does BREEAM say about “local”? Part of MAN 3 Construction Site Impacts asks for transport movements of materials to be recorded, however, there is no targets or limits set:

BREEAM does not set targets, as these are very project specific. For guidance on setting targets, refer to DTI’s Construction Industry KPI Pack; this series of documents guides the reader through setting targets for their own projects.

The next credit to look at is the sometimes controversial Mat 1 Materials specification which references the Green Guide (which has had a certain amount of flack since launching the new version last year). This methodology includes for some (but not all) transport impacts. From the methodology (pdf, 71 pages):

6.7
Transport
6.7.1
Transport to factory gate
For transport of materials to the factory, data is obtained from the manufacturers for the distance travelled, mode of transport (e.g. sea, rail, and road), vehicle or ship type and average loads or number of deliveries and return load. If data is not provided, then BRE will use default data provided by the Department for Transport from the continuing Survey of Roads Goods Transport.
6.7.2
Transport from factory to site
Manufacturers are asked to provide data on the typical methods of transport of the product to the site. This includes distance travelled, vehicle type and average load and return load if any. In the absence of this information, then BRE will use default data described in 6.7.1.
6.7.3
Calculating inventory data for transport
6.7.3.1
Road transport excluding municipal waste collection, tractor and trailer and Van < 3.5 tonnes
For road transport, the overall distance and tonnes km travelled by each vehicle type is calculated based on the average number of deliveries. Fuel consumption is calculated based on direct fuel consumption figures obtained from UK DfT Road Freight Statistics 2005 and the overall distance travelled.
Infrastructure for road transport including road building and maintenance, lorry and tyre maintenance and replacement is not included within the Environmental Profiles.
6.7.3.2
Rail, water and air transport and municipal waste collection, tractor and trailer and van < 3.5 tonnes
For rail and ship transport, the overall tonnes km travelled by each transport type is calculated.
Ecoinvent models for the infrastructure and energy associated with transport are then used based on the total tonnes km travelled by each mode of transport.
Rail transport is assumed to be a mix of electric and diesel, based on a European average.
Infrastructure for rail, water and air transport is not included within the Environmental Profiles.

Now reading this (and I could be wrong and will happily stand corrected) neither air freight nor shipping of building materials is counted in the Green Guide.  The impact of this may be minimal – but if materials are shipped from say, China, the environmental profile may work out better than locally produced but road transported materials. Odd. Correction: I *was* reading this wrong – shipping and rail is included, but the environmental cost of building and maintaining roads, rail and shipping is not. Air travel is another issue, but I’m not aware of many building materials shipping in planes.

So, local is a relative term and is only one factor to be considered when looking at materials. LEED and BREEAM have very different ways of assessing the “regionality” of a material, neither of which are perfect. Neither explicitly cover local employment either, which is currently a hot topic in the UK. As I’ve said before, this is where sustainability strays into the field of politics and outside of most companies comfort zone. It’s all about balance.

Personally, I prefer to think in terms of the Natural Step framework, licenced in the UK by Forum for the Future. Two of the four system conditions explicitly refer to materials and are reflected the thinking behind such initiatives as Cradle to Cradle*:

• Society mines and disperses materials faster than they are returned to the Earth’s crust (examples include oil, coal and metals such as mercury and lead).
• Society produces substances faster than they can be broken down by natural processes—if they can be broken down at all (examples of such substances include dioxins, DDT and PCBs).

This isn’t as tough as it first sounds:

At first reading, the system conditions and basic principles might seem to imply that we must rid society of all materials extracted from the earth and all substances produced by society and that, further, we must never disturb a natural landscape. But that’s not what they mean. The problem is not that we mine and use heavy metals, or use chemicals and compounds produced by society, or disrupt natural processes, or even temporarily interfere with people’s capacity to meet their basic needs. It is, rather, that our industrial system has developed so that substances extracted from the earth and produced by society will continue to build up indefinitely in natural systems. That means a progressive buildup of pollutants and substances that not only harm us directly but damage natural processes that have taken billions of years to develop.

By applying these principles to any specific situation, a hierarchy of requirements will develop. Whilst it would be lovely to have a one-size-fits-all tickbox solution, in reality each situation is slightly different. Then again, I would say that. If I didn’t believe it to be the case, my work here would be done and I would be off doing aromatherapy!

*Cradle to Cradle and Natural Step are very much seperate, but complementary frameworks. Interestingly, LEED now reward the use of Cradle to Cradle certification.

mel starrs Opinion BREEAM, impacts, LEED, materials, transport

These are my links for January 28th through February 1st:

• CrazyAuntPurl: January wrap-up – A lovely post from Laurie on coming to terms with uncertainty: "Because I think 2010 — TWENTY TEN!!!! — is going to be a really great year. That doesn't say much for the year we are currently in, year not-twenty-ten. Is it just me? Or does 2009 feel like a gap year, where there's so much housecleaning and hard work you have to do?"
• Stop navel-gazing and look up – Building – Chris Wise of Expedition has a wonderful article – wants to replace 36 engineering and architecture institiutes with just 5 societies: "The Society of Need would cover us, society at large, and the planet as a system. The Society of Briefing would be a child of the Society of Need and would put the world’s needs into an understandable form, which would look at societal value rather than just shareholder profits, lowest cost or client egotism.
  Then we come to the three linked bodies that together make up “design”: the societies of Conception, Testing and Judgment. These replace contemporary things like maths, codes, systems, form and function, although they would include useful bits of those."
• BBC NEWS | TODAY | Evan Davis’ blog | The threat of de-globalisation – As it happens, economic history supports the idea that protectionism is bad at times of global recession.
• Inhabitat » IS IT GREEN?: IKEA – Really good case study on IKEA's sustainabuility efforts.
• United Nations Statistics Division – Environment Statistics – Statistics on Water and Waste are based on official statistics that had been supplied by national statistical offices and/or ministries of environment (or equivalent institutions) in countries in response to the biennial UNSD/UNEP questionnaire. They were complemented by data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on water resources. Data on EU and OECD member and partner countries are from OECD and Eurostat.
• Is the architecture of Dubai socially responsive? | Design from Construction Week Online Middle East Editorials – Fairly scathing critique of Dubai from the point of view of providing housing for families: "Socially responsive architecture evolves as a direct reflection of the life patterns of its inhabitants, reflecting the collective will of the society. Architecture should employ sustainable design to address client goals and user needs while responding to the surrounding community.
  Architecture that serves a community; addresses inequities in society; and responds to climatic, cultural and environmental conditions can be considered socially responsive. Socially responsible design goes beyond aesthetics and function—it emphasises interaction between structure and people."
• ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy – " Will public, private and civic actors take action to create low-carbon economies? What emission reduction strategies will be efficient, equitable and acceptable? How much should we invest, and when, on measures to reduce vulnerability to climate change? Who will bear the costs and enjoy the benefits?
  These types of questions inform the work of the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy. Its mission is to advance public and private action on climate change through rigorous, innovative research."
• Turn trash into energy in your office parking lot | Green Tech – CNET News – Gasification unit: "Feeding the maximum of three tons of trash will yield about 120 kilowatts of electricity and about double that in heat, which will fulfill about 15 percent of a building's energy needs, IST Energy figures. The bigger financial benefit is in cutting disposal fees, Haber said.
  With an up-front cost of $850,000, a GEM unit will have a payback in three to four years, the company calculates."

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