Elemental

These are my links for July 26th through July 27th:

• International Green Construction Code (IGCC) Now in the Works| News | Architectural Record – International in the same way the World Series is a global baseball competition: "On June 29, the American Institute of Architects, along with the International Code Council (ICC) and the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), announced their intent to create an International Green Construction Code (IGCC).
  The new code aims to cover all aspects of sustainability in the built environment, from roofing to ventilation strategies, drawing from existing codes and standards to create one universal code. The code will apply to new construction and renovations. “We hope this will bring all of the separate efforts together and put them under one umbrella to make it easier for jurisdictions to know what they are adopting,” says Adolf Zubia, ICC board president."
• CBI climate change progress tracker. CBI on climate change. – Climate change remains one of the most critical issues affecting the UK, but in tough economic times it is at clear risk of slipping down the political agenda. Urgent action to cut emissions must be delivered if we are to hit government emissions reduction targets, ensure a future independent supply of energy, and manage rising energy costs.
  The CBI’s Climate Change Tracker is a tool developed by the CBI to track progress against the priorities set out in the CBI’s 2007 climate change report, Climate change: everyone’s business.
  The Tracker benchmarks the progress of the priorities for action set out in the report, focusing on the immediate decisions and delivery needed up to 2010.
• Dubai development may be down, but it’s not out – Los Angeles Times – Fascinating and scary article on Dubai: "In the heart of most cities, the biggest piece of land that a single developer is typically able to control is one square block. …In Dubai, whole districts of the city, many covering dozens of square blocks and hundreds of acres, have been given over to single developments. Seeing architectural diversity within any project as a threat to the bottom line, their creators usually hire a single firm to design them around a recognizable theme…
  The result is a surprising twist on the privatization of cities like Los Angeles, where public space is notoriously scarce. In the privatized city, as the well-known critique goes, people aren't forced to mix with people who are different from themselves. They are hidden from that interaction inside their private cars and gated developments. … In Dubai, remarkably enough, the same is true for buildings, which tend to cluster together with other pieces of architecture just like them."
• Property’s Quangocracy – Property Week – Excellent dissection of the RDA's and their spending. MIPIM anyone?
• Charter of the New Urbanism | Congress for the New Urbanism – My Jane Jacobs obsession has lead me to the doors of New Urbanism and their charter. With LEED-ND and BREEAM Communities rearing their heads, time to get to grips with New Urbanism and what the future holds…
• Frank Gruber: New Urbanism: Very Misunderstood – "New Urbanism, although it has antecedents in mid-century voices (such as that of Jane Jacobs) …is a movement that arose in the 1980s among architects upset not only with the decline of the quality of the built environment but also with the failure they perceived of the profession of architecture to pay attention to the spaces between buildings and the larger urban or regional context…
  New Urbanists are attacked from both sides of America's cultural divide. Chances are, if you mention New Urbanism to group of forward thinking, contemporary design professionals, whether architects or planners, they will roll their eyes. To them New Urbanism, …is a facilitator of sprawl, not a solution. …New Urbanism is hopelessly nostalgic.
  But if you find yourself among a group of conservatives or libertarians, … you'll just as likely unleash a denunciation on the grounds that New Urbanism aims to thwart the natural desire of Americans to live in a single-family house on a cul-de-sac."
• Media library · Town and Country Planning Association – "Leading planning and housing charity, the Town and Country Planning Association(TCPA) will celebrate its 110th AGM today by publishing a Manifesto for the 21st Century. The Association’s vision – Towns and Countryside for a New Age of Challenge – sets out a new set of aspirations which directly address today’s challenges of climate change, globalisation and social justice.
  The TCPA’s Manifesto comprises four main elements: choice and diversity; cities and the larger task; a revitalised countryside; and networks of cities, towns and villages."
• The Effect of the Recession on Partnering in the Construction Sector – Excellent presentation from Don Ward, which he presented at the AEC networking meeting at the Building Centre last week. Slides 31/32 hold key messages for me. A lower price for the client does not necessarily have to eat into our profit margins (and in fact, shouldn't – we all need to make money).
• Real Time Carbon – I love this – I have a great deal of time for anything coming out of AMEE : "Until now, anyone trying to understand the carbon impact of the electricity they use has only had a single static Government conversion factor. The factor – currently 527 grams CO2 per kWh of electricity – is updated only a few times a year.
  The standard figure is based on a number of assumptions about the mix of energy used to generate electricity – the "generation mix". It tells consumers nothing about the carbon intensity of electricity at a given time.
  Real Time Carbon wants to help energy users see the real-time carbon intensity of electricity so they can avoid consuming at times of high emissions. We look forward to a time when appliances, buildings and factories automatically manage demand according to the carbon being released."
• Our Seven Commitments – Royal Town Planning Institute – Interesting work from RTPI, but it feels a little late? Interested to find out how they do with no.1, behavioural change, and good to see it isn't a "cast-in-stone" mainfesto : "The seven commitments are supported by a living and continuously improved action plan that will deliver practical outcomes, benefiting communities at the global and the local scale."
• U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu: “Global Warming Is the Greatest Challenge Facing Science” « The Dirt – "In the case of energy-efficient buildings, Chu argued local knowledge drives local building development, and needs to be updated to ensure best practices in energy-efficient buildings quickly go global. ”Buildings are local. We don’t ship buildings to Denmark.” He described the type of knowledge needed for creating energy-efficient buildings as a sort of “hands-on,” practitioner’s knowledge –”it’s like a gardener’s craft or like those who know how to cook well.” Still, he thinks it is possible to “teach each other how to capture carbon, how to create more energy-efficient buildings.” To those who argue that any intellectual property (IP) transferred overseas should be protected, Chu added “it’s not about intellectual property (IP), it’s about people.” He also argued that the case for energy efficient buildings is economic — highly energy-efficient buildings can reduce current energy consumption by four-to-five times, putting “more money into people’s pockets.”"
• Ch 13 Page 79: Sustainable Energy – without the hot air – From David MacKay's excellent book:"“it’s better to drive than to walk.” Whether this is true depends on your diet. It’s certainly possible to find food whose fossil-fuel energy footprint is bigger than the energy delivered to the human. … According to a study from the University of Exeter, the typical diet has an embodied energy of roughly 6 kWh per kWh eaten. To figure out whether driving a car or walking uses less energy, we need to know the transport efficiency of each mode. For the typical car …, the energy cost was 80 kWh per 100 km. Walking uses a net energy of 3.6 kWh per 100 km – 22 times less. So if you live entirely on food whose footprint is greater than 22 kWh per kWh then, yes, the energy cost of getting you from A to B in a fossil-fuel-powered vehicle is less than if you go under your own steam. But if you have a typical diet (6 kWh per kWh) then “it’s better to drive than to walk” is a myth. Walking uses one quarter as much energy."
• DOE: Building Energy Codes – News Item – "The decision to create the joint publication resulted from the recent legislation passed by the U.S. Congress, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). The Act establishes an energy efficiency goal of 90 percent compliance with the 2009 IECC and Standard 90.1-2007 in all 50 states by 2017. In establishing this goal, the Federal legislation recognizes the 2009 IECC and Standard 90.1-2007 as the energy efficiency benchmarks for residential and commercial buildings.
  Because the ICC and ASHRAE documents complement each other, publishing them in one book benefits architects, designers, engineers, and code officials. It makes it easier to choose between design options, and helps make sure new and renovated buildings are in compliance with the latest references and local building safety codes."
• Bad British Architecture: BLAR MHOR HOUSING IN CAOL, FORT WILLIAM BY ARCHIAL FOR LORNE DEVELOPMENTS – Very quickly, a firm favourite on my blogroll. Ghost of Nairn in acerbic form as usual: "One helpful rule of thumb, from Nairn to you. When someone presents a masterplan with a perimeter of a line of trees, it means they're trying to hide something. Do not trust these people."

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These are my links for July 18th through July 19th:

• Crouching Tiger? | Forum For The Future – Excellent article on China. "Government backing for big green ambitions is also in evidence at Tianjin. This industrial port east of Beijing is to be the site of a hugely ambitious new ‘eco-city’, a joint Chinese-Singaporean venture which will shortly enter its first phase with the construction of a 1.5km2-‘eco-business park’. When complete, the city’s 350,000 residents will live in super-efficient buildings clustered in hubs designed to minimise commuting needs, and travel to work by light railway. It’s a lot less ambitious when it comes to energy, however, with only 20% to be sourced from renewables.
  In a country which builds two Manhattan islands’ worth of new floor space every year, there’s an urgent need for such exemplar developments. But Tianjin’s experiment will be watched closely, because such projects in China have often not lived up to expectations. "
• The Lazy Environmentalist: Desertec Industrial Initiative – I don't know how Polly finds the time or energy, but she's got good news for DESERTEC: "The aim is to ensure by 2050 that solar power from the northern Sahara will meet at least 15 percent of European electricity needs and a significant proportion of local electricity demand in the countries of North Africa. The purpose of the newly founded initiative is to clarify the technological issues and create the neccessary political, socio-political and economic foundations and develop a vaible implementation plan within the next three years. The DII is expected to network closely with the scientific community, non-governmental organisations and governement organisations. The DESERTEC Foundation will play a central role in this respect."
• how good is PAYS? « carbon limited – Great explanation from Casey on how PAYS might work (or not). The long and the short of it: "Even at this broad brush level, it’s clear that there will be a significant shortfall here. PAYS will not, single handedly, solve the existing stock problem. Someone else – either government or homeowners – are going to have to stump up and the costs are likely to be high."

admin News africa, China, CSP, desertec, Energy, Europe, existing, PAYS, refurbishment, sahara

An advantage to living in London during the week is the wealth of events, exhibitions and ‘do’s’ available to me, generally for free. Last week I took the opportunity to head to a very well attended event at Building Centre on Store St with standing room only.

The talk was on the Stadthaus, the tallest residential timber engineered building in the world.
It is, bizarrely, located at Murray Grove, in Shoreditch. KLH were the timber supplier, architects were Waugh Thistleton, and structural engineers were Techniker. Our speakers for the evening were Andrew Waugh (architect) and Matthew Linegaugh (structural engineer).

The 9 stories are positioned on the old footprint of a pub which used to be there. The building consists of 29 flats for Telford Homes, 10 affordable and 19 private. One interesting thing to note is that despite the affordable and private being within the same block, they each have their own entrance, bin stores, staircases etc! The adjacent properties were mainly high density LA housing.

At the time of construction, concrete and steel were very expensive and there was an incentive to build quick. The solution was to use cross laminated timber entirely (not even using a concrete core which would have lead to settling problems). This was a major change in the beam, column, slab mentality. The structure looks rather more like a deck of cards where every wall is a beam (diaphragm).

In addition to the speed of construction, the other main advantage was getting around the GLA‘s frustrating attitude to renewables. GLA proposed GSHP which would have required a basement plantroom. The team felt this was too costly, and also not in the real spirit of carbon reduction. They argued, successfully, that the timber construction had a much greater impact.

The maths went something like this:

• Timber stored carbon 186 tonnes.
• Concrete 130 tonnes emitted.
• So saving is 300 tonnes saved.
• 10% reduction is equivalent to 210 years.

Amazingly, the GLA agreed.

Comparing the program to an equivalent concrete building: 47 week program vs 72 weeks. Concrete would have been 4 times heavier and dense resulting in a much greater use of resources. During the Q&A the question of thermal mass was picked up and the answer from KLH was that we don’t currently properly understand thermal mass of cross laminated but research is currently being done. POE is just about to commence – it will be interesting to see how it performs in practice.

Apart from the timber structure the rest of the build was remarkably conventional. Follow on trades didn’t come on site until timber was up – could have got even better time savings. Electricians loved it for first fix – a nail gun and a pair of stilts and the job was done in a fraction of the time compared to drilling into concrete. Heating was via a floating screed floor with uderfloor heating.

From the Wood Awards:

The facade was created by recording the changing light and shadows formed on the empty site by the surrounding buildings and trees; the pattern was captured through a sun-path animation. The resulting image was pixilated, picked up, stretched and wrapped around the building. The exterior cladding forming this pixilated image is made up of over 5,000 individual panels across the building in three shades: white, grey and black. The 1200×230mm panels are manufactured by Eternit and made up of 70% waste timber.

The building was pre-Code for Sustainable Homes, but being partially affordable housing was built under Ecohomes. It started at an ‘Excellent’ rating but  cost savings during design resulted in a ‘Very Good’ rating.

The build costs were thought to be approximately 10% less than the equivalent concrete structure, but much of that saving is related to time and labour rather than capital cost.

For further information a book is available: A Process Revealed / Auf dem Howlzweg:Stadthaus (which I resisted the urge to buy myself – but it’s a very handsome tome).

Whilst the engineering is undoubtedly a huge success, there were a couple of points which maybe let down the ‘social’ aspect of the project – namely the demise of a pub (which may well have been a den of iniquity, but I have a soft spot for pubs) and the separation of the affordable/private common areas. Both, no doubt, commercial decisions.  Apart from these minor niggles, a successful project.

admin Events GLA, London, Thermal mass, timber

These are my links for July 14th through July 16th:

• Sustainable Homes – This could open the doors for more LA's to impose CSH (and BREEAM?) levels for planning conditions: "Chelmsford Borough Council requires that Code for Sustainable Homes Level 3 is achieved as a planning condition for new buildings. The developer appealed against this condition but following consideration by the Planning Inspectorate the condition was held as "reasonable and necessary"."
• House 2.0: On triple glazing – Mark Brinkley warming to the idea of Passivhaus: "comfort underlies the PassivHaus take on triple glazing. I have been a voice arguing that triple glazing is “overkill” in the UK climate and that the energy used in making these units would probably never be repaid by the energy saved over their lifetime. However, the main reason for using triple glazing is not to save energy but to provide more comfort, as the internal temperatures remain more even.
  Feist produced a table showing what the temperature differences were close to different forms of glazing when the internal temperature is designed to maintain at around 21°C and the external temperature drops to —5°C.
  • next to a single glazed window, the adjacent temperature is around 1°C
  • next to a double glazed window (2000 vintage), the adjacent temperature is around 11°C
  • next to a triple glazed window, with a centre pane U value of just 0.65, the temperature is 18°C."
• Portland Architecture: A man struggling: Guy Battle comes to Portland – Guy stands up for engineers: "Do engineers deserve more credit?
  Yes, I think so. Engineering is the hidden hand. They have an enormous amount to contribute to architecture, but too often their contribution is gently put to one side. I think it’s something that should be celebrated. You look at someone like Peter Rice or Neil Thomas, Chris Wise, Guy Nordenson, and a host of other fantastic engineers, and they don’t really get the recognition they deserve."
• Ashden Awards (Jonathon Porritt) – Kirklees (again): "Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council – one of the unsung heroes of local government who have been doing their "sustainability bit" for the last 20 years. But their current home insulation initiative has really made people sit up and listen as it has succeeded in achieving real scale – where so many of the current measures are just picking around at the edges. Here’s what the Award citation said:
  "In 2007, Kirklees Council committed £10 million to providing free loft and cavity-wall insulation for every home in the borough where it can be used. The scheme targets one council ward at a time, using the local Councillor and local advertising, then individual home visits by assessors. By May 2009, 66,000 out of the 172,000 households in the borough had been assessed, 54,000 referred for surveys, 26,000 surveys had been completed, and 21,000 had insulation installed. This avoids an estimated 18,000 tonnes a year of CO2. 140 jobs have been created by the scheme.""
• Cutting carbon with smart finance | Forum For The Future – Innovative financing examples: "For instance, Kirklees’ Re-Charge scheme loans householders money to install low-carbon technologies in their property, such as solar panels to heat water. It is successful because there are no interest charges and the money does not have to be repaid until the property is sold. The council only has to subsidise the interest on the loans and this costs around three times less per home than using a grant scheme."
• FT.com / Weekend columnists / Tim Harford – Carbon footprinting: time to pick up the pace – The ever lucid Tim Harford:"The carbon-footprinting process often produces surprises. An environmentally conscious consumer in the crisps aisle of the supermarket will probably be thinking about packaging or “food miles”. The Carbon Trust reckons that about 1 per cent of the climate impact of a packet of crisps is from moving potatoes around. The largest single culprit is the production of the nitrogen fertiliser, and half of the climate impact in general takes place at the agricultural stage. The point is not that agriculture is always the problem, but that it is very hard for a well-meaning consumer to work out what the green purchasing decision actually is. For this reason, the Carbon Trust has a carbon labelling scheme. The trouble is that many consumers simply do not care enough to pay more or choose a less enjoyable product simply because of the low carbon label."
• Ground Control | PD Smith | Kafka’s mouse – Minton's book duly added to my wishlist. Review: "Sections of our city centres are being sold off to private developers to create shopping monocultures such as Westfield London or "malls without walls" like Stratford City, which is being built for the 2012 Olympics and is one of the largest retail-led developments in Europe. It is, says Minton, "a private city within a city" and represents a return to the early 19th century when aristocrats owned great swathes of London, fortifying their estates of up-market housing with gates and private security forces.
  Now, “land and property which has been in public hands for 150 years or more is moving back into private hands”. Minton argues that today’s privatised city centres and gated communities are fostering "a new culture of authoritarianism and control"."
• Market Research Strategies – Excellent article on generating leads in a down turn market. Primarily aimed at US architects, but easily relatable to UK and engineers/consultants.

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These are my links for July 2nd through July 8th:

• Woobius Scribbles — Bottom-up collaboration in the construction industry – Excellent post on collaborative working by Woobius and the curse of email:"You know that feeling. You’ve just set up the best collaboration system ever. You have all the processes documented and approved. Everyone’s agreed to use the system. Things couldn’t be better. Then, the project kicks off and there comes that sinking feeling when you realise that everyone is bypassing your carefully tuned system.
  Everyone is sending emails instead."
• If zero carbon is the answer then just what was the question? « isite – Martin has an excellent rant and takes on Passivhaus amongst other issues pertaining to zero carbon: "Passivhaus is emerging as the aspirational darling or solution. But what is the true embodied energy of passivhaus, in particular the massive amounts of insulation, sheeting and duct tape? Passivhaus will reduce energy requirements and costs. Excellent. But I would love to see the payback time on the total and higher than normal embodied energies and waste."
• Tellytubby land: BedZed revisited – Building – Fantastic review of BedZed 7 years on. I was fully aware of the situation with the CHP, but less so with the allotments and car use issues. A long article, but very worthwhile reading.
• Climate change odds much worse than thought – MIT News Office – More doom, but presented in pretty roulette wheels. I ought to stop reading all this doom, but am strangely compelled to keep checking for confirming evidence. Behavioural economists, make of this what you will.: "The new research involved 400 runs of the model with each run using slight variations in input parameters, selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge. Other research groups have estimated the probabilities of various outcomes, based on variations in the physical response of the climate system itself. But the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities as well – such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries."
• The orders figures and public spending fears point to industry chaos ahead – need it be so? (Brickonomics) – I'm in broad agreement with Brian on this:"What firms should be doing now is assessing what they are good at and what they are not good at, what makes them profit, what costs them time and resources unprofitably.
  They should focus on quality of earnings not volume of earnings.
  They should focus effort on what they are good at and judiciously shed the operations that are weak….
  That however does not alter the reality that this recession will be cruel and that the industry has no choice but to retreat. Turnover overall must fall. Competition does need to be taken out of the market.
  It is better that firms recognise their weaknesses and retreat from them than seek to bid unrealistically against those better placed.
  The worst of all outcomes would be to lose good firms because of the woeful bidding by weak operations desperate to win work at any price."
• We don’t know what is coming next – so get ready – The Regeneration Blog – Jackie's advice on getting ready for a potential change in administration: "But in the meantime, my current advice is this: you know not what is coming next, so get as ready as you can. Have a total clear out (in every sense), trim down, strip back everything and establish your priorities.
  Swot up on localism and reconnect with your bottom-up roots. If you are able to deliver decent outputs (notably jobs or homes) you will be safe even if – or perhaps especially if – as we suspect, the RDA's get wiped away and their responsibilities are given to County Councils and the like. "
• Sustainable Design Tools Exhibited at AIA 2009: AECbytes Feature Article – Excellent review of the latest 'sustainable design' software tools available on the market, including Ecotect (aligned with Autodesk and therefore AutoCAD – very popular with architects), IES (my favourite) and TAS and Hevacomp (which are now both owned by Bentley (the home of AutoCAD rival Microstation). Whatever happened to Cymap? Seem to have been left behind…
• PlanningBlog: When did everyone get so cynical? « – "Regeneration is quite often seen as big business riding roughshod over local people’s wishes. It’s eyed with suspicion and written off as ‘ a waste of taxpayers money’ before it’s even come out of the ground.
  This all ties in with the wider anti-politician backlash currently sweeping the country. Politicians and anyone in authority are seen as ‘out to line their own pockets’ and anything they propose or champion is therefore, by association, a bad thing.
  Of course we should question authority and challenge things we don’t agree with but whatever happened to taking something at face value? A much needed regeneration of an area might actually be just that, not a conspiracy or an attempt to get one over on the general public.
  I’m not sure what the answer is to this. … Perhaps the problem is with the politicians themselves and only political reform can ‘reconnect’ and re-build trust between the people and those in authority."
• Government ends energy bulbs scheme – The IET – Some sensible news: "Power companies will no longer be able to mail out millions of energy-saving light bulbs to meet their targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions from homes.
  The Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc) has announced changes to the Government scheme requiring energy suppliers to cut emissions from homes, including an end to the direct mail out of low-energy light bulbs by January 1, 2010."

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These are my links for July 1st from 08:46 to 13:54:

• Quarterly Energy Prices – BIS – "Quarterly Energy Prices is DECC's publication covering energy prices. It includes data formerly included in ‘Energy Trends’ (Tables 26 to 30) and the ‘Digest of UK Energy Statistics’ (Chapter 9).
  It contains tables, charts and commentary on industrial, domestic and international prices. "
• ASHRAE Unveils Design of New Building Energy Label – CoStar Group – ASHRAE unveil details of BEQ (Building Energy Quotient), very similar to DEC's: "as many expected, the prototype borrows heavily from the U.K.’s Display Energy Certificate, an energy label that is required for some buildings in England and Wales. Unveiled Saturday by Harrison, it grades energy efficiency on a color-coded letter scale from “A+” to “F”, with the highest grade reserved for net-zero energy buildings."
• BRE :: News – Convergance in standards continues: "These developments will be in line with the work on common metrics which is being undertaken by BRE Global, CSTB and other major organizations such as DGnB, VTT, NIST, ITC-CNR and FCAV within the SB Alliance, as well as the common carbon measurement to be established between BREEAM, LEED, and Green-Star currently being led by BRE Global."

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