Elemental

These are my links for June 24th through June 26th:

• My M&M’s® – Get Your Favorite Faces on Your Favorite Candy – Upload a Picture and Message – Completely OT, but really? Printing photos on M&M's.
• Sex and the City and Handbag Insanity » Transition Culture – Poor Rob is stunned that women rent handbags in NY. I don't have the heart to tell him they do it in the UK too…
• workinproperty: Spinning Blocks in Dubai – OMG. In fact OMGG. Where do I even start on this one. Twisting to optimise orientation would be almost forgiveable, but on the occupants whim? Barking…
• Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (National) RAB says UK’s proposed renewable energy target is achievable – 3.3% of 15% to come from built environment.
• GOOD Magazine: The Life And Death Of Green Design – Living on The Huffington Post – Excellent article on LEED from Huffington Post: "Like any standardized test, LEED works best as a measurement tool, not a paradigm shifter. Change has to come from the architects themselves."
• BeGreen Launches First-of-Its-Kind Calculator to Help Businesses Achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED(R)) Certification – The tool allows businesses to calculate the number of RECs required to meet the Green Power LEED certification standard, based on actual or estimated energy usage.
• Home – The Carbon Trust Standard – The Carbon Trust Standard certifies that an organisation has genuinely reduced its carbon footprint and is committed to making further reductions year on year.
• Where Has All the Water Gone? | The American Prospect – via the Triple Bottom Line. "The world may not exactly be running out of water, but it is running out of clean water."

mel starrs News BERR, blogger, calculator, carbon_footprint, certification, crisis, Dubai, Economics, global, LEED, orientation, OT, renewable, renewables, skyscrapers, water

These are my links for June 4th through June 6th:

• Are developers ignoring the threat of climate change? – Building Design – BD debates losing their edge – both sides generally agree with each other. Agree with this: "We need a different hierarchy in the development team, with the building services engineer and landscape architect taking centre stage"
• Email checklist – Genius list of email do's and don't's from Seth Godin. I particularly like the CAPS item. Just don't do this. EVER. Especially to colleagues in internal emails (yes, there is a story there…)
• 534nm – Another blogger found! Paul from Norwich has been quizzing euro politicians on housing. Added to my growing blogroll
• New Hints Seen That Red Wine May Slow Aging – NYTimes.com – I always knew red wine was good for you…
• Less talk, more action | News | CABE – CABE not interested in naming and shaming – pity. Would have liked to see the full analysis rather than the highlights in the Guardian.

mel starrs News aging, blogger, building_services, CABE, construction_industry, developers, email, engineer, health, norwich, Sustainability, UK, wine

These are my links for May 29th through June 1st:

• is there a fourth sector? | design activism – Interesting discussion on businesses straddling the line between not-for-profit and for-profit (resonates with Yvon Chouinard's book Let my People go Surfing)
• Appraisals of Extensive Green Roofs – via Building magazine forums, a survey from Liverpool JMU on green roofs. Go help research and fill it out.
• Medicority « Life’s too short to drink cheap wine. – Great post about user competence and associated levels for Revit. Would love to see a similar one for IES<VE>. Agree with most of the observations. Anyone involved in BIM at any level should read this one.
• Mixed use needs real meaning – Building Design – "enormous plazas surrounded by galumphing great modern warehouses full of people sitting at computer screens earning the money needed to buy shiny gewgaws inside other galumphing great modern warehouses stuffed full of throwaway things made in China."
• Greener B-Schools, Greener Employees – Harvard Business Online’s Leading Green – Convergence ahoy! Andrew Winston (Green to Gold) is writing for Harvard Business Online. Sustainability is no longer an option.
• Sustainability in construction industry organisations – Nick Reilly's blog – the list of bloggers continues to grow.
• Want to Boost Productivity? Give Workers Bigger Screens – Why bigger or two screens are a good idea. From HBR.

mel starrs News article, BIM, blogger, business, construction_industry, fourth_sector, glancey, green, Productivity, R&D, Revit, roofs, survey, Sustainability