Elemental

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or check out my popular posts in the sidebar. Thanks for visiting!

These are my links for January 10th through January 14th:

• Why do architects earn less than other professionals? – BD Resource – Going back 50 years or so, architects used to have similar earning power to lawyers and medics, but we seem to have gradually painted ourselves out of the picture for clients. We wanted to focus on the interesting design bits. We didn’t want to “do money”, which led to the rise of the QS in advising and controlling costs for the clients. We were less interested in the management of projects, which led to the project manager becoming the client’s agent. All the so-called boring technical bits we delegated to technicians, technologists and engineers. No wonder clients now put far less value on what architects do.
• Building4Change : M&S backs A rated appliances and Code level 4 – Quite a commitment!: "High street retailer Marks and Spencer is incorporating energy efficient domestic appliances and building to level 4 of the Code for Sustainable Homes into its home insurance policy. If a property is damaged severely and warrants a total rebuild, properties will be rebuilt in line with the Code for Sustainable Homes level 4."
• Completion date scrapped for Masdar eco-city – Building – "Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s clean energy firm, has abandoned the final completion date of 2016 for its pioneering £13bn desert eco-city project.
  Initiated in 2006, Masdar City was billed as the world’s first carbon-neutral, zero-waste city. At the city’s groundbreaking ceremony in 2008 a completion date of 2016 was announced, but this has now been scrapped.
  The first stage of the project will be finished by 2013, with a new date of 2020 set for Masdar City to have a critical mass of residents and businesses."
• Ex-Llewelyn Davies Yeang team on move again | News | Architects Journal – Llewelyn Davies Yeang’s (LDY) former masterplanning unit has been sold on for the second time in two years
  The 13-strong team, which was offloaded by LDY in February 2008 to consulting giant the Tribal Group, has joined multi-disciplinary design and engineering outfit Scott Wilson.
• ASHRAE Standard 189.1 The Standard for the Design of High-Performance, Green Buildings – "Standard 189.1P, once published, will provide a ‘total building sustainability package’ for those who strive to design, build and operate green buildings. From site location to energy use to recycling, this standard will set the foundation for green buildings through its adoption into local codes. The Standard for the Design of High-Performance, Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings, is being developed by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) in conjunction with the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The standard is slated to be the first code-intended commercial green building standard in the United States when published early in 2010. It covers key topic areas similar to green building rating systems: site sustainability, water use efficiency, energy efficiency, indoor environmental quality, and the building’s impact on the atmosphere, materials and resources."
• Green, not grand – "Environmental concerns are no longer being overlooked by many developers, who have begun to take advantage of the politically correct, socially responsible image that being "green" provides, especially to attract multinational tenants. To prove their buildings are environmentally friendly, design professionals are beginning to adopt standards from the United States for "green" buildings, such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, an internationally recognized rating system designed by the US Green Building Council. LEED certification is meant to verify that buildings are energy and water efficient, have low CO2 emissions, and utilize local resources that use smaller amounts of energy to create and transport. "

admin News 189.1, architect, ashrae, building, China, CSH, green, LDY, LEED, m&a, masdar, masterplanning, Scott_Wilson, standard

These are my links for December 8th through December 10th:

• ASHRAE’s Building Energy Quotient building labeling program – ASHRAE's BEQ (roughly equivalent to DEC) continues to be developed.
• The Language of Sustainability: Why Words Matter | GreenBiz.com – Communicating sustainability: "Provide context for "sustainability," in that it means the ability to continue into the indefinite future by respecting the Earth's ecosystems, its limits, and providing space for the other beings on the planet to exist. Otherwise, we create perverse concepts like sustainable growth, as if we can continue unlimited growth in the face of limits."
• The Greenest Brick is the One That’s Already in the Wall : TreeHugger – Great point: "He understands also that while a sustainable building must be durable, flexible and frugal, it must first be lovable,
  "because it does not matter how efficiently the building performs if it is demolished and carted off to the landfill in a generation or two because it cannot be loved."
• Climate Change | Housing | Quarter-Acre Block – "But relatively high densities have little to do with the use of sustainable transport. The best performer is the Canadian capital, Ottawa, which is much less dense than Los Angeles and about the same as Melbourne. Brisbane has barely half Melbourne's density and a third that of Los Angeles, but use of sustainable transport is similar to Melbourne and more than twice the level in LA.
  Sustainable transport use has more to do with transport policy than density, which is excellent news for anyone concerned about the environment. It would take many decades and vast expense to substantially change the density of a city of 4 million people, and we don't have that much time. Climate change and insecure oil supplies are urgent problems, and we need solutions now. Fortunately, transport policies can be changed more quickly and with less disruption than urban form, so we might be able to keep our leafy suburbs and still save the planet."
• Homophily « twopointouch – Something often on my mind. Tricky: "Often, when I read blogs and tweets, I know that the person writing is doing so because it in some way amplifies or enhances their professional career. A lot of people I connect with are consultants of some description in their jobs. Their job is to be wise and right. That makes them lovely people, by and large, but there are arguably downsides. It can very often have the side-effect of meaning that they are never going to go out on a limb or wish to seem controversial. It’s also a job where you need people to want to work with you, so you won’t go around telling potential clients or collaborators that they’re wrong."
• House 2.0: The Copenhagen Blues – Great article from Mark Brinkley: ”Milliband minor answered thus: “By 2050, our economies will be six or seven times larger than they are now, and so we must ensure that all that growth is low or zero carbon growth.”
  I took a proverbial double take. Six or seven times bigger than 2010? That assumes something like a 10% annual growth rate every year for 40 years. And yet carbon emissions are due to fall by 80% by that time. Just how is that going to work?
  Historically, economic growth has been fuelled by carbon – almost every innovation we come up with involves substituting machines for human labour, which involves burning carbon somewhere along the line. Now we may be able to make machines which are less carbon intensive, but do you really think we will be able to get to zero carbon by 2050 whilst at the same time expanding the world economy by six or seven times?"

admin News aesthetics, ashrae, benchmark, beq, building, carbon, cities, COP15, DEC, definition, Economics, Energy, green, growth, planning, policy, socialnetworking, social_media, Sustainability, transport

These are my links for November 27th through December 2nd:

• Smart Vendors: Biomass Supply Chain (UK) – Innovation & Cleantech – Possibly interesting (but very expensive – £150!) report on biomass (not sure how independent the authors are?): "The future evolution of the UK biomass supply chain will be significantly impacted by the opening of proposed major biomass power generation plants by firms like Drax Power and Prenergy in the next 3 years."
• Debt storm threatens Dubai’s ambitions | Last Word | MEED – The most understandable commentary on Dubai which I have come across this week: "Dubai World has gone into a form of protective bankruptcy, similar to the US’ chapter 11 arrangements. It is a situation fraught with difficulties that could damage Dubai and the UAE. And the true scale of what Dubai owes is still unknown.
  But it is Dubai World’s creditors that face the biggest immediate problem. None can expect to receive any money until Dubai World’s assets and liabilities have been fully assessed, a judgement made about how big the gap between the two is and a schedule defined for when creditors will be paid, and how much. It is tough, particularly for those who are owed money today. But it is fair."
• Regulation shapes revolution in Gulf sustainable buildings | Last Word | MEED – Interesting summary of green building accreditation throughout the Middle East. Will the Dubai ripples have an impact?:
  "Abu Dhabi’s new building code, regulations that make sustainability compulsory in all buildings and major retro-fits throughout the emirate, come into force on 1 January 2010."
• First Net-Zero Neighborhood in the US Being Built in Boulder | Inhabitat – At last, some aesthetically pleasing (to my eye at least) net zero homes in my favourite US city, Boulder. Still enormous compared to the UK – 280m² for a townhouse is 3.5 times larger than the average new build UK home (76m² according to swing a cat):
  "Located on Broadway and Poplar Ave in Northern Boulder, the 1.5 acre neighborhood is conveniently located across from a market, shops and restaurants and with easy access via bus to the rest of the city. Six townhomes border Broadway, while six single-family homes sit back behind around a communal park. All the homes will be orientated to the south and photovoltaic systems can installed on the roof, which will completely provide the homes with all the energy they need."
• Rebooting Britain: transform cities into lush jungles – Another article from Wired. This time, I have to disagree slightly – IMO London is currently the *only* UK city suitable for walking and public transport?: "Cities are at present vulnerable to the smallest interruptions in oil and gas supply. The first step in cutting this dependency should be a ban on private car ownership in metropolitan areas. Even a sprawling city like London can be comfortably navigated by walking, cycling, and use of public transport – powered, like delivery vehicles servicing businesses and homes, by batteries, biofuels, or hydrogen fuel cells. The great tidal flows of commuters could be reduced by rezoning commercial areas for residential use and introducing workshops and offices into residential areas, as in the human-scale, mixed-use street plans of medieval cities."
• Rebooting Britain: tax people back into the cities – Really looking forward to PD Smith's new book. Here a flavour from Wired UK: "To create a low-carbon economy we need to become a nation of city dwellers. We tax cigarettes to reflect the harm they do to our health: we need to tax lifestyles that are damaging the health of the planet – and that means targeting people who choose to live in the countryside. We need a Rural Living Tax. Agricultural workers and others whose jobs require them to live outside cities would be exempt. The revenue raised could be used to build new, well-planned cities and to radically upgrade the infrastructure of existing cities."
• When provided a choice, do people choose? – The Social Enterprise – Suw is spot on about adoptation of social media within companies (my experience on Yammer and Skype backs this up): "The successful implementation of social software doesn't stop with a technically successful roll-out. In fact, that's when the process begins because that's when your adoption strategy should kick in.
  Adoption is ultimately about behaviour change: persuading people that, for example,
  instead of sending an email to everyone with a new version of a document they are working on, they should put it on a wiki where it's easier to collaborate. This might seem like a small step – and for a few people it is – but for the majority that's a fundamental change to the way that they have learnt to work on documents."
• Gordon Brown’s ‘eco town’ vision quietly shelved – Times Online – "Gordon Brown’s vision of establishing distinct “eco towns” across the country has been quietly shelved, it emerged today.
  The Government tried to keep up the project’s momentum by announcing a further 14 locations where “green developments” have local council backing.
  But it became clear the new sites will not be for the self standing towns of up to 15,000 homes originally envisaged by the Prime Minister.
  Most will be developments of no more than 5,000 homes on the edge of urban areas, which will be cheaper, easier to plan and attract much less local opposition than those first proposed by the Government."
• Futerra Sustainability Communications – Conspiracies, Climate and Communication – More climategate fallout – Solitaire from Futerra defends her position (well said): "So in my own voice I want to get one thing straight; I hate climate change. I really really hate it and wish it wasn’t happening. Some of the climategate posts seem to imply we’re part of a ‘pro’ climate conspiracy. Considering how deeply and passionately I wish the darn thing wasn’t happening that accusation left me fish-mouthing in surprise. I don’t want climate change, I don’t like climate change, and I’m bloody annoyed that my best years will be spent trying to combat the darn thing.
  The horrible irony is how much I want the deniers to be right. If I had one wish it would be for climate change to be untrue, a blip, misread data, to slope off in embarrassment. If only."
  Now, can we stop being distracted by the semantics and arguments and get on with some design? Thank you.
• CRED Guide | The Psychology of Climate Change Communication – Via Joanna Yarrow, a fascinating document on communicating climate change. Niggets include: "balance information that triggers an emotional response with more analytic information to leave a mark in more than one place in the brain."
• A Climate Scientist Who Engages Skeptics – Dot Earth Blog – NYTimes.com – Read the whole article: "In grappling with this issue, I would argue that there are three strategies for dealing with skeptics…
  Most scientists retreat into the ivory tower. The CRU emails reflect elements of the circling of wagons strategy. For the past 3 years, I have been trying to figure out how to engage skeptics effectively in the context of #3, … Some of the things that I’ve tried in my quest to understand skeptics and more effectively counter misinformation include posting at skeptical blogs, such as climateaudit, and inviting prominent skeptics to give seminars at Georgia Tech. I have received significant heat from some colleagues for doing this (I’ve been told that I am legitimizing the skeptics and misleading my students), but I think we need to try things like this if we are to develop effective strategies for dealing with skeptics and if we are to teach students to think critically."
• The Guardian – Poignant and depressing: "But I find I can't say this stuff anymore; not because I have stopped believing in climate change, but because I have stopped believing we can prevent it.
  Which is not to say that the End Times are here. One of the other problems with the climate change narrative is that it offers only two futures: Saving the World, or Apocalypse Now. We will probably get neither. More realistic is that we will experience what most previous human societies experienced – a painful decline after a period of over-expansion. We hear a lot about the year 2050: it is a handy date on which to hang our hopes of a "sustainable society", which has come to mean business as usual but without the carbon. It seems much more likely that by 2050 we will be mining our landfill sites for valuable metals and struggling to keep the electricity on, while we dream of the coral reefs that once flowered in the emptying oceans."

admin News Accreditation, biomass, Britain, building, carbon, change, cities, climate, climatechange, communication, debate, Dubai, eco, ECOTOWNS, Energy, Futerra, green, homes, LEED, media, net, planning, rural, science, Social, Software, solar, zero

These are my links for October 5th through October 7th:

• Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes – Partnership Publications – EEPH/CLG report: "This report presents results and findings of the joint EEPH (Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes) and Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) project to study the levels of compliance with Part L of the Building Regulations.
  Specifically, it presents the results from a study of compliance for new dwellings built since April 2006 in accordance with Approved Document L1A (2006). The results for the full sample for the 2nd Phase of the project are presented"
• The future of green building in China – ClimateChangeCorp.com – Interesting (long) article on green building in China: "Perceived high cost is another barrier. When a World Business Council for Sustainable Development survey in 2007 asked the real estate developers and building professionals worldwide how much more they thought green buildings cost than normal buildings, the Chinese respondents said they thought certified green buildings cost 28% more. They were unaware that in China the average extra cost for a LEED certified building has been 3-5% more. This figure is similar to the global average incremental cost for LEED certified buildings.
  Lewis says as long as the Chinese developers have a perception that green buildings cost a quarter more, they will surely not go for green projects."
  China’s green building targets
  * Reduce building energy use in all cities by 50% by 2010 and 65% by 2020 (base year 1980)
  * Top 1000 State Owned Enterprises Programme aims to improve energy efficiency in the largest SOEs by 2010…
• Target Zero – About Target Zero – AECOM have been commissioned by Corus and BCSA: "The aim of this project is to understand the implications of the UK Government's move towards 'zero carbon' for five steel framed non-domestic building types.
  Target Zero will research and cost options for improving operational energy consumption and reducing embodied energy and other life-cycle impacts. The fully costed solutions generated will demonstrate how to achieve the three highest BREEAM ratings and meet the anticipated changes to Part 'L' of the Building Regulations."
• Zerofootprint » Communities – Interesting competition to retrofit a post-war, pre-90's concrete building and operate at net zero for a year. Their definition of net zero is on-site NOT community level, and by my reckoning excludes biomass: "All the energy required to power household amenities, cool, heat, and light the building must be provided on a net zero basis. Possible onsite energy systems can include wind, solar, bio-fuel cells (from occupant produced organic waste), hydrogen cells, etc. Energy must be produced by devices located within the building and its nearby property, and cannot be powered by fuel brought to the building. The building can contribute excess energy to the grid and, when necessary, access an equivalent amount, but no more."
• Passivhaus Windows | GreenBuildingAdvisor.com – I've been slightly obsessed with window u-values recently. This article has a great overview of German vs. US calculations differences and some good suppliers for windows from Canada: "When I interviewed Dr. Wolfgang Feist in 2007, he told me, “The reason for the number which we now use in Europe is the comfort of the occupants. It is a functional definition. During the winter, the coldest surface temperature in the room will be the window. If you don’t have a radiator in your room, the difference between the surface temperature of the window and the mean surface temperature of the room should not be more than 3 degrees Celsius; that’s for comfort reasons.”
  The colder the climate, the more important it is to use U-0.14 or better windows in a Passivhaus building — and not just for comfort. Low U-factor windows are necessary to meet the Passivhaus maximum annual heating energy standard of 15 kWh per square meter."

admin News building, Canada, carbon, China, competition, compliance, domestic, dwellings, German, green, part_L, passivhaus, residential, targets, u-values, UK, US, windows, zero, zero_carbon

These are my links for September 25th through October 1st:

• "Passive" Heating and Cooling Is a Misnomer. It’s Active. : TreeHugger – "there are 36 Billion square feet of non-residential buildings from the 50s through the 80s that need to be retrofitted and greened. It ain't going to be easy."
• AIArchitect This Week | Buildings Brought to Life: The First Project to Meet the Living Building Challenge Is Only Months Away – "For a building to meet the Living Building Challenge it must consume net-zero energy and water. It must produce net-zero waste. It must choose an ecologically responsible site and maintain it. Inherently unsustainable materials (like lead, mercury, and formaldehyde) are not allowed, and there’s a limited radius from which materials can be transported to the building site during construction. Indoor air quality must be maintained, and, among many other requirements, all of these sustainability features must be featured in educational materials and programs at the building. Since the challenge was formulated in 2006, no building has met it."
• Don’t Underestimate the Power of Information in Pursuing Sustainability | GreenerBuildings.com – "The Energy Passport is a related idea that could be implemented much more easily. Conceived in the early '90s by Dr. Yuri Matrosov of the Moscow Center for Energy Efficiency (CENEf), Energy Passport programs were first adopted in Moscow, then in Germany, which is now pushing for it to be implemented in the EU as a whole.
  The initial Energy Passport is based on modeled energy use and then actual energy use is compared each year with predicted use, which then could be accessed by tenants and others. Clearly, comparing actual energy use with predicted energy use, as well as consumption trends over time, would give designers and developers an incentive to get the prediction right in the first place (parenthetical note, without clear modeling rules it is shockingly easy to game the results of energy models), as well as provide a clear benchmark for operators to manage their buildings more closely."
• Glass Industry Raises Concerns Over ASHRAE 90.1 Revisions That Could Reduce the Use of Glass in Nonresidential Buildings – Impact of potential changes to prescriptive route for ASHRAE 90.1 (similar to old elemental method for Part L) for glazing: "The proposal does not recognize or accommodate the need for different glazing solutions across climate zones. It is a "one size fits all" approach and will limit the glazing choice to a small range of high transmission, clear low-E glazings. They are not the appropriate products in all climate zones, especially the Southern cooling-dominated climates because of the sunlight intensity. Use of such high transmission glass in those climate zones will likely result in greater use of blinds resulting in increasing lighting energy usage.
  …There is only limited possibility for saving energy in buildings unless the space also includes automatic daylighting controls. Even with recent proposals, daylighting controls are only required in rooms where the "primary side-lighted area" is less than 1,000 square feet. …"
• How to keep your mouth shut « Scott Berkun – Oh, I have been here many times. Like Scott, I'm recovering ;o). Read the whole post: "But then later on, in a new job at Microsoft in a group known as MSTE, I discovered a world of dysfunction, despair and passive/aggression. No one spoke their mind in public. Few people worked hard or asked tough questions. Quality of work, and morale, was low. So I soon felt obligated to mention these facts as often and as loudly as possible to leadership. I even expected to be rewarded for telling people how bad things were. Why wouldn’t they want to hear this? I thought.
  Before I knew it, I was that guy. The guy who always complains."
• 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
• Constructing Excellence in the Built Environment » Blog Archive » Ethics and the Built Environment (by Jon de Souza) – If consultants only get involved at the Jus in Bello stage, is it ethical to build immoral buildings? Waiting avidly for part 2: "At present, the discussions about ethical behaviours in construction largely consider what happens after a decision has been taken to construct – the Jus In Buildo stage if you will. (Told you). What is missing is consideration of that former stage – the question asked is “can we build it”, but not “should we”. This seems to chime with our view of the world – that there are some things that simply shouldn’t be built. I mean, can any of us really morally defend snow domes in Dubai?"
• UK notches strong gains in renewable capacity in 2008 – Politics – Renewable energy news – Recharge – wind, solar, biofuels, wave/tidal/hydro and geothermal – "The UK’s installed renewable generation capacity surged 19% in 2008, thanks largely to a 727 megawatt (MW) increase in onshore wind capacity and a 192MW boost in offshore wind, according to new government statistics.
  At the same time, the amount of electricity produced from renewables in the UK rose a more modest 10%, to 21.6 gigawatt hours (GWh)."

admin News 90.1, Accreditation, ashrae, building, buildings, cascadia, CE, construction, daylighting, DEC, Energy, EPC, ethics, existing, Germany, glazing, ILBI, lighting, Management, morals, passport, renewables, Russia, US, windows

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."

admin News amee, Architecture, ashrae, building, buildings, business, carbon, carbon_intensity, CBI, Chu, climatechange, code, criticism, development, Dubai, Economics, efficient, electricity, Energy, food, global, globalisation, green, international, IP, Jane_Jacobs, local, manifesto, masterplanning, New_Urbanism, partnering, planning, RDA, recession, RTPI, Sustainability, TCPA, UK, urbanism, US

These are my links for April 30th through May 1st:

• Women in construction get funding boost – "A successful initiative set up to support women working in the construction sector, has been granted £420,750 further funding to continue."
• Building Sector Must Change to Meet Global Energy Targets, New Study Finds – "New modeling by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) shows how energy use in buildings can be cut by 60 percent by 2050 – essential to meeting global climate change targets – but this will require immediate action to transform the building sector…
  “The market alone will not be able to make the necessary changes. Most building owners and occupants don't know enough and don't care enough about energy consumption, and inertia is reinforced by assumptions that costs are too high and savings too low…” Stigson said.
  The project took a bottom-up, market-driven approach to understanding the barriers to lower energy use, based on the most detailed view ever of the current state of energy demand in buildings… Using computer simulations, researchers were able to show the market response to various combinations of financial, technical, behavioral and policy options, identifying the optimum mix to achieve transformation for each market studied."
• How to… prepare for an economic recovery – Times Online – Great list of ten things to remember – including learning from history.
• Zero Carbon Hub releases report on zero carbon definition – Building Sustainable Design – "Complexity of ‘allowable solutions’ – Suggestions for ‘allowable solutions’ – to make low carbon buildings more efficient – were thought by some to be too complex and difficult to deliver in practice.
  The report also indicates consensus on the following issues:
  Biggest challenge is in meeting design standards on site: Achieving low air leakage rates and eliminating thermal bridges regarded as bigger challenges than high efficiency windows, highly insulated floors, walls and roofs.
  New definition and framework should be carried over to non-domestic buildings and to the energy section of the Code for Sustainable Homes
  Over 90% of delegates agreed or strongly agreed that legislation is required to ensure higher energy efficiency in homes.
  Delegates wanted to see advice on the energy efficiency targets for 2016 specified with the 2010 update of Part L of the Building Regulations."
• USGBC: LEED 2009: Technical advancements to the LEED rating system – Regionalisation has been done on a zip code by zip code basis (US only). Eg: Colorado has 650 odd permutations of priority credits (obviously many are the same). Bonus points (one per credit) are awarded if the priority credits for the building location are achieved. An interesting way of recognising regional differences – carrots rather than sticks.

admin News 2009, building, Building_Regs, construction_industry, emissions, forces, gender, global, LEED, market, recession, UK, WBCSD, women, zero_carbon, zero_carbon_hub

These are my links for April 16th through April 20th:

• Of Age, Youth and Wisdom – The Regeneration Blog – Of all the new Estates Gazette blogs, I'm enjoying Jackie's the most. Wise words today and a point well made: "regeneration is all about delivering where the market has failed."
• AIArchitect This Week | Face of the AIA: Sustainability: The Legacy of Fitch – "How would Fitch appraise our profession’s embrace of sustainability? He’d caution us against making the same mistake as the Modernists by placing too much emphasis on technological fixes. He’d goad us to study the ways in which vernacular architecture uses native genius to keep buildings in environmental equilibrium. He’d encourage us to pursue preservation, restoration, and adaptive use as tools toward sustainable cities. And he would no doubt chide us in his warm, Southern drawl, “Took you long enough.”"
• EnergyPlus Version 3.1 and OpenStudio v1.0.3 Available « bldgsim – New version of EnergyPlus is released.
• Footprint » London Yields – "On the issue of food security, the exhibition quotes Lord Cameron of Dillington who said that Britain was ‘nine meals away from anarchy’. To illustrate how real the issue is, one wall is dedicated to a food map showing the origins of the contents of a two-person household’s weekly shop (from the ‘every little helps’ supermarket). Each item was described in terms of the country it came from, the resultant miles it had travelled and how much CO2 in kg per pack this equated to in terms of air and sea miles. Out of a 24 strong list, only 8 items were from the UK and products easily produced in the UK such as apples, broccoli and lamb were source from elsewhere."
• Places and infrastructure-Better Buildings Partnership (BBP) Green Lease Toolkit: London Development Agency – "These guidelines are non-prescriptive, helping owners and occupiers to agree carbon, energy, waste and water reduction strategies which best fit with the circumstances of individual properties. With this toolkit it is possible for any owner or occupier to positively engage in developing practical ways to effect significant change, with the hope to accelerate the process of making London’s existing commercial properties more sustainable."
• Real Life LEED: The BIG Review: LEED 2009 Reference Guides Released – Great post on the changes to LEED. More thoughts when I get a chance to read and digest.

admin News 2009, architect, blogs, building, carbon, commercial, estate, food, freeware, green, leases, LEED, real, regeneration, security, Software, Sustainability, UK

These are my links for March 31st through April 6th:

• Sustainable Design: What Do Europeans Know That We Don’t Know (But Should)?- 3/1/2009 – Building Design & Construction – "The respective roles of regulation and market forces are quite different in Europe from what we expect in the U.S. and Canada. That's one of the fundamental current differences that are likely to converge over the next five years, as the U.S. and Canada face up to the carbon reduction challenge. Generally speaking, in Europe, and especially in the U.K., people expect their governments to regulate, so government incentives for energy-efficient buildings are less prevalent there than they are in the U.S., or even in Canada."
• Top 10 Myths about Sustainability: Scientific American – Fantastic (long) article:
  Myth 1: Nobody knows what sustainability really means.
  Myth 2: Sustainability is all about the environment.
  Myth 3: “Sustainable” is a synonym for “green.”
  Myth 4: It’s all about recycling.
  Myth 5: Sustainability is too expensive.
  Myth 6: Sustainability means lowering our standard of living.
  Myth 7: Consumer choices and grassroots activism, not government intervention, offer the fastest, most efficient routes to sustainability.
  Myth 8: New technology is always the answer.
  Myth 9: Sustainability is ultimately a population problem.
  Myth 10: Once you understand the concept, living sustainably is a breeze to figure out.
• Visualising sustainability « Computing for Sustainability – An incredible resource – 158 different visualisations of definitions of sustainability. I can't remember who send me this – thanks whoever it was.
• ArchNewsNow – WORDS THAT BUILD: Re-invent Green Communication – Great article from a great series. Can easily substitute BREEAM for LEED and it will read the same: "Your goal is to filter the enormous written text of LEED and deliver the gist of relevant LEED issues into commonplace and yet engaging English. This isn’t as quixotic as it might initially sound. The advantage of LEED language over odious “GREENSPEAK’ or “ECOMARKETBABBLE” is that it traffics in concrete specifics within building systems. The downside of LEED language is that it borders on “official” bureaucrat-ese,” the palaver of numbed technocrats."
• House 2.0: Why sash windows work – "in a critical passage in Part F, the ventilation regulations, there is a reference that says that, when replacing windows, rapid ventilation should not be made worse. Up until now, no one has challenged the assumption that this simply means that the openings should be of similar size. But it transpires that a single opening casement is far less effective at rapid ventilation than a combination of top and bottom openings."
• Sustainability in practice: Carbon profiling | Design details | Architects Journal – "Sturgis carries out carbon profiling using a bespoke software program that measures the embodied carbon of a building over its lifetime to ascertain its whole-life carbon footprint. Part L requires a calculation of operational energy-use, the Building Emission Rate (BER), which is calculated in kgCO2/m2/year. Carbon profiling uses these same units to measure Embodied Carbon Efficiency (ECE), including allowances for the demolition and transport associated with the building. The total annual carbon cost of a building is the sum of the BER (operational energy) and the ECE (embodied energy).
  Each component of a building is analysed. For example, an aluminium panel and glass cladding system can be compared with a concrete panel and glass cladding system. The concrete system uses about 20 per cent less carbon to construct than the aluminium and will last approximately two to three times longer. Therefore, the ‘carbon cost’ over time is significantly less for concrete than for aluminium."
• Should aesthetics be part of BREEAM? | Zerochampion – Guest post from Benjamin Kinch: "no matter how energy and water efficient a building may be, it becomes a waste of resources, a potential detriment to the community and environmentally damaging if no one wants to occupy it."
• Hallmarks of a sustainable city | Publications | CABE – "Hallmarks of a sustainable city sets out the practical and policy responses to climate change that CABE believes are needed to ensure our towns and cities are geniunely sustainable places."

admin News aesthetics, Architecture, article, BREEAM, building, CABE, carbon, cities, climatechange, communications, definition, development, Economics, embodied, Energy, environment, Europe, future, LEED, myths, Part_F, politics, sciam, science, Sustainability, Sustainable, US, visualization, windows

These are my links for March 24th through March 29th:

• Lack of integration threatens UK’s sustainable buildings – Nothing new here – what are we going to do about it?: "The report argues that the "large number of interfaces" between the parties to the construction process, coupled with "high transaction costs and risk of duplication and re-work", serves a body blow against efforts to the rapid growth of sustainable buildings. It recommends that at the start of a project, "an integrated project delivery team with in-depth knowledge of the construction process" must be put in place."
• Design for Homes – Continuing Professional Development (CPD) – Masses of CPD pdf's – including articles from Pooran Desai and loads on sustainable communities.
• Transsolar Climate Engineering: Moderating The Design Process- 3/1/2009 – Building Design & Construction – "Among the participants were two German engineers, Matthias Schuler and Thomas Auer, who, according to Schuler, came away from the project with two overriding ideas. The first was that the most energy-efficient buildings they studied had been designed from the start with the target of reducing energy consumption—holistically, not as an afterthought.
  The second grand idea was that the “conversation” between architects and engineers was halting, at best. “Engineers think in numbers, architects think in pictures,” Schuler recalls. “There was a need for a moderator”—an entity that would iterate ideas back and forth between members of the Building Team to enable them to integrate the physical elements of any building project to produce the optimal solution."
• Architects are creating toxic ‘killing machines’ – Building Design – "Architects are creating “killing machines” by not considering the toxicity of the materials used in buildings, America’s leading sustainability expert William McDonough said this week."
• The Four Sins of LEEDwashing: LEED Green Buildings That Perhaps Aren’t Really Green : TreeHugger – 1) The Sin of Not Following Through
  2) The Sin of Valuing Gizmos Over Appropriate Design
  3) The Sin of Laughably Inappropriate Use
  4) The Sin of Wretched Excess.
• BRE-PassivHaus-Primer.pdf (application/pdf Object) – Passivhaus is flavour of the month at the minute. Nice 8 page pdf explaining the principles and the differences between passive and passiv.

admin News architects, Bill_McDonough, building, buildings, collaboration, construction_industry, CPD, design, engineers, green, holistic, IAQ, integration, LEED, passivhaus, reference, RIBA, Sustainability, Sustainable, system:filetype:pdf, system:media:document, toxic