Elemental

These are my links for December 28th through December 29th:

• BRE Trust reveals the results of DEC data analysis – ‘Energy used in public buildings accounts for 4% of the UK's carbon emissions. Design standards are improving, but we need to demonstrate that this is resulting in improved building performance. This study found that the DEC ratings for some schools recently refurbished to higher energy efficiency standards under Building Schools for the Future and the Primary Capital Programme appeared to be no better than average. If expected savings are not being made, we need to learn the reasons why. DECs are important because they measure the carbon emissions from real buildings as they are used.'
  It has been suggested that DECs should be made mandatory for all non-domestic buildings, to provide evidence of actual emissions and potential leverage for improvements. The BRE study found…DECs were generally giving consistent results. However, up to 9% of DEC data is unreliable as a guide to the energy and carbon performance of buildings because default ratings are being used…
• Engineering consultancy – Grontmij – News archive – 7 More London Riverside achieves BREEAM ‘outstanding’ rating – 7 More London Riverside has become only the third building in the UK and the first office in England to achieve the BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ award. This is the final major building to be completed for More London Development Ltd who are particularly proud of the building’s sustainable credentials.
  The 60,884m², 10 storey building, designed by Foster + Partners, incorporates a range of carbon saving measures, renewable energy provisions and efficient Building Services systems. These include sculpted solar shading, solar hot water panels, green roofs, heat recovery systems and fully automated Building Management Systems and metering facilities.
  The key design aspect that assisted in obtaining the ‘Outstanding’ rating was the implementation of a Bio-Diesel fired Combined Cooling Heating & Power (CCHP) Trigeneration system which has been used to provide a low carbon source of cooling, heat and power to the building. This has resulted in 74% less CO2 than…2006 Part L2 Building Regulations.

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These are my links for November 14th through November 19th:

• Welcome to amazonails – Enerything you ever needed to know about straw bale building.
• Footprint » Common carbon language – "The ‘Common Carbon Metric’ will be piloted by the leading green building rating tools and made available to anyone dedicated to promoting the understanding and development of a low-carbon built environment. The real impact of this initiative lies in the detail which has yet to be announced, but it is an indication of the growing consensus about the role the built environment can play in mitigating climate change."
• Publications – News & Publications | BioRegional: solutions for sustainability – via Hattie at AJ, I find that BioRegional are making lots of their reports free. Will be interesting to read the One Planet Communities and compare to BREEAM, LEED and Estidama. Communities (rather than buildings) will be the buzzword for 2010. Unfortunately Pooran Desai's book is not free, but can be ordered from Amazon.
• marklynas.org | Closed because of geoengineering works – Mark Lynas on geo-engineering (something I'm really not comfortable with): "Geoengineering deeply divides scientists and environmentalists. Should we really consider spraying sulphates into the stratosphere, planting artificial trees across deserts or dumping iron filings in the Pacific as legitimate options to cool down our planet? Kruger, whose preferred solution involves spreading billions of tonnes of lime in the oceans (see cquestrate.com), likens the approach to having an airbag in a car: it’s better not to crash, but also sensible to insure against the risk that the worst will happen. Plus, “the time to design an airbag is before you are skidding on ice”."
• Predicted vs. Actual: Closing the Gap – "Marcus Sheffer, chair of LEED’s Energy and Environment Technical Advisory Group (TAG), shared some ideas under consideration for the next update to the rating system slated for 2012. The group is closely looking at LEED’s energy credits so that energy simulations more accurately predict performance. For example, the TAG is looking at ways to encourage modeling earlier and more frequently in the design process. “We need to change the practice of validation modeling at the end of a project,” said Sheffer. “We need more iterative modeling.” "
  Interesting comment after the article – can we *really* predict performance?
• Three older houses to be Passivhaus retrofitted – "An architects practice is being funded by the Technology Strategy Board to undertake design and feasibity studies into a proposed scheme to retrofit three empty houses to Passivhaus standard. The Retrofit for the Future competition is designed to address the challenge laid down by the government's target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by the year 2050."
• Announcing Living Building Challenge Version 2.0 — ILBI – For those unfamiliar with ILBI, think of it as uber-LEED: "Version 2.0 of the Living Building Challenge expands its focus to local food production, unrestricted access to nature, no gated communities and other equity issues."

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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)."

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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 May 26th through June 1st:

• Concentration Solar Power Module Integrates Into Side And Roof Of Buildings – min-CSP – intriguing but no data in the article to back up the theory: "The system, of which the international patent has already been requested, consists of a stationary lens and a linear absorber plate that concentrates sunlight to generate energy. This concentration system reduces the space that until now was needed with traditional plates, which move around in search of sunlight"
• UK Climate Impacts Programme – Socio-economic scenarios – Getting quite old now (Feb 2001) but sets forward 4 potential scenarios for socio-economic situations against which climate change will play out in the UK :
  1. National Enterprise
  2. Local Stewardship
  3. World Markets
  4. Global Sustainability
  At 140 pages, it's not a quick read, but useful resource.
• A glimpse of the future as 56% of surveyors see workload fall (Brickonomics) – More sound commentary from Brian: "But for all the figures on workload, the two bits of data that will probably reflect most the long-term effects of the recession are those for employment and for profit margins. Both continue to look grim.
  It may sound like a management course cliché but one of the biggest weaknesses of the construction industry is one of its biggest strengths, its flexibility.
  And this weakness is exaggerated by the easy willingness of firms to work at below cost.
  My recollection of the 1990s recession was the less damage was done by falling workloads, which the industry's flexibility can absorb without huge stresses, than was done by winning work below true cost or at unsustainable thin margins."
• Monbiot.com » How Much Should We Leave in the Ground? – I had wondered about this before – good to see George has done the math for me: "Even ignoring all unconventional sources and all other greenhouse gases and taking the most optimistic of the figures in the two Nature papers, we can afford to burn only 61% of known fossil fuel reserves between now and eternity." This would result in a 2ºC rise in temperature. Adaptation, here we come…
• Monbiot.com » Crash Landing – Monbiot being unusually level headed: "we were told by both the airline companies and the Confederation of British Industry that business flights were necessary and non-negotiable: civilisation would collapse if executives weren’t able to fly whenever and wherever they wished. The government repeated this creed, insisting that the UK economy was dependent on the expansion of Heathrow. Now we learn that these are the first expenses to be cut when a contraction begins. Businesses are discovering that there are other means of engaging with people overseas, such as email, video-conferencing and an outlandish new device called the telephone."
• ACE – If we can’t count the buildings, how can we plan cuts in emissions? – There's an elephant in the room, and his name is data: "There is no definitive data showing precisely what the carbon footprint of Europe's buildings is. So we can have no confidence we can identify precisely what percentage of the carbon dioxide emissions by end use comes from space heating as opposed to water heating, lights and appliances as opposed to cooking."
• Why Has Globalization Led to Bigger Cities? – Economix Blog – NYTimes.com – Great article on cities with a slant on India: "The right response to the problems of megacities is not to get misty-eyed about village life, but rather to work to improve the quality of infrastructure in those growing urban areas."
• FT.com | The Undercover Economist | Dear Economist: Can you help me to stop procrastinating? – How to cope with procrastination: "The behavioural economists Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch conducted an instructive study of procrastination with three groups of students at MIT. Each group had to complete three assignments over the course of the 12-week course. The first group had a separate deadline for each paper, after four, eight and 12 weeks. The second group had no intermediate deadlines: all three papers were due at the end of the course. Students in the third group were asked to impose their own deadlines.
  Students with well-spaced deadlines – those in the first group and a subset in the third who had spaced out their deadlines – tended to achieve the highest grades. Students who had assigned themselves no intermediate deadlines, or had been assigned none, fared poorly."
• A new era for public health? « – "Yet one group of very important people now admit they too have neglected the issue. The latest edition of The Lancet – probably the world’s leading medical journal – says health professionals “have barely begun to engage with what should be the focal point for their research, preparedness planning and advocacy”. Now doctors see climate change as “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”.
  The Lancet calls for a “new public health advocacy movement” to usher in an unprecedented era of co-operation between widely divergent spheres such as disease, food, water, sanitation, shelter, settlements, extreme events, population and movement.”"
• Prince fails on sustainability – Building Design – A bit late getting to this one – Amanada takes on Charles: "This is where the speech unravelled for in making out “experimentation” to be a terrifying leap in the dark rather than something good based on hypotheses and a body of knowledge he came across as an intellectual Luddite, whose only solution is to retreat into a Hobbit-like world of organic earthy buildings and no cars."
• Carbon-effective refurbishment – Modern Building Services – Ant Wilson calls for an integrated approach to refurbished buildings: "At the same time, the lower metre could be well insulated and fitted with photovoltaics (PVs) and internally lined with phase-change boards. Emerging concentrated photovoltaic energy generation (CPV has around 1000 times less embedded energy than conventional PVs, and its price is falling rapidly, which will improve the cost-effectiveness of building-integrated PV in coming years."

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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.

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These are my links for March 17th through March 23rd:

• Built on Collaboration: Being disciplined – KPI's for use of extranets/collaboration tools – I love the idea of this. After all, what gets measured gets managed. However, will there be the temptation to file every email back and forth on where best to have the next design team meeting?
• A/N Blog » Design for the Younger Set – A list of pop-up books for kids on architecture.
• Review of the BSRIA Briefing – achieving zero carbon – "There was nothing magical about truly sustainable buildings, added McWhirter. They are simply better ones.
  "We don't need to sell people into deep green lifestyles or set them on the pathway to eco-enlightement," he said. "Sustainable buildings should be designed to be appealing, gentler on our pockets in terms of running costs, gentler on our health in terms of improved internal environment, and much more gentle on the planet."
• How Green Buildings Should Look: Ken Yeang : TreeHugger – via lagavulin, a nice piece on Ken Yeang. BTW, anyone know if there is an actual difference between ecomimesis and biomimicry?

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These are my links for March 11th through March 15th:

• The Building Futures Game – Building Futures – The Building Futures Game is the outcome of 3 years research and development work carried out by the Building Futures team, CABE and architectural practice AOC. The toolkit emerged through a shared desire as to how one might enable communities to think about the future of their neighbourhood, while providing stakeholders with an interactive and alternative way of consulting with a wide variety of groups on their concerns and aspirations.
• Disney Aims for Zero Carbon Emissions, Zero Waste in New Environmental Goals | GreenerBuildings – "The corporate responsibility report lays out seven long-term environmental goals for the company:
  • Zero waste.
  • Zero net direct greenhouse gas emissions from fuels.
  • Reduce indirect greenhouse gas emissions from electricity consumption.
  • Net positive impact on ecosystems.
  • Minimize water use.
  • Minimize product footprint.
  • Inform, empower and activate positive action for the environment"
• T-Zero – "T-ZERO is a free internet tool that provides independent sustainable refurbishment advice to users, with the option of linking directly to the suppliers, manufacturers, and installers of any measures you choose. It is designed for those refurbishing their own homes, homes they manage, or the homes of clients, taking you through a series of simple steps."
• How to Grow Your Own Fresh Air – TED 2009 « GreenSpaces Blog – More 'healthy' plants (I'm slightly obsessed with the original NASA study – spider plants are *good*). Mother in Law's tongue for bedroom, and Areca Palm for living room.
• Welcome to YouCanPlan – via Be2Camp and then EcoBuild: "Our idea is based on the concept of ‘enabled self procurement’ or ESP to help build new sustainable communities. ESP is a process where future residents of communities are supported as the developers of their own homes, combining the choice of self build with the efficiency of speculative development."
• Green for go: sustainability in the JCT contract – Building – "Following an industry-wide consultation, it published Building a Sustainable Future Together, a guidance note which is principally concerned with how sustainability in design and construction is provided for in contract documents. It also includes new contract clauses that extend those currently in JCT contracts, such as the Framework Agreement. The two principal new clauses are:
  1) The contractor is encouraged to suggest economically viable amendments to the employer's requirements which, if instructed as
  a variation, may result in improvement in environmental performance in the carrying out of the works or of the completed works
  2) The contractor shall provide to the employer all the information that he reasonably requests regarding the environmental impact of the supply and use of materials and goods which the contractor selects."
• A second look at solar power on roofspace « lightbucket – Lightbucket doesn't blog often, but when he (she?) does, they're worth reading.
  "Averaged over the year, rooftop PV can exactly match England’s electricity sales, but there is a huge seasonal variation. During the summer, PV output is higher than the full-year average, but electricity demand is lower, so PV can supply more than twice the total demand. The situation reverses in midwinter. In December, the month of lowest insolation, rooftop solar PV can meet only 20% of electricity demand. Additional capacity will be needed to meet winter demand. Energy storage technologies can smooth out variations in output over a 24-hour timecale, and maybe longer, but certainly not over 6 months.
  If we had solar photovoltaics on all roofspace in England, we could comfortably meet England’s summertime electricity use, but only a fifth of wintertime electricity use."
• Ten things to manage in a recession: 4 – executive costs « pwcom 2.0 – Paul illustrates Charles Handy's 'Hollywood' model perfectly: "… some AEC professionals have already opted to work as freelances or as independent consultants, undertaking a succession of contracts of their own choice instead of working for an employer. Particularly in the consultancy sector, just as small firms might combine with others with complementary skills and/or resources, so experienced individual professionals could combine with other independent practitioners to compete for work and then form part of the multi-disciplinary team appointed to undertake the project. …. Being formed of a group of independent ‘e-lances’ or ‘tech-nomads’, the operational overheads of such a multi-disciplinary consortium are also likely to be lower, making their services more cost-effective – an advantage likely to be underlined if the team also uses low-cost collaboration technology to manage and share its data."
• You are the weakest link, goodbye – Joan has a list of funny/tragic redundancy stories.
• cityofsound: Work and The City, Frank Duffy (2008) – Good review of Duffy's book: "In particular, Work and the City convincingly details how this has led to a grossly inefficient under-utilisation of resources with damaging effects on individuals, corporations, and almost all aspects of urban ecosystem."
• Sustainability Consulting: What is it, and am I qualified? Part I « Bright Green Talent Musings (www.brightgreentalent.com) – And I count myself amongst those who say sustainability is NOT a discipline: "As individuals from all kinds of backgrounds and industries push into the field of sustainability consulting, it can become murky as to what that work even entails. This is especially true when considering the different perspectives and methodologies that are employed and adding even more complexity is the variability among clients and their needs. Thus, this quote sums up for me what sustainability consultants are trying to do – they help businesses address and redress the way in which they operate so that they will be better positioned for the market of the future a la decreasing their negative impact on the natural environment. Some argue that like the trends of international business and e-commerce, sustainability will at some point cease to be its own discipline and assume its rightful place within all of business practices."
• » Perpetual beta SuDoBE — Sustainable Design of the Built Environment – Chris makes a great point: "What would happen if we treated buildings as being in perpetual beta state? How would this change things in the construction industry? Perhaps developers and the design team would make a long term commitment to upgrading the building in line with occupants’ (and others’) experiences after the building’s initial release.
  Of course buildings, like most artefacts are in perpetual beta. There are always ‘bugs’ to iron out and features that don’t work. Many of our new low and zero carbon buildings will fail either from the outset or a few months or years down the line. It would be a real step forward if we could admit that now and put in place the mechanisms that will allow us to decide whether they are working as intended, to fix them when they aren’t and to pass on what we have learned to Carbon 2.0. Would the industry allow us to do that? Do we need to ask?"
• Robinson Low Francis to slash staff pay 12.5% – Building – I'm sure this is just the same as cutting salaries by 20-40% – surely they'll just end up doing a similar amount of work, in fewer (probably longer) days (was my experience of working part-time, anyway): "At engineer Scott Wilson, some senior staff have agreed to work three- or four-day weeks, according to Jerome Monro-Lafon, its UK managing director."
• Survey confirms building control officers enforce regs – Building – "The LABC’s survey looked at 2000 projects to see how many potential contraventions would have occurred if a building control officer hadn’t stepped in and enforced the regulations. It found Part A attracted the most enforcement action with building control officers asking for remedial action in 18% of projects followed by Part L at just over 16% and Part B at just under 16%. Part G which deals with hygiene attracted enforcement action in just 1.5% of the surveyed projects."
• Natural lighting and sustainability | Sustainable Building Blog – Building Sustainable Design – "The tightening regulatory allowances placed on artificial lighting are already beginning to push the limits of what lighting technology can deliver. Our regulatory framework must not become unworkable or breed dull, unhealthy and uninteresting visual environments. The lighting community must steer regulation through better government lobbying, but we should not forget the place natural light has in avoiding the need for regulation in the first place."
• Pursuing the Elusive Goal Of a Carbon-Neutral Building by Richard Conniff: Yale Environment 360 – "But Kroon is also a reminder of what even some of the best hearts and minds in the sustainable design movement cannot yet achieve. For a “green premium” unofficially estimated at about 5.7 percent of construction cost, the Kroon design team managed to reduce projected energy use and emissions by 61 percent below the levels for a comparable building of conventional design. The biggest savings came not from sexy new technologies but from figuring out how to make the design function like an old-fashioned cathedral, with a slender profile for maximum daylighting, an east-west orientation for greater solar gain on the long southern exposure, careful use of shading, and plenty of stone and concrete to store thermal energy. A solar photovoltaic array and geothermal wells will supply much of the remaining energy load. “We got damned close to carbon neutral,” boasted a construction manager…"
• Sustainable Cities – The most useful output I've seen from CABE – sustainable cities website. A feast of information and examples: "This website gives expert advice on planning, designing and managing a sustainable place. It cuts through the complexity with clear priorities for action. And it shows which places are getting it right."
• Constructing Excellence in the Built Environment » Blog Archive » Reverting to type (by Don Ward) – Don Ward has a great post: "The industry loves lowest price tendering – it invented it, and back in 1963 codified it in the NJCC’s code of practice for single stage tendering. Large parts of the industry have since conspired with clients over the years to continue with lowest price tendering – it is easy, and it means you don’t have to work too hard to deliver on value. But let’s face it, it usually knowingly sets the project up to fail. It’s a bizarre process – as a questioner said at a conference the other day put on by the Universities of Reading, Loughbrough and Salford, construction must be the only industry that competes to deliver the same thing for the client rather than something different? And is it the only industry that thinks it’s clever to make its money by screwing the client and/or the supply chain?"

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What I’ve been reading about:

• Survey warns of low profit margins – Building Design – A third of architectural practices made so little profit in the boom times that they could go bust with the onslaught of the credit crunch, an RIBA survey has revealed.
  This year’s RIBA Business Benchmarking Survey, released to BD this week, shows that just 67% of firms met the industry safe standard of profits equalling 15% of total turnover.
• EH’s Heritage Counts report calls for ‘recycling’ of older buildings to cut CO2 emissions – Building Design – English Heritage argues that a significant proportion of energy savings will come from adapting historic buildings. Properties built before 1919 contribute just 5% of carbon emissions, despite making up one fifth of all housing stock, it estimates.
• Dubai to tighten up its act on green regulations – Building – In practice, standards vary wildly across Dubai. Build on any land controlled by Dubai World, the investment company that controls large parts of Dubai and owns developers including Nakheel, and all buildings must achieve 29 compulsory LEED credits, many of which cover energy and water use. Smith says that these add up to a building a notch short of a LEED silver rating. Tecom, which controls Dubai Internet City, has another set of requirements. And all areas are subject to controls by Dubai Municipality, which requires compliance with Decree 66.
• Dutch to adopt BREEAM – Building – The Dutch Green Building Council is to adopt BREEAM rather than LEED as its building assessment tool for the Netherlands.

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These are my links for August 21st through August 23rd:

• Widgetbox › CIBSE Search Widget – A widget you can add to your website to search for LCEA's.
• Freelance Jobs & Freelancers – iFreelance.com – via Paul Miller – a website posting freelance opportunities and freelancers. Considering for my blog redesign in the future…
• ISO – News – ISO establishes sustainability principles for building construction sector worldwide – "The building and construction sector is a key sector in national economies and the built environment is a major element in determining quality of life, as well as contributing to cultural identity and heritage. Addressing sustainability in buildings and other construction works includes the interpretation and consideration of sustainable development in terms of its three primary aspects while meeting the requirements for technical and functional performance.The principles take into account that while the challenge of sustainable development is global, the strategies for addressing sustainability in building construction are essentially local and differ in context and content from region to region. The social environment includes social equity, culture, traditions, heritage, health and comfort, social infrastructure and safe and healthy environments. It may, in addition, particularly in developing countries, include poverty reduction and job creation."
• ISO 15392:2008 – Sustainability in building construction — General principles – "ISO 15392:2008 identifies and establishes general principles for sustainability in buiding construction. It is based on the concept of sustainable development as it applies to the life cycle of buildings and other construction works, from their inception to the end of life.
  ISO 15392:2008 is applicable to buildings and other construction works individually and collectively, as well as to the materials, products, services and processes related to the life cycle of buildings and other construction works.
  ISO 15392:2008 does not provide levels (benchmarks) that can serve as the basis for sustainability claims."
• 20 Eco-Structures that defy conventions! – Whilst the pictures are pretty, the green credentials of some of these projects are slightly dubious (rotating tower, for one). A nice summary, though, and some I hadn't seen before.

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