Elemental

These are my links for October 13th through October 14th:

• Launch of HCA and English Heritage Guidance set to pave way for new approach to masterplanning – Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) – "The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) and English Heritage today launched its first joint 'How to' Guide outlining a new development-led approach to masterplanning, which advocates assessing the historic character of a site right at the earliest stages of redevelopment. This is set to transform the way sites are redeveloped.
  The Guide, 'Capitalising on the inherited landscape – an introduction to historic characterisation for masterplanning' is the product of an innovative joint pilot project between the two agencies. This took the established conservation-led Historic Characterisation approach – encouraging the use of specific techniques to identify the distinctive characteristics of a site in order to explain an inherited sense of place and identity – as a starting point – and tested its value at different stages of the development process."
• BREEAM: BREEAM Europe Commercial 2009 – "We are delighted to announce the release of the updated BREEAM Europe Commercial 2009 scheme. After four months of consultation with clients, assessors, experts and technical researchers, the new scheme combines the 2008 versions of BREEAM Europe Offices, Retail and Industrial. Key changes to the Commercial 2009 scheme include:
  * Introduction of minimum standards specific to Europe
  * Introduction of exemplary level requirements specific to Europe. Other types of innovation credits will not be available in Europe at this point in time.
  * Post Construction Stage assessment is now mandatory like in the UK in order to get the final certificate.
  * New shell only approach as in UK BREEAM v3.0 Schemes applicable.
  * The manual is now be freely available for download on the website for anyone to access. "

admin News BREEAM, commercial, EH, Europe, HCA, heritage, masterplanning

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