Elemental

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

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

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

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

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

The maths went something like this:

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

Amazingly, the GLA agreed.

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

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

From the Wood Awards:

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

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

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

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

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

admin Events GLA, London, Thermal mass, timber

Last Monday I attended Green Monday, a monthly networking event for corporate climate change leaders in London. I was first alerted to Green Monday by Phil back in September, but this month was the first time my calendar had conspired to allow me to attend.

The event kicked off with a panel discussion and then went on to round table discussions. I really enjoyed the panel discussion – some highlights of which I jotted down on the crackberry (I’d been very remiss and forgot pen and paper).

First up was Dr Peter White of Procter & Gamble who was keen to emphasis they exercise no trade-offs. Meaning that it should be possible to have both sustainability AND performance, rather than compromising with a sub-standard product. Coincidently, I am currently reading We-Think
by Charles Leadbetter and P&G are featured heavily in it in the chapter on We-Think business. According to the book P&G have set a goal of getting 50% of their new ideas from external sources and encourages open-innovation. All its patents will be released either 5 years after they are lodged or 3 years after a product is shipped. So the innovative new detergent which washes at 15ºC which Peter referenced, should in theory be in the public domain within 3 years – which can only be a good thing for climate change. This is a vast shift in IP strategy and something all companies should be thinking about, if not yet implementing. The models of business are changing.

Next up was Marie Louise Ter Boek of McDonalds. Colleagues had scoffed at the idea of McD’s having the audacity to sit on such a panel, but times have moved on. The “big bad corporates” are learning and evolving and we are all playing catch-up with each other. Last year’s greenwashers can turn out to be this year’s heroes. Anyway, Marie was heavily referencing DEFRA’s framework which was very timely as I had re-read the summaries that morning. Written by Futerra, there are two strategies  for positively communicating climate change: Rules of the Game (pdf) (relevant to changing attitudes) (long version available from DEFRA here (pdf, 48pages)) and New Rules:New Game (pdf) (relevant to behaviours). Recommended reading and hold an explanation as to why eco-bling such as urban wind turbines might act as a catalyst to further action – big socially visible actions can lead to smaller actions such as energy saving lightbulbs, so whilst we engineers lament the physical energy contribution, we are missing the social knock-on effects – something to ponder).

The third speaker was Alan Knight who was frustrated by our current language of doom and gloom. Do we talk ourselves down? He was keen to emphasis enthusiasm and ambition. What does the future world look like? Imagine a world of 20% of today’s carbon, no poverty, no obesity, diabetes etc. He was also keen to promote the business case for framing solutions in a positive way. As he said, there is no business case for famine (he was referring here to Lovelock’s prediction of 8 billion dying). There is an opportunity to reengineer today’s lifestyle to be 20% carbon but edit out bad choices. Again, no trade-offs. Requires an air of optimism – don’t talk ourself into defeat. Alan “blogs” here (no RSS and very few posts).

The final speaker was Jeremy Leggett of Solar Century. I had high hopes of fireworks given his voice over at CiS, but he was remarkably calm and calculated. He talked of the triple crunch of climate, financial and energy. Asset assessment is, in his opinion, systemically wrong (gas and oil). He was keen to promote The Oil Crunch Report authored by Arup, FirstGroup, Foster + Partners, Scottish and Southern Energy, Solarcentury, Stagecoach Group, Virgin Group, and Yahoo. I’ve not had a chance to read it yet, but the thrust is that a peak in cheap, easily available oil production is likely to hit by 2013, posing a grave risk to the UK and world economy. Other interesting tidbits from Jeremy included the fact that 18 of 27 european countries now have FIT (feed in tariffs). He was also keen to point out that there is no magic bullet – solar is one of maybe 50 families of alternative technologies.

The roundtable discussion afterwards was broken into different topics and I opted for commercial real estate. The table discussed the zero carbon consultation and experience varied from those who had read it several times to those who hadn’t heard of it at all. The majority of us however agreed that we had consultation fatigue. Then it was time to schmooze. Like any of these events, it takes a couple of attendances to build relationships, so no million pound deals were made, but I was pleased overall.

All in all, it was a good gig. I’ve applied for a space again next month. It’s a much more organised and less rowdy event than London Green Drinks (which is currently overrun in it’s current venue – making it a hot, sweaty and slightly unpleasant experience).

mel starrs Opinion business, Climate Change, London, renewables

These are my links for December 9th from 09:37 to 09:37:

• Toolkits. London Energy Partnership – "Low Carbon Designer"
  An electronic toolkit that allows developers, building design engineers and planners to assess the energy performance of a proposed development using the London Plan energy hierarchy. The software has been designed to encourage energy statements to be produced and assessed in a consistent manner.
  "London's Community Heating Database"
  A database of London's community heating, CHP and district heating schemes. The database is designed to assist those looking to safeguard, develop or connect to these schemes in line with London Plan policy 4.A.It is also designed to be 'future proof' – i.e. it will accommodate new schemes as they are approved and new connections between schemes as the planned expansion of decentralised energy networks materialises in London.

mel starrs News LEP, London, renewables, toolkits

What I’ve been reading about:

• LSX – London Sustainability Exchange – The Environmental Justice and Inequalities toolkit is an electronic resource that will help build the capacity of policymakers and planners across London to take up good practice in tackling environmental inequalities.
• The Long Now Blog » Blog Archive » “We would all be smarter if the world remains multilingual” – video – “everyone can do something to support a world in which a diversity of thought and a diversity of ways of speaking is encouraged and is fostered and is sustained. There’s no reason for people to be forced to abandon their languages. It’s one of the false choices of globalization to tell people that they must give up a small or minority or a heritage language in order to speak a global language like English. It doesn’t have to happen. We would all be better and smarter if the world remains multilingual.”

mel starrs News diversity, inequality, intelligence, language, London, toolkit

What I’ve been reading about:

• Green vs. Greed — An Open Letter to Green Building Professionals | Rick Fedrizzi on GreenerBuildings – "The greed that led the world economy into crisis will not defeat our commitment to good work. Fear will not dominate our agenda. And our commitment to change — even in the face of so great a challenge — will not waver."
• Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy – "So maybe a recession is a good time to start a startup. It's hard to say whether advantages like lack of competition outweigh disadvantages like reluctant investors. But it doesn't matter much either way. It's the people that matter. And for a given set of people working on a given technology, the time to act is always now."
• Not Exactly Rocket Science : Corals survive acid oceans by switching to soft-bodied mode – Fine and Tchernov's findings suggest that corals may be able to survive upcoming climate changes by adopting soft-bodied, free-living lifestyles. And there is evidence that they have used this trick before. The hard shells of coral reefs fossilise easily, but the fossil record still has large gaps where no reefs are found. These may represent periods of time when corals were biding their time in their soft-bodied phase instead.

  But while this new discovery is cause for hope, it should not be cause for complacency. Even though the corals themselves may persist in another guise, the vast diversity of species that depend on them may go for good if their reefs disappear.

• London’s best free wi-fi hotspots – Time Out London – Great list of free wifi in London. Will be checking some of these out soon.

mel starrs News carbon, climatechange, coral, ecology, entrepreneurship, London, ocean, recession, rick_fedrizzi, startup, wifi

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

• Fabric Insulation – ways of further raising performance standards for all types of building fabric: BD 2428 – Planning, building and the environment – Communities and Local Government – This report summarises building thermal performance requirements in Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands and classifies them according to the approach taken (elemental unit-based approach, target U-value average heat transmission through the building envelope, heat demand calculation or integrated energy use calculation).
  The regulations are compared to each other and contrasted with United Kingdom building codes.
• Minister pledges zero-carbon homes definition consultation ’shortly’ – The Government expects to begin consultation on the final definition of zero-carbon homes shortly, planning minister Caroline Flint told the Labour Party Conference in Manchester.
  The minister confirmed that the issue of how the zero-carbon definition dealt with on and offsite green generation remained the most challenging element of the form of words which would be consulted on.
  The fringe meeting heard that Government-commissioned research into the zero-carbon target had highlighted problems over the availability of some of the key technologies and an estimate that the new standards could add between 17 and 24 per cent to the costs of a new home.
  The conference also learnt that the standard would be significantly harder to achieve in high-density, urban infill schemes compared to more large-scale non infill projects.
• How eco-towns can support living within ecological limits – Cutting-edge principles for the agencies involved in developing proposals for eco-towns have been published by BioRegional and CABE. The report, What makes an eco-town?, defines an eco-town as a place designed to make it easy for residents to reduce their ecological footprint by two thirds and their carbon dioxide emissions by 80 per cent below 1990 levels.
• Patrick Barkham talks to Tony Wrench about low-impact housing in … – Closure on the Welsh Hobbit house planning controversy: "After a long struggle with the authorities, Wrench got retrospective approval for his home, tucked away in a valley in south-west Wales, via an unusual planning policy experiment in Pembrokeshire. County council and Pembrokeshire Coast National Park planners agreed to allow for low-impact developments on rural land where normal houses would not be considered, as long as they met stringent environmental, economic and social criteria."
• Environment Agency – Green roof toolkit – GLA green roof toolkit.

mel starrs News bioregional, carbon, checklist, competitors, definition, design, ECOTOWNS, european, fabric, GLA, green, hobbit, house, Housing, London, pdf, performance, planning, report, roof, toolkit, u-values, wales, zero

These are my links for September 11th through September 19th:

• BREEAM set to cover communities – Building – Unlike existing BREEAM tools, the assessment will take into account regional requirements. Cotter said: “For example, does the development meet the criteria for employment stimulation? It’s about making sure development complements regional local planning requirements.”

  It has not been decided whether the assessment will include existing buildings.

• Rogers and Foster shun nuclear design framework – Building – “Ethically, we wouldn’t get involved in projects like this. We have a fairly strict constitution set up by Richard [Rogers] which prohibits work on military schemes and power stations.”
• NHF demands stricter CO2 timetable for housebuilders – Building – Orr said: “Currently, private developers are not being compelled to meet minimum standards on greenhouse gas emissions at all. In fact, they are being allowed to put their profits ahead of the survival of future generations.

  “It's time that ministers legally locked private developers into the same timetable as housing associations. We have long been calling for the government to ensure that from April 2008 all new private homes emit 25% less CO2. And we would like ministers to make certain that all new privately built homes are zero carbon by 2016, at the very latest.

  “Unless the government compels the private sector to meet the same standards and timetable, private companies will simply try to wriggle out of their environmental duties, saying it costs too much.”

• The Question of Global Warming – The New York Review of Books – "Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful."
• OMNIVORACIOUS: Thomas Friedman and Fareed Zakaria: Author One-to-One – via Ben Casnocha, Friedman takes Zakaria to task on the alleged green revolution: "So you'll know the green revolution is happening when you see some bodies–corporate bodies–along the side of the road: companies that didn't change and therefore died. Right now we don't have that kind of market, that kind of change-or-die situation. Right now companies feel like they can just change their brand, not actually how they do business, and that will be enough to survive."
• Felicity Lawrence: We could slash our CO2 emissions if we ate less meat. What a pity Boris Johnson doesn’t agree | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk – Whilst the article is good, the reason I am flagging this one is the fact that McD's are the Olympics 2012 official caterer. Cognitive dissonance, anyone?
• TALL BUILDINGS OFFER ECONOMIC BENEFITS, SAYS REPORT: British Property Federation – Fascinating study on tall buildings (in response to Boris quashing some of Ken's plans, I strongly suspect) in London: "The exercise was one of changing the distribution of employment, rather than total levels of employment. The economic benefit was equivalent to the annual output for each of those 80,000 workers increasing by £2,500 a year. A second scenario redistributing those 80,000 workers to less accessible parts of Central London produced a decline in output equivalent to £1,600 a year for every one of those 80,000 workers."

mel starrs News 2016, BREEAM, carbon, change, co2, communities, company, corporations, Economics, environmentalism, ethics, food, global, green, Housing, London, nuclear, policy, private, quote, revolution, Sustainable, tall_buildings, warming, zero

Blogging has been light, for a number of reasons.  Mainly red wine based, which is always a good excuse in my book. My new found love of life in London is leading me to sorts of weird and wonderful social occasions. This means I don’t have time to read feeds never mind write blog posts. I’m sure the excitement will wear off soon and I’ll be back to wittering on about things I know not enough about (I’ve been reading economics, history and philosophy recently – a deadly combo, especially when mixed with red wine).

In the meantime, I’ve been swishing, which is an ethical clothes swap meet.  There are normally two reactions to this, very much along gender lines. The girls think it’s a great idea, the boys want to know why. It was great fun and the event I went to was being filmed by BBC for broadcast in the near future.  If you happen to catch it, let me know. I hear there is a big swishing event coming to London in the late autumn – watch this space… details here and add Sunday 9 November to your diary.

The next event in my calendar was Green Drinks, as Phil has already covered. In a very remiss oversight I forgot to tell anyone I was going until the morning of the event. So here’s the slightly better planned invite – I’m trying to make it on September 9th and if I’m not there, some of my colleagues will be. I hadn’t been in 10 years, but good to see it has survived almost 20 years now! Always a casual affair with a good mix of people from every end of the green spectrum. And I held a Totnes pound:

I am fundamentally opposed to starting your own currency, but it was fun to see it.  I had an interesting chat with the guy from Totnes on whether they had managed to keep the process apolitical (kind of, was the conclusion).

I’m planning on attending a few more London centric events over the next couple of months, but lest anyone think I’ve forgotten my (recent) roots, I shall point out Green Drinks are also available in Leeds. They are also available all over the world.

mel starrs Diversions Events, green drinks, London, totnes pound

I’m back in the UK and gradually acclimatising to the shock.  Trying not to translate prices into US$ and shaking my head at the price of petrol (£1.09 in Leeds!).  Just as well I no longer have a car…

I am currently without landline, broadband and laptop, so blogging opportunities are low.  Bear with me (and BT) – things should return to normal soon.

I’ll be twittering from Think 08 tomorrow and hopefully meeting quite a few bloggers in the flesh.  If you see me, come and say hi.

mel starrs Uncategorized conference, London, think08

Is is really two years?

Almost 360 posts, over 70 regular subscribers, almost 8000 hits in the past year*, including over 250 to BREEAM is a means to an end post.

*Over 20% of visitors use Firefox as their browser, most of the rest use IE.  Only 0.5% use Mac although one visitor found me using their Playstation 3, two with their iPhone. The two favourite screen sizes are 1024×768 (39%) and 1280×1024 (24%). 28% of readers are in London.

Guess I’m going to keep this up for the forseeable future then.

Some thoughts about the blog and where I see it going:

• I love using del.icio.us as a mini-blogging tool – 255 characters is usually enough space to comment on a news item and leaves me a lot more time to write “proper” posts
• Twitter is looking like a good way of micro-blogging but I’m not quite ready to add it into my main feed yet
• I still have a stupid number of drafts sitting around cluttering my mind, especially some book reviews I promised to publish over a year ago.  Mental clutter = distraction.  Will finish these in May once I get back to the physical copies of the books.
• The past year has been a whirlwind of scattered thinking.  I’m hoping to focus on topics in a more structured fashion for the next
• A bloggers to-do list is never finished.  The minute I get one thing done, I find another gadget or widget to play with or see some other niggle I want to fix.  All this on top of posting.  I must learn to accept this and realise things will never be complete.  Live with it.

Thanks to everyone who has read, commented or sent me emails in the past year, especially those who let me know when when my awesome web skills have broken the site.

mel starrs Geekery Blogging, Housekeeping, London, mini-blogging tool, statistics, twitter