Elemental

These are my links for April 21st from 16:49 to 17:46:

• Bring back Victorian values | Architecture | Art and design | The Observer – "A generation of young architects has grown up and been given the opportunity to prove their worth. British architecture was stagnant in the early 90s and now it's not, for which some of the credit is due to Labour.<br />
  …Many of the new schools and hospitals are at best very ordinary, at worst soul-destroying. Their problem, as in other fields, has been the New Labour belief that you could hand over the delivery of social benefits to the private sector.<br />
  In the planning of office blocks and blocks of flats, and in the building of schools and offices, the same thing happens. Worthy public aims are stated. Ambitious targets are set. The private sector is entrusted with achieving the aims and targets which, as it will, put its own interests first. So the worthy aims are compromised."
• Straw houses: I’ll huff and I’ll puff… | The Economist – "California, of course, is already thoroughly earthquake-proofed. But straw buildings of this sort might do well in seismically active places that are less wealthy. Spurred by the earthquake that devastated Pakistan in 2005, Darcey Donovan, a structural engineer from Truckee, California, set up a not-for-profit straw-bale-construction operation that has since built 17 houses there. She has been designing straw-bale houses in California for ten years and lives in one that she and her husband built in 2007. It has two stories, three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a two-car garage…<br />
  As Mr Eisenberg observes, “the lesson of the Three Little Pigs isn’t to avoid straw. It’s that you don’t let a pig build your house.” "

admin News Architecture, bale, earthquake, politics, seismic, straw, urbanism

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."

admin News Accreditation, actual, aletrnative, bales, bioregional, buildings, carbon, climatechange, communities, Energy, environment, geoengineering, globalwarming, ILBI, LEED, materials, metrics, passivhaus, predicted, refurbishment, retrofit, standards, straw, use