Elemental

These are my links for February 8th through February 9th:

• David Hicks Consultants Ltd – Industrial Roofing and Cladding Consultants – Hilarious Part L takedown to the tune of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody: "During the course of our duties, we are discovering most buildings do not comply with Part L2 ( non dwellings ) in one form or another. Due to the complexity of Part L2, we are finding very few fully understand its requirements and to such an extent, many are blatantly ignoring it. For this reason alone it makes a mockery of trying to reduce Carbon emissions." Click through for lyrics
• NBS | Sustainability: A short history of sustainable development – "The Brundtland definition has spawned a series of sub-definitions to meet particular sector needs. Typical of these is that used by the practice of Foster and Partners, which defines 'Sustainable design as creating buildings which are energy efficient, healthy, comfortable, flexible in use and designed for long life'. The Building Services Research and Information Association (BSRIA) defines 'Sustainable construction as the creation and management of healthy buildings based upon resource efficient and ecological principles'."

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These are my links for August 21st through August 25th:

• Welcome to Green Building Index – via IES: "GBI is developed by Pertubuhan Akitek Malaysia (PAM) and the Association of Consulting Engineers Malaysia (ACEM). It is a profession driven initiative to lead the Malaysian property industry towards becoming more environment-friendly. From its inception GBI has received the full support of Malaysia’s building and property players. It is intended to promote sustainability in the built environment and raise awareness among Developers, Architects, Engineers, Planners, Designers, Contractors and the Public about environmental issues. The rating system will provide opportunity for developers to design and construct green, sustainable buildings that can provide energy savings, water savings, a healthier indoor environment, better connectivity to public transport and the adoption of recycling and greenery for their projects…Malaysia’s Green Building Index or GBI will be the only rating tool for the tropical zones other than Singapore Government’s GREENMARK."
• BREEAM points for energy efficiency – 11/06/2008 – Contract Journal – This is an oldie but worth stating:
  "If people are a few points short, it could encourage them to step back and think innovatively about the project."
  Um, sorry, nope. At least I hope not. Embedding sustainability into a design, this is not.
  The point of innovation credits was to reward forward thinking which BREEAM has not yet covered, not a chance to tag on stuff at the end when you realise you're not going to get enough points.
• UK Government CO2e Targets & Seeing Through the Eco-hype – "Key to acquiring the in-depth knowledge that will be needed to prosper in the world of low carbon building will be an understanding the political drivers for policy. Policy that experience has shown us is almost always re-active. Therefore, by gaining an understanding of the political pressures exerted by the challenges of climate change it should be possible to see where policy might be going next and how to address the necessary measures. This will give businesses a significant commercial advantage over competitors who will inevitably be playing catch up."
• Putting Urban Planning In the Hands of the People | GOOD – “Many planning meetings are boring, contentious, and fail to stir people’s creative energy,” says Rojas. Even though planners consistently work closely with groups of constituents, they’re stuck with the kinds of tools they like to use: maps, words and pictures. Well, not everyone can understand a complex map. Other people are uncomfortable writing. And even the physical tools—Post-It notes, simple blocks, whiteboards—that planners use during charrettes do nothing to get the imagination pumping.
  “My process gives the public the power to create,” says Rojas. ”Giving people small interesting objects sparks their interest. Creating a 3-dimensional world with 3-dimensional forms breaks down the planning process into simple terms and helps participants translate conceptual planning ideas into physical forms.” Additionally, Rojas gives power to groups that might be disenfranchised by the typical neighborhood council meeting.
• Leeds on frontline of local climate response | Sustainable Cities – ‘At the moment in all major cities outside London our fate is not in our own hands, we don’t have the financial wherewithal to do what the Victorians did. What I would very much like is the same sort of autonomy that London has with its mayor. If the city region had a mayor with the same powers, that would be a considerable leap forward because it would give you much more of a focus and much more chance to raise money. Please devolve power to us – trust us – is the message.’
  So what would he do with that power? One simple idea would be to introduce a London-style Oyster card for buses, trains and taxis in the city region. ‘The buses would then move much quicker and they’d be more attractive because at every stop at the moment they’re fiddling with change. It’s no surprise that London has a far better public transport system than Leeds. If we had something that was half as good it would be an improvement on what we’ve got now.’
• Business case made for sustainable design | Sustainable Cities – "‘Our tenants are asking for things like more daylight, lower running costs and quantifiable carbon emissions and they are starting to embed sustainability in to their design and delivery process. The landlord tenant relationship is critical In order to achieve a high level of sustainability within a project. For the tenant space to be able to be sustainable, they need the base building to work with them. Everyone is noticing that landlords and tenants are starting to talk to each other more about delivering sustainable outcomes.’
  … In 2007 the company introduced a ‘green lease’ to provide a clear legal structure for increasing environmental accountability and to create a shared commitment to greater energy, water and waste efficiency. More than 360 green leases have now been signed in the UK for both offices and retail and another eight have followed in France. The success is due to the lease promoting collaboration and partnership and not being too prescriptive."

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I’ve been geeking out over my gorgeous faux leather hard bound copy of the 2009 Ashrae Handbook – Fundamentals (SI units) which recently arrived in the post. One of  the perks of ASHRAE membership is an updated copy every year of one of the handbooks on a rolling schedule (something CIBSE have started to do too in recent years).

Anyway, in this year’s tome is a new chapter – Chapter 35 SUSTAINABILITY. Under ‘Characteristics of Sustainability’ is a clarifying few paragraphs on the difference between green and sustainable buildings. For reference:

Sustainability Addresses the Future

Sustainability is focused on the distant future (e.g., 30 to 50 years). Any actions taken under the name of sustainability must address the impact of present actions on conditions likely to prevail in that future time frame.

In designing the built environment, the emphasis has often been on the present or the near future, usually in the form of capital- or first-cost impact. As is apparent when life-cycle costing analysis is applied, capital cost assumes less importance the longer the future period under consideration.

This emphasis on the distant future can differentiate sustainable design from green design. Whereas green design addresses many of the same characteristics as sustainable design, it may also emphasise near-term impacts such as indoor environmental quality, operation and maintenance features, and meeting current client needs. This, green design may focus more on the immediate future (i.e. starting when the building is first constructed and then occupied). Sustainable design is of paramount importance to the global environment in the long-term while still incorporating features of green design that focus on the present and near future.

An interesting way to slice the problem, and makes me realise (by this definition, at least), most of the stuff that I am most interested in is green design, rather than sustainable design, occupant comfort being my raison d’etre. The chapter goes on to point out that HVAC&R engineers cannot by themselves create global sustainability (however, we all need to do our bit and encourage as many others as possible), and that sustainability has many contributors, is comprehensive and that technology plays only a partial role.

As green building rating systems continue to converge (BREEAM and LEED), I find a growing interest in keeping up to date with ASHRAE, which I have always found more ‘engineery’ than CIBSE (in that their technical guidance seems to have many more equations than CIBSE).

Given ASHRAE’s definition, which rating system is more sustainable (rather than green) – LEED or BREEAM? Something I’ll poder a while longer…

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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."

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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 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."

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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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