by mel starrs on February 6, 2008
in News
What caught my eye today, February 5th: JCT wants legally binding sustainability commitments in contracts – Future building contracts could include legally binding commitments to sustainability. The Joint Contracts Tribunal (JCT) started a consultation exercise on 4 February aimed at gauging the industry?s appetite for the idea. AEC, environmental consulting, still strong in U.S.- 2/5/2008 […]
Quiet around here this week? I’m in Patagonia on the Navimag (a boat) and there is no internet access. By the magic that is scheduling posts with ‘post timestamp’ in WordPress I’m managing to post some posts, but not the daily offerings I had hoped. So in the absense of anything approaching original insight or […]
 Turns out, there a word for what I talked about in this post , eating within 100 miles – locavore. Eating locally sounds like it will be of great environmental and social benefit – but is it? Tim Harford, one of my favorite economist/journalists* weighs in at Forbes.com here and the Free Exchange blog takes […]
by mel starrs on January 16, 2008
in News
What caught my eye today, January 15th: Weather Data – For use with Google Earth – loads of weather data in EnergyPlus weather format ? 295 locations in the USA, 71 locations in Canada, and more than 800 locations in 100 other countries throughout the world. Lyons-Dubai – via BLDGBLOG, news that “The Arab emirate […]
Has anybody read this yet? Lester Brown’s book (free ebook download at the link) has been sitting on my to-do list forever (since April 2006 at least – oops!) and rather than wait to read it myself, I thought I’d share it with you all in the hope that someone will read, dissect and point all the […]
by mel starrs on January 8, 2008
in Fun
Believe it or not we still have 11 months of US politics to sit through. Good grief – they know how to spin things out, don’t they? Anyway, via Oikos, I found Glassbooth which is a great tool for comparing yourself to the candidates and their views. My top match was Barack Obama, which was […]
Recently found this article in Vanity Fair of all places. The article exposes some of the alleged shocking over-expenditure by KBR in Iraq. KBR, (#15 in ENR’s 2006 Top 150 Global Design Firms) formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root, have recently been shed by Halliburton. There are so many things to be said here, but the […]
This looks intriguing. ABSTRACTS DUE February 1, 2008 ANNOUNCEMENTS of Accepted Papers March 1, 2008 COMPLETED DRAFTS DUE June 1, 2008 The Topic Following successful Congresses in Berlin 2005 and Leeds 2006, the Council for European Urbanism will hold its third international congress in Oslo, Norway from the 14th to 16th September 2008. The congress […]
by mel starrs on November 26, 2007
in BREEAM
I have BREEAM set as a key word in Google, Technorati, Topix, del.icio.us and Bloglines – if anyone writes BREEAM on the internet, I get notification of it (hey – you all know what a geek I am by now). Which is how I found this OT (off-topic) discussion on BREEAM at SingleTrack magazine. I […]
Some good news on BIM from Building Design + Construction (A US publication). Â The rate at which newcomers join the ranks of BIM users has been increasing, FMI reported. BIM usage grew by three percent in 2003, six percent in 2005 and 11 percent in 2006, the study found. Â A white paper from CMAA is […]