This is a great video of New York's daily emissions by Carbon Visuals
Tuesday 30 October 2012
Thursday 25 October 2012
Beyond Zero Carbon Housing
Yesterday the Nottingham Sustainable Building Research team held their second lively symposium moving from 'Towards Zero Carbon' in 2007 to Beyond Zero Carbon in 2012. It should be no surprise that we know a lot more now than we did in those giddy days and it is not all good news. Almost every speaker had tales of woe ranging from serious peformance gaps to profoundly depressing bodging and yet all were keen to build on this knowledge and press forward with designing good-live-in low energy housing even if much of it is nearer Code 4 than Zero Carbon. Mentioning just some highlights of the day:
Richard Partington kicked us off with the development of ZC regulation and his heroic efforts to get that better, so that it is achievable and achieved. He insisted we all read the excellent report on the Leeds Met research into 2 pilot houses in his Temple Avenue Project for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which is available on their website http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/temple-avenue-project-energy-efficient-homes
Alan Shingler described Shepherd Robson's journey from their £60k Prescott challenge house, through the Code 6 Lighthouse at BRE to their huge scheme, the first phase now built, at Barking Riverside - we must go all and see it. Alan made the essential case for the higher market value of these low energy homes although the valuers have yet to get it!
Former Cullinan year-out student Ben Hopkins and his two collagues described their heroic efforts to design and make the award-winning UK entry for the 2010 Solar Decathlon in Madrid; pre-assembling it in Nottingham, then moving it to Eco-build in London, then erecting it in Madrid in the wettest June in the pouring rain. And now it is nearly finished as the 6th house in the University's brilliant creative energy homes displaywww.nottinghamhouse.co.uk.
The charming Mario Cucinella talked about creative empathy (his train to Nottingham had caught fire and everyone had to climb out!) before discussing among other projects his delightful school in Gaza, about to start to site having been marked on GPS as 'not to be bombed'! Thisis onthe frontof his webste http://www.mcarchitects.it
Then Code 4 Green Street in the Meadows in Nottingham built after an invited competition, which we didnt win. The local developer Blueprint (Igloo +) described the scheme by local architect Marsh Grochowski before PhD student David Bailey (sic) went on to describe his emerging findings having fallen on his feet; here was a scheme with one phase in timber frame and one masonry with wet plaster built next door to one another to the same spec with the same contractor - how rare is that! Julian Marsh later described his really delicious 'holistic' house, office and vegetable garden nearby.
Bill Gething encouraged us to read his TSB Design for Future Climate report on adaptation and get ready to buy his new book but its not out till after Christmas. CIBSE are shortly to launch UKCIP-made easy Pro-clip graphs; dont use current weather data as it is already out of date! In answer to a question he reminded us that 'Team' GB put 25% of the CO2 up there so we had better get cracking and do something about it......
Fionn Stevenson reminded us of Gibson's theory of 'affordance (I was embarrassed that it was new to me but as in a chair affords sitting) and drew on her POE experience to insist we architects (and engineers) 'design for users'; we have loadsd of unhappy occupants of 'dumb' housing that oveheats, has poor cross-ventilation and very poor air quailty - DO BETTER fast!
As it turned out my slight anxiety about our not having built any ZC Housing didnt matter and a brief description of our carbon neutral garden city for 60,000 at Shahat in an area of high housing need in Libya coupled with a plea to direct our (and the students') attention to the existing stock seemed to strike a chord (forget HS2 and sort out out existing hsouing etc).
But that was not all as, after the symposium, we were whisked off to Brian Ford and Michael Stacey's new Energy Technologies Building to see their astonishing inaugural Prototyping Architecture Exhibition www.nottingham.ac.uk/abe. But us Londoners can see the exhibition, well it can only part of it, when it comes to the Building Centre in the New year - 11 Jan to 15 March.
And then it was off to the centre of Nottingham to put the world to rights over a glass of red wine or two - we need to stay close to Nottingham.
Richard Partington kicked us off with the development of ZC regulation and his heroic efforts to get that better, so that it is achievable and achieved. He insisted we all read the excellent report on the Leeds Met research into 2 pilot houses in his Temple Avenue Project for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which is available on their website http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/temple-avenue-project-energy-efficient-homes
Alan Shingler described Shepherd Robson's journey from their £60k Prescott challenge house, through the Code 6 Lighthouse at BRE to their huge scheme, the first phase now built, at Barking Riverside - we must go all and see it. Alan made the essential case for the higher market value of these low energy homes although the valuers have yet to get it!
Former Cullinan year-out student Ben Hopkins and his two collagues described their heroic efforts to design and make the award-winning UK entry for the 2010 Solar Decathlon in Madrid; pre-assembling it in Nottingham, then moving it to Eco-build in London, then erecting it in Madrid in the wettest June in the pouring rain. And now it is nearly finished as the 6th house in the University's brilliant creative energy homes displaywww.nottinghamhouse.co.uk.
The charming Mario Cucinella talked about creative empathy (his train to Nottingham had caught fire and everyone had to climb out!) before discussing among other projects his delightful school in Gaza, about to start to site having been marked on GPS as 'not to be bombed'! Thisis onthe frontof his webste http://www.mcarchitects.it
Then Code 4 Green Street in the Meadows in Nottingham built after an invited competition, which we didnt win. The local developer Blueprint (Igloo +) described the scheme by local architect Marsh Grochowski before PhD student David Bailey (sic) went on to describe his emerging findings having fallen on his feet; here was a scheme with one phase in timber frame and one masonry with wet plaster built next door to one another to the same spec with the same contractor - how rare is that! Julian Marsh later described his really delicious 'holistic' house, office and vegetable garden nearby.
Bill Gething encouraged us to read his TSB Design for Future Climate report on adaptation and get ready to buy his new book but its not out till after Christmas. CIBSE are shortly to launch UKCIP-made easy Pro-clip graphs; dont use current weather data as it is already out of date! In answer to a question he reminded us that 'Team' GB put 25% of the CO2 up there so we had better get cracking and do something about it......
Fionn Stevenson reminded us of Gibson's theory of 'affordance (I was embarrassed that it was new to me but as in a chair affords sitting) and drew on her POE experience to insist we architects (and engineers) 'design for users'; we have loadsd of unhappy occupants of 'dumb' housing that oveheats, has poor cross-ventilation and very poor air quailty - DO BETTER fast!
As it turned out my slight anxiety about our not having built any ZC Housing didnt matter and a brief description of our carbon neutral garden city for 60,000 at Shahat in an area of high housing need in Libya coupled with a plea to direct our (and the students') attention to the existing stock seemed to strike a chord (forget HS2 and sort out out existing hsouing etc).
But that was not all as, after the symposium, we were whisked off to Brian Ford and Michael Stacey's new Energy Technologies Building to see their astonishing inaugural Prototyping Architecture Exhibition www.nottingham.ac.uk/abe. But us Londoners can see the exhibition, well it can only part of it, when it comes to the Building Centre in the New year - 11 Jan to 15 March.
And then it was off to the centre of Nottingham to put the world to rights over a glass of red wine or two - we need to stay close to Nottingham.
Wednesday 10 October 2012
Setting the Conditions For Innovation
On Monday night myself and Robin attended the Edge debate at the Dept. of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS ). The Debate was entitled "Setting the Conditions For Innovation"
Richard Miller, Head of Sustainaiblity at the TSB chaired the debate. Michael Pawlyn of Exploration Architecture kicked off the evening with the need to debunk the myth of the lone genius During the industrial revolution we were resource abundant and population scare. Now we are resource scare yet population abundant, so future products should be made with less materials but employ more people in their manufacture.
Peter Head, chairman of IfS and Founder of the Ecological Sequestration Trust pointed out the need to change to a procurement system based on performance targets for buildings; cost should come second. It worked on the "Severn Crossing" project and it drove innovation.
Robert Webb of Quiet Revolution indicated that globally we need to spend £1trillion per annum to de carbonise the planet. We are resource rich if we turn our back on fossil fuels and look to renewables. The government need to be more focused.
Here are some snippets from the debate that followed:
Richard Miller, Head of Sustainaiblity at the TSB chaired the debate. Michael Pawlyn of Exploration Architecture kicked off the evening with the need to debunk the myth of the lone genius During the industrial revolution we were resource abundant and population scare. Now we are resource scare yet population abundant, so future products should be made with less materials but employ more people in their manufacture.
Peter Head, chairman of IfS and Founder of the Ecological Sequestration Trust pointed out the need to change to a procurement system based on performance targets for buildings; cost should come second. It worked on the "Severn Crossing" project and it drove innovation.
Robert Webb of Quiet Revolution indicated that globally we need to spend £1trillion per annum to de carbonise the planet. We are resource rich if we turn our back on fossil fuels and look to renewables. The government need to be more focused.
Here are some snippets from the debate that followed:
- people need to be given ownership of the problem, otherwise they feel powerless/don't bother to affect change
- innovation needs the over turning of the present moral-lacking, consumer-driven, out-for-oneself society
- Behaviour change is close to impossible (questionable?)
- Intellectual Property Rights are sometimes bought to bury ideas, we need to be more open with our ideas.
- Stronger links between academe and industry
- R&D isn't on the minds of construction company board members unlike other industries (the construction client gets the benefit of innovation while in other industries it is the innovator who benefits)
- Olympics was a great example of British Innovation
- It has been said that the fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate, take more risks!
- Government and industry should not be afraid to publish failures
- Why are there so few young people in the room?
- Innovation often comes through fine tuning over a long time, not new concepts out of the ether.
- Make building performance transparent. DECs for all
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