The events page is now updated for events in the North West . For members of the Lancashire Best Practice Club a reminder that the AGM is next Tuesday at 5pm. If you know of more events in the north west – let us know.
The cost of achieving carbon neutral or zero homes to the Code keeps raising its head, as Phil over at Sustainability Blog points out.
I didnt catch the UCT speakers name on the US Greenbuild365 live webcast testerday, I was listening rather than watching, but a sound bite delivered with typical American style caught my ear…“The building sector is over-estimating the cost and under-estimating the impact of climate change issues”
How true, when we think about the moaning around the cost of the new Code for Sustainable Housing, which will be seen as a smokescreen for reluctance in doing anything at all.
Jonathan Porrit writing in his blog and in BD… makes the point well… why put a price on the importance of carbon free homes?
Government policy is being applied to decarbonising both new and existing housing, with Building Regulations and the Code driving that transformation. An industry that has lived for far too long in a feather-bed world, where nobody gave a tinker’s cuss about energy and resource efficiency, is being incentivised to change, and is marketing to rapidly rising consumer expectations. So why would anybody suppose that the combined genius of architects, designers, engineers, builders, surveyors and planners isn’t going to be able to come up with the zero-carbon goods?
I live in weird world these days. Having spent most of my life described as a prophet of doom, I now find myself having to shake people out of a fatalistic “can’t be done” mind-set! We seem to have moved from denial to despair in one effortless leap. So let’s get our creative act together here. After all, we don’t have a choice about this. Either we rise to this challenge, or the mealy-mouthed, risk-averse mediocrity that dominates this particular industry will take us all down with it.
The costs arising from inefficiencies through waste, poor project management, incorrect procurement, lack of working together, poor design, legal fees to check contract documentation and all the well documented historical ills of our sector etc far far outweighs the cost of achieving the Code… surely?
Acheiving the code needs a different mindset, as Einstein said… we cannot solve todays issues with the same mind set that created them in the first place...
By rearranging the debate towards opportunity we can can move from despair to exciting.
I caught the live broadcast (webcast) of Bill Clintons speech at Greenbuild365* yesterday, and a few things stuck in my mind.
One was Clintons reference to this being an opportunity, a challenge but an opportunity, and that the transition from a carbon economy to a green economy will produce as many new jobs, skills and professions as the carbon industries loose.
he saw that the greenbuild sector was the place to be to really address climate change issues. “The sale has been made,” he said. “Otherwise Al Gore wouldn’t have got the Nobel Prize. Now what we have to do is to prove that this is not a bottle of castor oil that we’re being asked to drink”.
Secondly, Clintons call the need for an industry benchmark to keep score, and his pledge, I assume from his foundation, to create a tool for the AEC Industries – (Architecture, Engineering and Construction).
Watch this space…
In fact Clinton could be one to watch. The worldchanging writer and founder Alex Steffen ran a story on Clinton’s speech to US Mayors in Seattle recently and described it as …quite simply, the best speech on climate given by an American politician (other than Al Gore) I’ve ever heard — it’s the sort of speech I wish a sitting president would stand up and deliver before Congress and the nation
* As to Greenbuild, I understand7000 saw Clintons speech, 20,000 will attend over three days and most of the key speeches are webcast around the world. (An idea for the UK Think 2008 maybe Phil?) I just get a feeling something big is happening there, despite the rhetoric in American politics and leadership.
Blogs and the Media are awash with news and comments of MIT sueing Gehry for an ‘unbuildable design’ at the MIT Stata Center in Cambridge, Boston. (The Guardian, Building etc)
I find this fascinating and a reminder of the failures and flaws in the more traditional (or historical – traditional sounds too craft, and heritage-like), un-collaborative, approach to construction. The best reporting is in the Boston Globe, which provides the contractors (Skanksa) view as well. (Boston being an old home of mine, I try to keep informed through the Globe) And its very illuminating.
“This is not a construction issue, never has been,” said Paul Hewins, executive vice president and area general manager of Skanska USA. He said Gehry rejected Skanska’s formal request to create a design that included soft joints and a drainage system in the amphitheater, and “we were told to proceed with the original design.”
After the amphitheater began cracking and flooding, Skanska spent “a few hundred thousand dollars” trying to resolve the problems, but, he said, “it was difficult to make the original design work.”
It also delves deeper, citing former Boston University president John Silber, who said “It really is a disaster,” and sharply criticizes the Stata Center’s design in a new book, “Architecture of the Absurd: How ‘Genius’ Disfigured a Practical Art.” A book that questions why the Guggenheim is always covered in scaffolding? Why the random slashes on the exterior of Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum, supposed to represent Berlin locations where pre-war Jews flourished, reappear, for no apparent reason, on his Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto? Or why Frank Gehry’s Strata Center, designed for MIT’s top-secret Cryptography Unit, has transparent glass walls? Not to mention why, for $442 per square foot, it doesn’t keep out the rain?
Ouch.
He goes on … and asks all the questions that critics dare not. He challenges architects to derive creative satisfaction from meeting their clients’ practical needs. He appeals to the reasonable public to stop supporting overpriced architecture. And most of all, he calls for responsible clients to tell the emperors of our skylines that their pretensions cannot hide the naked absurdity of their designs
Time to order a copy !
Noted on the USA Building Design + Construction Network website recently:
Governor Schwarzenegger recently signed into law Assembly Bill (AB) No. 715, supported by the Plumbing Manufacturers Institute (PMI), that encourages and provides for the gradual conversion to higher efficiency toilets and urinals in California.
Many existing toilets average 1.6 gallons per flush. High efficiency toilets only use 1.28 gallons per flush, or less; while high efficiency urinals use one-half gallon per flush, or less. Under the new law, plumbing manufacturers have committed to producing at least half of their toilet models sold in California to be high efficiency by 2010. By 2014, all toilets and urinals sold in the state will be high efficiency models. The new high efficiency toilet and urinals will use less water, helping alleviate demands on water agencies in California.
This illustrates the increasingly acute water problems in many areas of the world.
From the BD website, (the Architects Website)
Moxon Architects has won an RIBA competition to design a £6 million landmark office building in Preston, Lancashire.
The firm beat CJ Lim’s Studio 8 Architects, Maxwan, Piercy Conner, New York-based Stephen Yablon Architects, and Hamburg’s LH Architekten in the contest.
The winning scheme, Moxon’s biggest win to date, will be four storeys high with a two-storey atrium, and will provide around 4,000sq m of office space.
Director Ben Addy said the unnamed client did not want to release design details until it had gone through pre-planning consultation, but added: “It’s quite bold, it’s got a pronounced expression to it. It’s got unusual cladding and we’re looking to use a material that retains colour as it weathers.
The contest had 50 entrants and was judged by a panel including Urban Splash’s Nick Johnson and architect Ian Simpson.
A quick surf of Moxon Architects website revealed very little about the organisation other than a hard to view portfolio. In fact the news / press section was more than a year out of date. Something about form and function?
Now thats got Prestonians guessing who, where, what, when ?
Noticed this on the SD Commissions website today –
… However, it is not currently possible to do carbon offsetting in the UK, as this would lead to the double-counting of any reduction in emissions (as all reductions are already claimed by Government in helping to meet our international obligations)…
Is this correct? This needs to be read in the context of the SD Commission’s view on Carbon Offsetting and Neutrality, but having read the web page a few times I assume this means that the offset projects cannot be UK based?
So planting trees in Scotland or anywhere else in the UK, to absorb/sequester carbon dioxide, or any of the other main greenhouse gases is not available to construction projects looking to offset. Well there go a few I know off…
Anyone care to clarify or offer an explanation of this?
National fame for isite
– the isite post on the Environment Agency calculator has been picked up by Building.
A mixed bag in the media over the weekend and today…
The Sunday Times launched a four week series on what promises answers to the global warming problems, which seems to be to
wait for Rogers to complete cities of the future,
capture carbons from the air,
geo-engineer solutions in the oceans,
sprinkling iron ocean surfaces , oh,
and build homes of the future that resemble Lost In Space visions of the future 1970’s style
Meanwhile the Observer investigated 5 carbon calculators – and revealed that a personal footprint can vary from 2.3 tonnes to 28 tonnes – no surprises there!
And then today in the Guardian – a Guardian survey shows only 48 of the top 100 companies trading on the UK stock exchange have published a plan to address and reduce their carbon emissions and a significant minority refuse even to reveal their carbon footprint. This report contains and interesting comment form Tesco’s Leahy -who predicts that by working with consumers, “we can turn the green movement into a mass movement”.
Are we about to see a Tescos branded green movement?
The USA “Green Buildings Research White Paper,” the fifth in a series of annual reports on green building by Building Design+Construction, provides exclusive data on how building owners, operators, facilities directors, and real estate executives view green buildings—and what they are doing to implement green building. The 60-page report covers corporate office buildings, hospitals, hotels, K-12 schools, college and university facilities, restaurants, and residential development.
Download here (3.2 MB PDF file) the full report.
Key findings of where respondents stand on key issues:
■ Respondents are still worried about possible higher initial costs for green buildings.
■ They’re generally sanguine about the energy savings from green buildings.
■ They believe that green buildings may deliver health benefits for occupants.
■ They appreciate the marketing and PR bonanza that green buildings often garner.
■ They see companies, institutions, and building owners more willing to invest in green buildings today than
they were just a few years ago.
Plenty of numbers and data in the report, along with signed statements from sponsors.
I need to keep asking myself why is it so much easier to access reports like this in the States than here in the UK?
Fairsnape 