Category Archives: design

Second Life: will code really be the new bricks and mortar?

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Second Life: will code really be the new bricks and mortar, or ‘clicks’ and mortar? ….

Saturdays Telegraph carried an article looking at a new lifestyle magazine aimed at homeowners – Prim Perfect is a virtual magazine to give virtual people advice on virtual furniture to put in a virtual homes and expects to make real money.

And yet it is probably going to be – if it is not already – the best-read magazine on the subject of bricks and mortar on the planet. Prim Perfect has a potential global readership in the hundreds of thousands.   Pauline Woolley is Prim Perfect founder and editor.  

Read more in Daily Telegraph

Also New York Times

(Fairsnape has a presence within Second Life .  For more information on Second Life and Built Environment issues, or a guided tour in SL, contact through Fairslife)

Post modern apathy in the built environment ?…

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Jonathan Glancey, the Guardian architecture critic, writing in his Guardian column today, Extinction of Engineers, bemoans the lack of skilled workers in the uk, and sees our sector as a nation of call centre operatives and customer service facility managers, threatened by a glut of postmodern apathy.   Yes.  This backs up the findings of the recent Arup report for the ASC – that we dont have the skills in the UK to address the sustainability targets and visions being set down and proposed.

In another article in the same edition  Jonathan Glancey provides a profile of Edward Cullinan, who has been designing thoughtful and sometimes daring buildings for long enough to see a number of them listed

Two comments in this article caught my attention

Cullinan remains equally in thrall to the wayward genius of Frank Lloyd Wright. The great American architect was much influenced by Voysey, even if Wright went on to design such avant garde buildings as the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. Voysey’s individuality and craft and Wright’s originality and verve are forces that have inspired Cullinan throughout his 52-year career as a practising architect. “I cherish that word,” he says. “I’m always practising. And one day might even get there.”

and, in an attack on design build…

 “Good architecture does demand money. The buildings we did for the University of East London [alongside London City Airport], for example, look great from 50 metres away, but when you get up close you can see the effects of ‘design and build’ construction, meaning that the architect is not responsible for the building works. The details just aren’t good enough. The level of craftsmanship is far too low.”

Voysey and Wright were lucky that they did not have to practise their craft in a cheapskate world of “design and build”. None the less, Cullinan, more so than most contemporary British architects, has lived to shape some of the best-made, most cherished British buildings of the past 50 years, buildings that, if you could slice into them, would shine with Grade I gold.

Having spent a fair amount of time as both a project manager on architect led and design and build projects, I am not sure I entirely agree with this.  The low level of craftsmanship is a symptom of the industry’s lack of investment in skills and training over the last few decades, rather than architect-contractor forms of contract.   And, in both approaches the relationships just did not foster a spirit of collaborative working to the benefit of the building or facility, but a reinforcement of silos and hidden agendas.

Green buildings on a mass scale?

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An interesting article over at worldchanging, looking at a progamme being piloted by USGBC (US Gren Building Council) to … allow large companies to design, build and certify a green prototype facility–and then replicate that design all over the country.

It’s ideal for large retail operators with buildings that are more or less the same from city to city–companies like Starbucks, Lowe’s and Best Buy, all of whom happen to be participating in the pilot program

said Brenda Mathison, Best Buy’s director of environmental affairs. “The reality is that 60 percent of all energy use in the United States comes from commercial buildings, and we decided to take action on that.”

Solar building design

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One of the fascinating things behind the statistics to running a blog is the search items people use to end up here at isite.

Still by a large margin is the search for a good construction carbon calculator.  However coming up fast on the inside, is the search of things solar relating to energy and building design.  This has led to me to brush up on my knowledge – and found this fascinating wikipedia entry. Passive solar building design

 Passive solar building design involves the modeling, selection and use of appropriate passive solar technologies to maintain the building environment at a desired temperature range (usually based around human thermal comfort) throughout the sun’s daily and annual cycles. As a result it generally minimizes the use of active solar, renewable energy and especially fossil fuel technologies.

I would add into this the passive solar lighting concepts of sun-pipes, light tubes and wind pipes which we use to great effect here.  Having daylight and fresh air into the middle of the house is wonderful – and saves on lighting energy and costs, even on overcast days.

Praise for Preston Bus Station

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Good to see the article in the Guardian yesterday A baroque cathedral for buses giving praise to the Preston Bus Station scheduled for demolition for the Titheburn regeneration project.

It is cinematic, sculptural, heroic – and one of the most dramatic public buildings from the 1960s, writes Jonathan Glancey, who  heartbroken to hear that Preston bus station is to be demolished.

The station is a thing of swoops and curves. Great ramps whizz cars up and down the parking floors, while buses move to and fro below.

The article is worth a read as it makes comments on regeneration schemes that will be … an air-conditioned town-centre shopping complex with some “luxury apartments”, a spot of genteel public art, a few water features and yet more chain-store retailing. Tithebarn will, of course, look like every other exciting new “urban regeneration” project in Britain.

About maintenance ….   To reduce the weight of the cantilevered balconies, they were kept so thin that, in the words of the architect for Preston borough council: ‘In many cases this has resulted in inadequate cover to the steel reinforcements which in turn resulted in the need for continual inspection and maintenance.

About Preston  …  Preston lacks impressive historic buildings; many of its streets are lined with glum, run-of-the-mill office blocks and gloomy multistorey car parks. In another city – mainland European, not British – something as striking and monumental as Preston bus station might have been listed, loved and worked intelligently into a new development. It would take just an ounce or two of imagination to rejig the building and give it a new life.

About community and place … The building was created at a time when the car was deferred to, and pedestrians were expected to enter major new public buildings through underground passageways. This is rarely done today, not least because most city subways are, at best, frightening. The arrangement of underground passages explains why the bus station appears to be isolated, set on an ocean of roadway with no pedestrians in sight among the buses, taxis and cars.

Carbon neutral buildings designed

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Searching for the carbon negative led me to this neat little 5 mins video from Green Building Studio It sets about designing a building to be carbon neutral using their online web service. It is worth following through to the end of the video to see how orientation and material choice affects the carbon performance and costs of the building in use.

End of back to backs

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Pleased to note the greenhouse project in Beeston Leeds as reported in Building today. (Work starts on UK’s first carbon negative project) Having had an office on the fringe of Beeston for about 10 years, it was an area that fascinated me, a built environment from another era, with most of the housing of 19th century stock, including what must be some of the last remaining small back-to-back terraces

The greenhouse project is billed as being carbon negative – rather than just carbon neutral. It is hoped this includes the construction processes as well as the use of the new homes, and NOT achieved through carbon offsetting but through real improvements in process, management and technology.  I searched for a definition of carbon negative – but unable to find anything useful that was not linked to carbon off-putting, but for an excellent overview see this Worldchanging link 

It is fascinating to see how far we have come from back to back housing

 The rows of houses were literally built ‘back to back’ one room deep.   The typical back to back house has three rooms, one above the other. The housing became renowned for squalor, disease and poverty due to its cramped design and poor sanitation.

“Our house is a three storey terrace with a common yard, a privy and wash house which we share with fifteen other families.”

(BBC)

back to back

 

 

 

 

Greenwash buildings

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There has been an inetresting series of articles and reports recently on technology versus hearts and minds approach to climate change, carbon management and the approach we seem to be taking to becoming green, and greening the built environment.

As mentioned here before, it was Einstein who said “we cannot solve todays problems with the same patterns of thought that created them in the past” and that we need to rethink.   Technology and its use has contributed to the environmental problems of today, can we now rely on technology to take us out of it?  There is a very strong case for more focus on hearts, minds and spirit, or what is becoming known as the eco-mind.

Mark Lynas (whose book High Tide should be on every shelf) writes in a recent Guardian article  Can shopping change the planet?

Some in the business community argue that the whole green consumerism thing is just a passing fad, a sort of climatic version of the dotcom bubble. … According to Phil Downing, head of environmental research at Ipsos Mori, the majority of the population are “fairweather environmentalists” who remain very reluctant to take lifestyle change seriously.

George Monbiot on his blog writes

“Green consumerism is becoming a pox on the planet”, Green consumerism will not save the biosphere … drowning in eco-junk … heading for eco-cide

Are we seeing the same green commercialism, or greenwash in our built environment sector.  Increasingly every product and organisation is keen to inform of green credentials.

Most material suppliers carry their Environmental Commitment on their web sites – prominently – which usually has the aim of reducing pollution or carbon emissions (eg Travis Perkins) yet how serious can they be in attempting to save carbon when these companies still sell patio heaters ? (Just one patio heater will negate the climate value of half a dozen micro wind turbines)

There is a growing need and call to verify  green, carbon and environmental claims.

We seem to be heading down a technological solution route, coupled with carbon off-setting, and yet, seeing carbon emissions continue to increase.

Interviewed in the current issue of the informative Plenty journal, Function Over Form.  Travis Price, a seasoned architect, architectural and environmental pioneer, takes aim at the green building movement he’s been part of for over thirty years, arguing that it’s veered off course: more technical than spiritual; more about regulation than nature. The answer, he says, is to move away from a mandated “checklist” approach and toward an inherently eco-minded design aesthetic. (take a look at the Travis Price website)
Price uses expressions like building in the spirit of place, the context of the earth, a lexicon we dont hear too much in built environment … and yet may be just the rethinking we need.

And, last week we had the Arup report for the Academy of Sustainable Communities, Mind the Gap which assessed the gaps in the supply and demand of skills required to deliver the sustainable communities programme. These are a combination of technical skills, linked to regeneration and the built environment, and generic skills, linked to, for example, finance and project management, leadership and communication and in summary

The key finding is that England faces a significant shortage of qualified professionals with the necessary skills to deliver sustainable communities between now and 2012…. A national drive to address labour shortages and skills gaps is needed .. and … Organisational culture must evolve.

Are we, in the built environment,  stuck in an accommodationist view – ie we can accommodate climate and ecological change, by embracing a fair weather environmental approach,  by using technology and through a little legislation – but crucially without changing lifestyles, or as the Arup report suggests educational and training issues.

A dangerous view and route to take:

The effects of climate change will be felt sooner than scientists realised and the world must learn to live with the effects, experts said yesterday. Martin Parry, a climate scientist with the Met Office, said destructive changes in temperature, rainfall and agriculture were now forecast to occur several decades earlier than thought.

Second Life – the space between real worlds?

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I (or my Avatar) took a look around the Second Life exhibition that illustrates what architects and designers are doing within second life.

Fascinating stuff.

The exhibition, called Portal The Space Between Real and the Other Real, opened within second life yesterday and runs until Nov 4th. Organised by Odyssey and introduced as:

In the past, architects and designers have used the virtual world as a workspace in which to experiment and develop prototypes for real world projects. In recent years we’ve seen the growth of networked 3D environments in which users socialise, play games, establish businesses and even fall in love. With millions of registered users of these environments worldwide, the Virtual World is no longer simply the sweatshop for the Real World; it’s fast becoming the Other Real World.

This exhibition is a portal to the virtual architectures of Second Life, a 3D online community where people can fly, and the laws of physics generally don’t apply. While a virtual building doesn’t provide much in the way of shelter, it still functions as a stage for interaction and an effective way to signify identity. As a consequence, there are plenty of fantasy palaces and Barbie mansions in Second Life, but there are also other sites where architects have been able to rethink the possibilities of human interaction with the built environment.”

This is a good opportunity for exploring design and the built environment within second life.

If you can handle SLurls (Second Life urls) the location is here

If you would like a guided tour to this event, and other areas in second life, contact my avatar Brand Woodin, who would be happy to meet you, within Second Life, and help with getting around and other aspects of this ‘other real world’

Back to the future with open office plans

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Mel over at Elemental alerted me to the new Architectural Record blog and this recent article on open office planning.