Category Archives: futures

EcoCity 2008

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A wealth of information relating to urban and city futures is to be found through the EcoCity2008 conference web site and media blogs, including interviews and podcasts through the Tomorrow Matters internet radio.

With a strap line of Get Ready to change the world… Ecocity World Summit 2008 will bring together the key innovators, decision makers, technologists, businesses and organizations shaping the conversation around ecological and sustainable city, town and village design, planning and development. We intend to put these issues on the economic and environmental agenda for 2008 and beyond.

Hoping to follow EcoCity2008 streams and on line content through this blog.

Just how the UK Eco Towns and Eco Villages (and even Transition Town) concepts compare to international approaches will be of interest.

virtual world collaboration

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As I have been developing an exciting project in Second Life recently, collaborating in-world (as they say) with people across the US, in the UK, Switzerland and elsewhere – but more on that later – the emerging virtual world collaboration concepts have been rattling around my brain, emails and blogs that I read.

Whilst I bemoaned the fact that Eco-Build event had no real virtual presence, it was good to note Phils push for the virtual Sustainability Now event (now moved to 1 and 2 July).

I haven’t given enough time to the Think on line  forum – it didn’t really take off for me, but I sense that may be addressed through the Think08 event (where hopefully there will be more, and parallel online content)

In what must be a classic oxymoron – the Virtual Worlds conference in New York in April would appear not to be availble online!

An email from Howard Lictman at TelepresenceOptions intrigued me with the expression ‘keeping people off planes and improving collaboration” I guess here in the UK that would translate to ‘keeping people off the roads and improving collaboration” which is always a good thing.  (Telepresence is a conferencing technology where participants feel as if they are in the same physical space.)

Howards fascinating paper: ‘Telepresence, Effective Visual Collaboration and the Future of Global Business at the Speed of Light’ can be downloaded here

Facebook is too bloated now for effective collaboration – other than shallow social fun.

Finally there is a debate within  LinkedIn  discussing where the best Live Community collaborations are to be found – Second Life, Facebook, or elsewhere.  Maybe the answer to that is within the blogging community?

built environment futures? (now with links)

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The other evening I had the opportunity to tour around a new state of the art hospital facility, so state of the art it is calling itself the hospital of the future.

As the press release states: The new facility intends to positively transform the traditional health care experience that is normally associated with staying or working in a hospital. The campus will epitomize Cisco and PPH’s shared vision of a ‘Connected Hospital’ where technology and the physical environment seamlessly integrate to enhance patient care through the sharing of timely, accurate information among the right people at the right time, between hospitals and the extended ecosystem of care.

Following the tour – more comments here soon – I popped into the Blarney Stone pub and shared a Guinness or two with a friend whilst listening to a live singer entertain the regulars.

‘Work’ wasn’t over though – it was then off to a small group meeting to discuss how web technology can assist those working in the built environment sectors. This was part of a regular Tuesday evening get together to learn and share on themes that run from using Skype to dealing with Radon.

Possibly a typical afternoon / evening for those involved in improvement forums and tours, except this one was completely virtual within second life, demonstrating the benefits of such platforms for business, communication and learning.

On February 25 ‘cut the ribbon’ on a new hospital – Palomar West – a simulation of a real world hospital campus due to open in 2011 – gives visitors the opportunity to tour the hospital years before its doors actually open. How that for testing future patient comments and user ‘usability’. The ‘experience’ of users can be monitored prior to the building commencing, and real life designs amended accordingly. This is more than the video fly through we see to promote new buildings. I could sit and chat to others, within the reception and discuss our thoughts on the place.

The live singer was in a pub in London, streamed into a virtual pub, the Blarney Stone, on the Dublin sim. (The beer was real but from my own fridge)

The meeting was part of the Construction Group, with members across the globe, learning and sharing in a setting very similar to the thousands of meetings that occur across the country every night. Except this didn’t involve any traveling, didn’t interfere with family life, and with delegates from around the world, huge potential in global learning.

I am planning a regular meeting get to together to discuss the topics raised through isite – so if you have a second life – join the isite group in world, IM me from within second life or just leave a comment below . For more on second life, how to get into the groups, visit places such as the Palomar, contact me here, or leave comments below.

Hospital of the Future press release … Continue reading →

zero carbon route map to Wales

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Jane Davidson the Welsh AM for Environment, Sustainability & Housing,  launched the new Renewable Energy Route Map for the Welsh Assembly Government last week – out for consultation until May.

It details lots of wind farms and lots of public engagement. Of note is the speed of the intentions across all energy themes, including the built environment as:

The devolution of the Building Regulations: Assembly Government control of the Building Regulations, in addition to our existing Town and Country Planning powers, should enable us to ensure all new buildings in Wales are built to the highest possible low carbon standards, both in respect of energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy.

Higher standards through devolved Building Regulations would be aimed at delivering the aspiration for all new buildings to be zero carbon by 2011. Over the next 3 years the Assembly Government will be looking to demonstrate a path to zero carbon buildings through construction work it funds.

Carbon Zero by 2011 – a far more ambitious plan than the Code of Sustainable Homes and other targets being set, increasing the importance of a strategy to follow with confidence

efficien-cities

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Its clean and its efficient and its possible  – its efficiencity – whilst the government dither on policy Greenpeace have produced an attractive and informative animation to show just what is possible in our towns and cities.  It is a animated and illustrated portal to many of the initiatives and emerging technologies in the built environment

It is statistics such as by the time we use electricity in our homes and offices, we’ve lost nearly 80 per cent of the usable energy inside the fossil fuels we burn that demonstrates the urgency of rethinking our approaches, and as this site demonstrates – this rethinking is happening in real world communities and projects around the UK

Face it – solve global warming – stop coal

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Face it – the on line web cast from Architecture 2030 is now available to watch on-line

Sub titled Turn it Around, Watch and start to understand the impact the built environment has on global warming, the impact the built environment has on demanding power from coal fired power station – and the proposed solution – stop and replace the demand on coal!

Also available for educational use is the 2007 Global Emergency Teach-in

Manchester plans low-carbon future

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Manchester city council is embarking on an ambitious plan to tackle global warming by controlling all aspects of the city’s energy supply by 2020. Report – Guardian 31 Jan

Excellent news, that will put it in the league of other cities around the world with similar aspirations.

As it appears to be a daunting goal, the council has produced a strategy which includes bite-size targets in three key areas; commercial, domestic and transport.

However, will this drive  improvement in the energy and domestic and commercial built environment sectors ?  Will universities, academia and collages in the region gear up to be able to deliver the skills required – (the track record dosen’t look good).

Also that date 2020 – how does that tie in with all the other milestones for acheiving zero or low carbon in the built environment sector?

meeting tomorrows needs?

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Alex Steffen over at Worldchanging posts an interesting comment on the future usability, flexibility and appropriateness of facilities designed by ego -starchitects.   Alex calls for : An open architecture, an architecture which asks a question of the future — how does our inspiration today serve your needs tomorrow?

(This question of inspirations today meeting the needs of tomorrow is being raised on many public PFI facilities at the moment, withing education and health for example. (Are we really building schools for the future)

A global, and virtual, open source architecture movement is gathering momentum within second life (wikitecture) and the open architecture network amongst other places.

And of course this all comes back to real integrated and collaborative working across the whole facilities and project players, stakeholders and end users. (see studio wikitecture concept for a nice approach to integration and collaboration)

isite 08

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For what its worth, here are my top ten themes for the built environment sector in 2008. These are not predications as such but more of an extension of what I have seen emerge in 2007 and will most likely increase their presence on agendas in 2008…and beyond …

1 Carbon supply chain management – with carbon zero and carbon neutral being the buzz for 2008, will we see a re-evaluation of the value that supply chains add from a carbon reduction perspective? Each member of a supply chain will prove its worth to the overall chain through reduction or carbon emissions in the product or service it passes on to its customer. Essential in achieving the targets before us as we move along the route to a low carbon sector

2 Construction (and fm) Carbon footprint – of the construction or maintenance process – we have little understanding of the contribution the construction process itself makes to the life of a building – estimated from 11% to the equivalent of 3 years emissions for a typical home. Not knowing your carbon footprint may well be the equivalent of not knowing your health and safety stats at the end of 2008

3 ouses, ouses, ouses – a recognition of the importance of wilderness, national parks in light of housing expansion, and the importance these areas have – as a contribution to the environmental balance as well as our collective psyche.

4 End of greenwashing – well, at least a move from anecdotal blatant greenwashing to more evidenced based claims – we will still see many guilty of the greenwashing sins though to be caught by bloggers, watchdogs and bloggers alike.

5 Social networking – private facebook type networks such as xing for collaborative working across organisations, projects, supply chains and communities of practice. The use of Web 2.0 technologies to source knowledge and best practice, leading to a re-appraisal of IP perhaps

6 Open source – An increase in the sharing of technology, knowledge on an open source creative commons approach within our industry. Maybe value will come from using technologies and knowledge rather than just ‘owning ‘ it and restricting its real potential

7 From excellence to experience – the world of quality seems to have gotten stuck in excellence mode. Yet organisations are increasingly concerned with the experience – the experience of a journey the customer or end user makes through the facility or with an organisation. Often the level and nature of this experience is determined and shaped by the front of house (or organisation) people – facilities management people!

9 Virtual assets – as more and more organisations move activities and processes on line we see the reduction in need for built physical assets – eg large HQ’s – will the fm sector come to understand the concepts of virtual assets. Will we see FM organisations within Second Life? (we already have a thriving architecture and construction community there)

10 Community based fm – this one has been bubbling around for a while – but with the increase in social responsibility, social enterprises, community owned assets and the regeneration agenda we can see more community based facilities management approaches, some small such as management of village halls, some larger such as Transition Towns

More on these in future posts – your comments and additions are more than welcome

Cost of carbon

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A good note to end the year on and a new perspective on the cost of carbon to start 2008 with was reported in the Guardian last Friday. (also picked up by fellow blogger Phil at Some Seasonal Cheer ). Effectively ministers will now have to include a cost for carbon emission on all projects, starting at £25.50 a carbon tonne for 2007, rising every year to reach £59.60 a tonne by 2050. (This seems lower than other figures suggested!)

It will be interesting to see how this plays out through construction and fm – what would the additional cost of PFI’s, and BSF, building schools for the future projects etc now be. Would these costs be predicted over the life of a building. Can they be offset by carbon reducing measures built in?

And the Code – suddenly the cost of zero carbon homes may well be less than business as usual carbon construction.

Will the costs be applied to construction process emissions as well – and if so will this be tracked back up stream to the cement industry for example.

Not sure who actually will pay for these costs – the developers?, the supply side? the clients? More questions than answers at the moment, more detail is still to announced, but as this is a Treasury initiative it will surely be forced into being rapidly and with teeth. A whole new carbon based currency is being created.

Lets hope there is not a cop out by allowing offsets to offset these costs, and that the costs are real contributions to tackling sustainability

Whatever the detail,  we will start 2008 with a new, more meaningful perspective of sustainable construction, and more debates and discussion.

Brilliant.