sustainability news
Shades of green
This morning’s Background Briefing on RN examined the flaws in home energy rating systems. The show was unsurprising: they found many houses with low ratings and high performance, and vice versa. No prizes for guessing that architect-designed green homes suffered in the ratings department for not under-glazing, and not air-conditioning. The software wasn’t designed to be used like this and it encourages a conformity of design that suits standard project homes. From my experience, it is a bit of a lottery what the software will think of a custom-designed house.
01.04.12 in sustainability
Sustainability - Your laws do not apply to me
Readings sale table, 2011
08.11.11 in sustainability awards
Stirling ideas
This year’s Stirling shortlist is of buildings most modest. The Guardian calls it “austerity architecture”. I have read here and there that the GFC has apparently made exclamatory buildings a little bitter on the palate up on the topside, though Zaha did get a listing for the speedlining Evelyn Grace academy in Lambeth, which the Guardian calls, “one of the most expensive city academy schools ever built”. Two of the shortlisted buildings are extensive renovations to existing buildings, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, and the Angel Centre in Islington, London. The Angel Centre was not even 30 years old when it was considered outmoded. Rather than a bowl’n‘build, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris stripped the building, threw out the mirror glass, and gave it a jolly good £72m white-washing. That’s 15% less than a complete rebuild, with 30% less carbon dioxide emitted.
21.07.11 in sustainability
green maths
Extracts from an HIA Press Release 2011 dutifully relayed by many news services in late May.
18.06.11 in sustainability housing
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Rating the ratings
The Fifth Estate today looks into recent claims by the HIA and The Australian that the NatHERS sustainability rating scheme is inconsistent and that there is a, “lack of correlation between actual energy performance of houses and their star ratings”. The CSIRO, developer of NatHERS-accredited Accurate software, says that they weren’t rating the ratings software correctly – “apart from a few minor glitches with the way the software was running, the main issue was due to errors made by assessors and incorrect interpretation of the results.”.
28.10.10 in sustainability computing
Clothes heaps in New York
Piles of clothes tend to broadcast to me the concept that I should wash them. But not always. Here’s a pic from a show now on at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. That’s up the road a bit from The State Armory where that chap R.Mutt submitted a urinal for a show in 1917.
16.05.10 in sustainability insulation
Frank on green
I hope this was taken out of context. Chicago Trib reporting on a talk by Frank. O. Gehry, 81:
14.05.10 in sustainability
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Bark vs. bite
From the Landcorp (Western Australia) website :
- “LandCorp is the Western Australian Government’s land and property developer.”
- Services include “Optimising triple bottom line outcomes from government-owned land.”
- “Sustainable development requires a different way of thinking about neighbourhoods in our cities and regions and involves identifying ways to demonstrate environmental leadership, community wellbeing, design excellence and economic health to produce integrated and holistic development concepts.”
- “We apply our sustainability vision to our work to bring a balance of social, environmental and economic outcomes for West Australians.”
10.02.10 in urban-planning sustainability
NOx eating facade
I don’t usually put product info in the news, but this looks interesting – a titanium dioxide coated decorative facade that fights pollution. It can be seen installed at enex100, a retail complex in Perth.
18.11.09 in facades sustainability
Tall in timber
PHOTO BY WAUGH THISTLETON
21.10.09 in sustainability timber
Architect / protaganist:
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World Green Building Day
Hey, happy inaugural World Green Building Day! What can you do to mark this event in Melbourne… um, you could take the opportunity to network with GBCs . Other than that, not sure. Maybe knock off early and have a Green Beer.
24.09.09 in sustainability
Ben Elton wired to the sun
Comic Strip comedian and author, Ben Elton, gets to keep the photovoltaic panels he put on his heritage registered North Fremantle home after a stoush with the council. But he does have to remove them within 25 years, if Freemantle is still above water then. He will move into the house with his “Perth wife” in December, and will probably have enough material for a new novel with this.
06.09.09 in sustainability
Earthships don't fit the plan
Garbage warrior Michael Reynolds is in town and spoke to The Age . “What the planet needs right now is a billion Earthships . But right now, conventional junk housing is the easiest thing to get a permit for, while the right thing to do – green, sustainable, zero-carbon-emission housing – causes someone to have to fight for years to get permission.”
01.09.09 in sustainability video-clips