The advantages of magnesium-based cement: GreenHomeBuilding.com

Frank Gehry's Dancing House, Prague. Photo by RyanGWU82.

Renowned architect Frank Gehry caused a a bit of a stir last month during a speaking engagement in Chicago. Asked about the role of green architecture and buildings in tackling climate change, he said: "I think the issue is a political one."

He went on to criticise LEED, the US's rating system for the environmental impact of buildings, for rewarding "bogus stuff", and added that the costs of green buildings are "enormous", and that "they don't pay back in your lifetime."

Treehugger has an interesting report on the response from architecture writer Fred Bernstein, who defends Gehry's criticism of LEED, writing in ArchNewsNow:

One example is CityCenter, the Las Vegas complex that contains more than 5,000 hotel rooms, plus casinos and shopping malls and restaurants and nightclubs - altogether, 18 million air-conditioned square feet smack in the middle of the Mojave Desert. I can't imagine a greater environmental disaster than this complex (which, in addition to requiring vast resources to build and operate, is designed to draw travelers from around the world). And yet it was awarded LEED Gold status.

What I found most interesting was Gehry's claim that the costs of green building are "enormous" - this is patently untrue. Construct Ireland has published numerous articles over the years that prove green buildings - or at least buildings that are quite green - can be built at little extra cost (see this project for example). Consider the mixed-use complex in Foxrock we featured  in the March issue of the magazine, which will be online shortly. It's built to an almost-passive energy standard and makes abundant use of green materials, but Seamus O'Loughlin of contractors Viking House told us his price was the same as that offered by conventional builders - who were planning to build to the 2005 energy standards - who also bid for the project.

Gehry has designed some of the most iconic buildings of our times, but I think his comments are reflective of a wider lack of understating among many architects when it comes to green building and architecture. Of course some have been building green properly for a long time, but many have only started to talk about sustainability as the term has become trendy in the last five years or so. While some have genuinely made the effort to educate themselves, others haven't and just throw the lingo around. I've spent hours browsing architects' websites looking for potential case studies for Construct Ireland, and though many talk a lot about sustainability and energy, when you get to the details they usually reveal a lack of in-depth knowledge about what green building really is. In fairness to Gehry, at least he isn't pretending to be green when he isn't. 

 

Knock yourselves out: 

US group offers to meet Ireland's wave energy targets: Irish Times

OMA Architects has created an ambitious proposal for a European-wide power network that it claims would reduce the conintent's carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. Check out a fascinating image gallery of the design here: Guardian

The Emilio Ambasz Prize for green architecture, top three: ArchDaily

Bill Gates donates $300,000 to cloud-seeding geo-engineering technology: The Times

Slideshow - the greenest of the winners of the Canada governor general's medals in architecture: Treehugger

Short profile of a passive house in the Wisconsin Woods: Green Building Advisor

Will fly ash be classified as a hazardous waste by the US Environmental Protection Agency: Green Building Law Update

I've been keenly waiting to see the finished Monte Rosa Hut in Swtizerland since I saw the first design illustrations, and the building is now finally finished. This Swiss mountain hut, a five-storey timber frame building on steel foundations, is designed to be 90% energy self-sufficient - it boasts an 85 square metre solar PV array with excess energy stored in "lead-acid accumulators". There's more details here and here. Photos courtesy of ETH-Studio Monte Rosa/Tonatiuh Ambrosetti.

 

Last week the American Institute of Architects announced its top ten green building projects of 2010. Pictured below is one of the buildings, the Omega Centre for Sustainable Living in New York. Jetson Green has a gallery  of all the buildings, while detailed information on all of the projects can be found here . 

Photo by Andy Milford

For your perusal:

A journalist re-designs his neighbourhood: Grist
Is the Passivhaus standard too inflexible for America? Treehugger
Solar plane takes first successful flight: Inhabitat
A few interesting green buildings: Wildlife Conservation Society HQ, Harpoon House, Maine low enegy house, Dairy barn converted into eco home, Guelph City Hall
Frank Gehry not a fan of green architecture, says the cost of green building is "enormous": Infrastructurist
Applying Passivhaus to a "centuries old" building: Green Building Advisor
How to sell green products to builders: Green Building Advisor
Sustainable 'superbus' under development: Energy Saving Trust (more here)
Best of green design & architecture, 2010: Jetson Green

Sorry for the prolonged absence - after the madness of the last CI deadline I took a week off, but normal service will resume now.

The following letter appeared in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago. Does Ireland need a green bank too, or are the big banks' 'green funds' enough? 

 

 
As it says on the tin. Full details here.

Just a quick update today, as the deadline for our next issue is approaching rapidly. Anyone interested in reading more about the pay-as-you-save programme launched in Britain yesterday should take a look at the official press release. The plans seem quite ambitious - ambitious enough to make you wonder if the amount of work that's being planned can be done properly in such a short space of time. Are the skills and expertise available and ready?

These figures caught my eye particularly:

The strategy will be implemented in a three stage plan:

• To insulate 6 million homes by the end of 2011
• To have insulated all practical lofts and cavity walls by 2015
• To have offered up to 7 million eco upgrades by 2020; all homes to have smart meters.

According to the Guardian yesterday:

 

 

A bumper bunch of links today:

Video of Bill Gates talking about 'zero carbon' at the TED conference: TED
World's tallest building closed indefintely: Archinect
50 "must read" green engineering blogs: Top Online Engineering Degree
Passivhaus renovation of a Victorian terrace house: TreeHugger
Are the days of the cul de sac over? Treehugger
Looking at lights from space - a sign of progress or failure? Treehugger
Norway to build world's largest wind turbine: Inhabitat
The coming renaissance of electrical contractors: softwareadvice.com
Would you live in a shipping container? Inhabitat
Is the Living Building Challenge the toughest green building standard in the world? Jetson Green
UK boiler scrappage scheme a "success": Energy Savings Trust
Barack Obama's $5bn green home gets off to a slow start: Guardian
Loft insulation - Australia's burning issue: Guardian

...and lastly, officials in Tysons Corner, Virigina are thinking of letting developers build at higher densities if their buildings are greener - a concept known as 'planning gain', and something I wrote about in my first ever article for Construct Ireland.  See Green Building Law Update for more.

A press release on the SEI website has announced the launch of a new quality mark for wood fuels in Ireland. With a deadline approaching I don't really have time to dissect the details right now, but the programme - known as the Wood Fuel Quality Assurance scheme - will be launched in Tipperary tomorrow.

Various agencies appear to have played a role in drawing up the scheme, including Coford, NSAI, SEI, the Irish Bioenergy Association and Waterford IT.

The press release says the "quality assurance scheme will certify organisations involved in the manufacture / supply of quality logs, chips, pellets and briquettes formed from clean wood. This QA scheme will provide customers with confidence that they are purchasing a quality wood fuel from a sustainable source relevant to their needs."

Unfortunately the press release doesn't appear to list the specific criteria wood fuels will have to meet to get the stamp, nor does the Irish Bioenergy Association website. However the Wood Fuel Quality Assurance scheme website will go live tomorrow, so more details should be available then.

For those of you who haven't already seen pictures of it floating about, I thought I'd post a pic of the design for Manchester United captain Gary Neville's new house, designed by Make Architects. According to Inhabitat, the house will feature locally-sourced materials, a ground source heat pump and PV panels, and is designed to be "zero carbon". The architects say it was inspired by the neolithic settlement of Skara Brae in Orkney, and not the Tellytubby House.

As usual, a few links:

Out of the ruins, a more sustainable Haiti: Treehugger
Why are so many Paul Rudolph buildings being torn down? Treehugger
Car bodies could store energy like batteries: Inhabitat
Top five green gadgets to look for in 2010: mylifescoop.com
Can solar panel mounts cause roof leaks?: GreenBuildingAdvisor.com
World's first personal carbon credit: Guardian
£60m eco-home funding announced in the UK: Energy Savings Trust

 

 

I've come across mentions of aerogel insulation a few times recently - it featured in a few of the buildings from the Solar Decathlon that I wrote about in the current issue of Construct Ireland. The claims made about it are generally impressive: that it's an ultra-light, extremely high performance translucent insulator that was, apparently, developed by Nasa. But I have no real way to verify these claims, so I'm curious to hear what readers know about it. I've certainly yet to see it used in a project in Ireland.

A new article on Jetson Green certainly speaks fondly of the stuff: 

Despite the fact that we are now living in the 21st century, aerogel insulation seems like a material out of science-fiction. It is the lightest solid known, although by volume it is 99% air. It is breathable, but it doesn't absorb water. It is incredibly strong for its weight. But most importantly, it is a fantastic insulator.

There's also an interesting discussion about it on greenbuildingforum.co.uk. 

Anyone know any more? 

As usual, a few links for your perusual:

Code for Sustainable Homes to apply to new UK dwellings from this year: Energy Savings Trust
Tesco opens its first "zero carbon" store in the UK: Guardian (see Construct Ireland's profile of a Tesco Passivhaus-certified store in Waterford)
Demolish Buckingham Palace and replace it with an eco-friendly replica? Guardian
Profile of some new green homes in Portland, Oregon: Jetson Green
Solar roof system unveiled: Jetson Green
Solar Decathlon comes to Europe: Green Buidling Advisor (The US Solar Decathlon is profiled in the current issue of Construct Ireland)
Re-envisioning New York to combat sea level rise: Treehuger
Berlin factory renovated into recyclable live/work space: Inhabitat

We're thinking of making a few changes at Construct Ireland to freshen up the magazine, and we'd love your input. Among the changes we're thinking of introducing in the March issue are:

• More, shorter case studies of new build and retrofit projects. Rather than publishing three to four long case studies (of 5-6 pages each), we're thinking of featuring one big case study along with 3-4 short new builds and a similar number of retrofits (each of about 2-3 pages).
• A letters page, and a one page opinion column on green building and energy issues (written by a different person each issue).
• A 'how to' article in each issue, which would examine a particular green building topic in detail, starting with the basics but getting into a lot of technical detail too. Articles could focus on topics like insulation, air tightness, thermal mass, solar thermal - practically anything relevant to sustainable building really.
• Getting architects and other experts to contribute to our feature on international green buildings by selecting some of their favorite green buildings globally.
• A one-page interview in each issue with a leading figure in a field such as sustainable building, architecture, energy or green economics.

And that's about the gist of it. We'd love to hear your thoughts on these ideas - click 'comment' below and then 'show/hide comment form' to leave a comment.

 

Architect Peter Powell has an interesting post on GreenBuildingAdvisor.com about passive solar design principles. Powell, who say he's designed over 60 "passive solar homes" over the last 35 years, challenges some of the most widely held principles of passive solar design. The full post is here, but I've selected a few snippets and copied them below.

Powell advises against using trees to shade south-facing facades, writing:

Using deciduous trees to shade the south elevation in summer is a major design error. This is a myth that won’t go away. Don’t do it! This theory holds that deciduous trees and vines will shade south-facing windows in the summer and reduce heat gain, while in the winter, when the leaves are down, sun will be able to enter and heat the house. It doesn’t work.

The problem is that the limbs of any tree tall enough to shade the windows in the summer will significantly block the lower winter sun, even with the leaves down. In my area (central Pennsylvania), most of the leaves don’t fall until November anyway, after there have been many cool days and nights when the solar gain would have been useful.

 

He also says that getting your building orientation 100% perfect isn't necessary...

I keep reading articles about how to locate true south, using everything from computer programs to measuring shadows through different seasons. Just get a simple compass and correct for declination if you must.

Orienting a house east or west of true south by up to 20° will have no significant effect on solar performance. For example, I currently live in two virtually identical passive solar buildings, a residence and a studio. The studio faces due south and the residence faces 25° west of south. By the end of a sunny day, the overall solar performance of the two buildings is almost identical, with the house performing slightly better in the spring and fall and the studio doing slightly better in the middle of winter.

...and that it's okay for designers to specify more south-facing glazing than most rules of thumb allow:

The area of south-facing glazing area can comfortably be 15-20%+ of total floor area as long as there is adequate storage mass and “active” movement of the heat into the storage.

To maximize solar gain while minimizing overheating, immediately move the stratified heat into storage. Don’t rely on natural conduction and convection to move the heat.

Most rules of thumb for south-facing glazed area assume that the storage mass is located only in the south-facing rooms, and they assume direct conduction of the solar heat into that storage. This method is relatively slow and inefficient, except for the limited surface areas which are directly in the sun, and often results in overheating. It fails to take full advantage of the available mass in rooms remote from the sun, as well as the advantages that occur when heated air is moved through hollow masonry walls or hollow floor slabs to remote mass storage.

A house with a larger-than-normal glazed area (which could be 30%+ of the floor area of the south-side rooms) can still be comfortable and productive if solar heat is moved mechanically out of these areas and circulated into other rooms and, most importantly, directly into supplemental storage mass.

 

 

 

An article in the Guardian last Wednesday discussed a report by the Royal Academy of Engineering, which concluded that "eco-bling" such as wind turbines and solar panels will not help the UK cut carbon emissions quickly enough to meet the government's ambitious carbon reduction targets. That's hardly news - it's pretty obvious such technology is just part of the solution rather than a total fix.

The report also warns that a major step-up in the retrofitting of old buildings needs to take place.  Interestingly, it said the UK building industry would struggle to meet demands to make all new buildings zero carbon by 2020 because of a lack of skilled workers who understand how energy is used and saved in buildings. The report requested British government funding for a study to examine exactly how many workers would need to be upskilled in order to meet government building energy targets.

Reading the piece reminded of what appears to be a disconnect in Ireland regarding our ability to energy upgrade old buildings and to build low energy new ones. The construction industry clearly sees the retrofitting of old buildings as a major source of potential work in the coming years, and it has stressed time and time again that it has the skills needed to meet this challenge. It also sees the exporting of Irish construction skills as a potentially big area of work - with a green and low-energy reputation as one of the key thngs defining the Irish building brand.

But on the other hand, Construct Ireland has been hearing and seeing for years just how badly energy-related work in buildings can be: insulation not properly installed,  draughty gaps around windows and doors, badly-filled cavities, bad internal insulation jobs that lead to condensation and mould, crude heating systems and controls, building regulations not being met.

These problems are far too common, and to suggest we can immediately begin retrofitting successfully on a massive scale is naive.  The wider industry is still emerging from the property-boom mantra of quick new build with little focus on energy standards or retrofitting. Things are are improving of course, and the sustainable building sector has been at the forefront of the focus on quality.

Nonethless, what's clearly needed is a gradual approach to renovating our building stock with a focus on training, upskilling and standards first and a staggered rise in the number of buildings upgraded each year as standards improve.

The January issue has finally gone to the printers, albeit a bit later then we'd have liked. Still, it should be hitting desks and newstands early next week. In the mean time, here's the usual links round-up.

Skip the daily commute with an OfficePOD: Jetson Green
1850s US house gets green upgrade: Jetson Green
Jerry Yudelson's top ten green building trends for 2010: Jetson Green
Natural bark shingles for external cladding? Jetson Green
Innovative financing for energy upgrades: Green Building Advisor
Recycled weapons used for construction in London: Inhabitat
Are shipping containers an answer to the accommodation crisis in Haiti (including an interesting discussion on providing housing in post-disaster situations): Treehugger