The New Museum of Liverpool

This new project will seek to build on the success of the old museum which, with limited floor space, could no longer deal with the more than 300,000 annual visits and will be able to better represent the history of the city of Liverpool and can place it within a wider British urban context.

The 72 million pound museum set to open in 2010, is located on the Mann Island site at the Pier Head, at the core of the World Heritage Site on Liverpool's famous waterfront and will be the world's first national museum devoted to the history of a regional city as it reflects Liverpool's global significance through its unique geography, history and culture.

With a total square footage of about 24,000, the museum will be composed of four large gallery spaces, an 180 seat theater for audio/visual and community theater performance, facilities for after-hours events, meetings, after-school clubs and dining in the brasserie. The new building will display 6,000 new exhibits not displayed in the previous building with other interesting additions including a tailor-made gallery for children under six called Little Liverpool and a "history detectives" gallery which charts Liverpool's story from the last ice age to today.

The general goal is to allow the exhibits be capable of incorporating change, to examine and interpret the city as it evolves. Within the new museum there will be ‘anchor’ elements of the displays outlining the milestones of Liverpool’s development, combined with more frequently changing temporary exhibition spaces. This combination of approaches and media will realize the museum’s core value as an engine of learning through a mixture of education and entertainment.

What is most impressive with this project is that despite the economy, the city of Liverpool didn't use this as an excuse to submit a cabinet full of "work change orders" and greatly reduce the scope of the project. They saw this as an opportunity to not only create a landmark building for the city but to also improve their economy. The building will attract more than 750,000 visitors per year including 100,000 learning visits, provide at least 500 construction jobs and 73 direct permanent jobs.




Images obtained from: www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk
For more information, check: www.designbuild-network.com/projects/museum-liv/

Waste2tricity!

This British venture seeks to take carbon based waste, either municipal solid waste (MSW) or waste from business and industry and convert it to clean electricity, reducing the amount of garbage going into landfills and giving U.K electric companies a much needed boost. This is a very important step towards solving many environmental issues plaguing us today as it is also common knowledge that the majority of electricity generation and waste disposal methods currently in widespread use are not very environmentally friendly.

The system involves sorted carbon waste, including plastics, paper, cardboard, food and other plant material, entering a plasma gasification chamber and being turned into syngas by the application of very high temperatures (+6000°C). This process has advantages over incineration, which has not been adopted on a large scale for the conversion of MSW into power because of the low efficiency, fears over emissions and waste from incineration or from existing gasification systems. Compared to incineration systems the Waste2tricity system produces fewer pollutant gases, tar, ash and fly ash and the main by-product, vitrified slag, is inert and can be used as road-building aggregates, with the added benefit of reducing demand for gravel extraction.

Waste2Tricity will develop the process in two stages. In Stage 1 the cleaned syngas will be fed into an internal combustion engine (ICE) generator, with an average generation efficiency of about 30%. In Stage 2, the syngas will be processed and converted to hydrogen and the ICEs will be replaced by new generation alkaline fuel cells, which have the highest conversion efficiency of hydrogen to electricity of any process. By the combination of plasma gasification with fuel cells Waste2tricity claims the net output of electricity to the UK National Grid could increase by over 50% compared to existing technologies and that the new generation fuel cells will increase the net output of electricity by a minimum of 60% over an internal combustion engine generation system or by 130% over a steam turbine system. Waste2Tricity also estimates that the cost of generating electricity can be less than UKP3p (USD$0.04cents) per KWh at today's prices.

This is a very impressive system that will go a long way to improving the environment as facilities could be built directly on landfills thereby utilizing existing roads and saving valuable land. Also, not only will this help reduce landfills and probably the need for them altogether, but the main by-product, inert vitrified slag can be used as a very durable road building aggregate. I am very pleased with the pace at which the British are going in trying to solve environmental problems. I wrote an article last month on CO2 absorbent cement developed by some British scientists and now this "waste2ricity" system is just another reminder to the rest of us in the United States how far we seem to lag when it comes to finding new technologies to clean up the environment and yet we produce most of the world's pollution.

Image obtained from: www.gizmag.com

British Private Gardens a Delight; Their Public Ones A Disgrace

At least that is what Martha Schwartz, a landscape architect and Harvard professor, seems to think. Saying that the British put way to much attention to their private home patches while "public parks are litter-strewn wastelands, about as horticulturally interesting as boxes of paperclips."

Gardening defines many a British household and is indeed a culturally iconic activity and Sarah Gaventa, Director of Cabe Space has lashed back, saying that, "Schwartz’s views are out of touch intellectually." Gaventa has sited the Sheffield Gold Route, which runs across shared space from the Sheffield railway station to the center of the city and helps to orient passengers just coming off the train. Gaventa went on to say, "You come out of the station and know exactly where to go without the need for signs; it guides you into town, past some great public art, and leads you to the Peace Gardens. It was a £20 million investment from a committed local authority. How can she say the British don’t care?"

In a way I understand Martha Schwartz's view point on this matter but I think its irresponsible to call out all of England on the issue of their public gardens when I'm not so sure we are doing any better ourselves in the United States. There aren't many spaces in this country that are easily identifiable as public and not privately owned and fewer still have been landscaped. At least I don't consider concrete and a miserable looking fountain as attractive landscape elements. We could all do better when it comes to greening our parks and creating spaces within the community that foster social interaction and a place for children to play, regardless of the country.



Image obtained from: www.telegraph.co.uk
For more information, check: www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/4389731/Britains-gardens-A-private-passion-and-a-public-disgrace.html

Beckham's Childhood Home Still Up For Sale?

A modest three bedroom property in Leytonstone, north east London has received a lot of interest from fat purse individuals and has brought much attention to an otherwise quiet neighborhood after it was verified that the LA Galaxy right midfielder spent his first two years in the house.

Colin Evans, a local businessman, stumbled upon the property while doing research on famous people from Leytonstone and surprised the owners with the news. After verifying from Evans that the England captain did indeed live there from when he was born at nearby Whipps Cross University Hospital on May 2 1975, before moving to Chingford in 1977, they quickly made him sole agent for the sale.

Similar houses in the area normally sell for around £250,000 but the Beckham name brand has not surprisingly, raised the property value. An advert for the house on the U.K real estate website gumtree.com, as of November of last year, listed the asking price at £850,000 and describes it as "a lovely town house" with wooden floors and french windows opening onto the garden. Not long after, Colin Evans received an offer from an anonymous Australian Beckham enthusiast for £1million. In the same month, a spokeman for David Beckham reported the the star himself was interested in purchasing the house and offered £1.5million for it.

This is the month of January and there doesn't seem to have been any sale yet (at least I haven't heard of any) of the Leytonstone property. How much more do Evans and the current owners want for the place. The Beckham offer is already three times the property value and in this economy, I'm not sure that there are going to be too many offers to beat that, unless of course its been sold already. If anyone knows about its sale please "talk me down" as Rachael would say.



Image obtained from www.telegraph.co.uk

Recession Defying Plans For London Towers

The Swiss based practice of Herzog & de Meuron, responsible for the Beijing national stadium and the new Portsmouth Stadium on Horsea Island, is proposing three towers of 320, 640 and 800ft respectively, to be the tallest residential projects in the country. The towers located next to the Renzo Piano "Shard" is part of the redevelopment plan for the London Bridge station area.

The towers are to have 380 apartments, , along with a hotel, retail and cinema space. The tallest tower, which would be 65 storeys, would include 121 flats along with the hotel, the other tower will have a total of 115 flats contained within 51 storeys while the shortest, at 31 storeys, will boast 144 flats. The sheer scale of the project is already dividing opinion among the select few who have seen it which is is to be expected. The reservation felt by many in the U.K is that these buildings do not quite have a place next to more traditional British designed structures as they break with the consistency of "character and Scale." Some sentiment is that the proposals have not incorporated enough parkland into the design as this might help to lessen their perceived impact on the site especially on the street level from a pedestrian point of view.

It is not only surprising that these projects are being planned with what the economy is like in the U.K but also that there has been such fervor in responses about this project when the complete designs and cost estimates have not been unveiled yet and will not be till mid February. Still, it is commendable of Herzog & de Meuron to be planning such a large scale project in light of the economic crunch and I know that i am the first to always condemn a building design that clashes with its surroundings but these days, any project is a good project mainly because I don't think there is anymore room or money for frivolous designs. But I will withhold further comment till there are more details on the project in its entirety.

Image obtained from buildingdesignonline.com
For more information, check: www.bdonline.co.uk

British Engineers Develop CO2 Absorbent Cement

Cement, a vast source of planet-warming carbon dioxide, could be transformed into a means of stripping the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, thanks to an innovation from British engineers and scientists.

The new environmentally friendly formulation means the cement industry could change from being a "significant emitter to a significant absorber of CO2," says Nikolaos Vlasopoulos, chief scientist at London-based Novacem, whose invention has garnered support and funding from industry and environmentalists.

The new cement, which uses a different raw material, certainly has a vast potential market. Making the 2bn tonnes of cement used globally every year pumps out 5% of the world's CO2 emissions (more than the entire aviation industry). The long-term trends are upwards: a recent report by the French bank Credit Agricole estimated that, by 2020, demand for cement will increase by 50% compared to today.

Making traditional cement results in greenhouse gas emissions from two sources: it requires intense heat, and so a lot of energy to heat up the ovens that cook the raw material, such as limestone. That then releases further CO2 as it burns. But, until now, no one has found a large-scale way to tackle this fundamental problem.

Novacem's cement, based on magnesium silicates, not only requires much less heating, it also absorbs large amounts of CO2 as it hardens, making it carbon negative. Set up by Vlasopoulos and his colleagues at Imperial College London, Novacem has already attracted the attention of major construction companies such as Rio Tinto Minerals, WSP Group and Laing O'Rourke, and investors including the Carbon Trust.

The company has just started a £1.5m project funded by the government-backed Technology Strategy Board to build a pilot plant. If all goes well, Vlasopoulos expects to have Novacem products on the market within five years.

Jonathan Essex, a civil engineer at the building consultancy Bioregional who also sits on the environment and sustainability panel for the Institution of Civil Engineers, welcomed Novacem's ideas to tackle the carbon impact of cement. "In the UK the climate bill commits us to reduce CO2 emissions, and every sector should play its part. The construction industry needs to take greater responsibility for its own environmental impact." Essex said that, if Novacem can make their cement at a competitive price, the next step could be to take even more CO2 emissions out of the process by using renewable energy to fire the furnaces.

According to Novacem, its product can absorb, over its life-cycle, around 0.6 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of cement. This compares to carbon emissions of about 0.4 tonnes per of standard cement. "From that point of view, it's attractive," said Rachael Nutter, head of business incubators at the Carbon Trust. "The real challenge is what is the supply chain, who do you need to partner with to take it to market? The million-dollar question is what are the applications of it? If it ends up as decorative applications such as floor tiles, it's quite interesting but not as much as if you get into load-bearing structural stuff."

Previous attempts to make cement greener have included adding more aggregate to a concrete mixture, thereby using less cement. But this still does not tackle the problem of the carbon emissions from making the cement in the first place. Other systems use polymers in the mix, but none have yet made a significant impact on the market.

A spokesperson for the British Cement Association expressed a sceptical note, saying that though there was much ongoing laboratory work on new types of cement, there were also problems. "The reality is that the geological availability, and global distribution, of suitable natural resources, coupled with the extensive validation needed to confirm fitness-for-purpose, make it highly unlikely that these cements will a be realistic alternative for volume building."

Vlasopoulos responded that magnesium silicates are abundant worldwide, with 10,000 billion tonnes available, according to some estimates. "In addition, the production process of our cement is of a chemical nature, which means it can also utilise various industrial byproducts containing magnesium in its composition." He is confident the material will be strong enough for use in buildings but acknowledged that getting licenses to use it will take several years of testing.

If test reveal that this new cement is indeed an absorber of CO2, I hope it will begin to be implemented in many of the projects that will hopefully be commissioned this year. Unfortunately, what I see happening is that the ultra-conservative Building Materials Industry will cry and whine again (as they always do when it comes to things that actually make sense) about how they really don't know this new material and how they prefer to work with what they know: Portland cement. Hence they'll help to continue to keep the United States behind the rest of the world in building construction technology.

Image obtained from www.guardian.co.uk

Schools Lull Children to Sleep

A study conducted by Dr. Dejan Mumovic, lecturer in environmental design and engineering at the Barlett University in England, schools constructed under the building schools for the future (BSF) initiative have been found to have very poor ventilation and increased "air tightness." This has caused a build up of CO2 in classrooms making students feel sleepy and hence affecting their learning performance.

In his study, Mumovic compared ten schools built 50 years ago to the same number of schools built under the BSF program in the last 5 years and found that in terms of the ventilation rates and IAQ, nothing has changed. This has stemmed from the government's rush to implement the BSF program, which seeks to have all new schools at zero-carbon by 2016, and has led to increased focus on heat loss and natural ventilation rather than carbon levels for which the program was originally intended.

Prof. Derek Clements-Croome of Reading University tested students from the 1o schools and found increased levels of CO2 in the blood stream and brain which can cause increased drowsiness and decrease learning performance.

I don't know if there are just more CO2 tests being done in the UK or that there have higher levels there than in the United States, but i seem to hear way more about high carbon levels in buildings in England. All in all, these are very important tests and can only help improve the IAQ and general user experience.

For more info, check www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23605389-details/Children+'falling+asleep+in+stuffy+eco-classrooms'/article.do
Image obtained from InMagine

Spotlight On England's Biggest C02 Offenders

In the United Kingdom, a test done to determine the level of C02 emissions from many of the prominent buildings in the country yielding astounding results with many of the so called green buildings receiving failing grades. This test, which came about as a direct result from the new national law to curb carbon emissions and improve energy efficiency in the country, sought to measure emissions from buildings to determine which needed to be redesigned and upgraded to be more efficient.

Approximately 18,000 buildings, including town halls, schools, museums and banks have now been tested by the National Department for the Environment to discover their level of energy efficiency and assign a grade, where an "A" is the highest obtainable and a "G" is a failing grade. From the bottom up, both the Palace of Westminster and the Bank of England scored a G consuming enough energy to pump out 21,356 tonnes of C02 a year.

Many newer buildings, initially marketed as green also fared badly calling into question many of the sustainable claims made by architects and developers. For example, London's city hall scored an abysmal E despite Foster & Partners initially describing it as "a virtually non-polluting public building." The building for the Treasury Headquarters in Whitehall and Libeskind's Imperial War Museum shared a similar grade even though the former had received a complete refurbishment six years ago and both projects were supposed to set "new environmental standards in their respective counties."

Many of the other evaluated buildings in the country received an average grade of a D with only 22 buildings scoring an A (less than 1%) also showing that almost a fifth of all carbon dioxide emissions in the U.K are caused by non-residential buildings. Matt Bell, director of public affairs at the commission for Architecture and the Built Environment stated, "We review about 350 significant new build projects a year at design phase and hear a lot of 'greenwash.' The knowledge that from now on, this performance will be objectively measured should put an end to all those baseless claims."

All these results have made the government pledge to make all new public buildings zero emission by the year 2018 but it looks like they'll have to start in their own backyard as the Department of Environment's main office received an E. So now we have to wonder if "Green" has just become a label slapped on to projects to make them more salable and again ask the question, "who really designs green?"

Image (Imperial War Museum, Manchester) obtained from www.guardian.co.uk

HKS Selected for New Liverpool FC Stadium

After battling with Manchester based AFL, HKS has finally been chosen to design the new Liverpool FC soccer stadium in Liverpool, England set to open in time for the 2011 Premier League season. The two firms' original proposals were rejected by the American owners, Tom Hicks (also owner of the Texas Rangers) and George Gillett as they felt that AFL's design was outdated and HKS' way too expensive. The cost had risen from $600 million when it was announced in the summer of 2007 to almost $900 million by the end of the year.

The new design by HKS which increases the current seating capacity from 42,000 to 60,000 will feature a stone base on the north, west and east exposures with glass facades above. The south will be metal clad with south east and south west corners open but the main selling point of the design is the world famous "Kop" (similar to the Oakland Raider's "Black Hole" but filled with fewer Hooligans) behind the home goal. This all-seater stand will be set at the higher point of the site and will contain over 20,000 seats and was designed very expressively to intensify the setting and sense of drama. The asymmetrical building as a whole was designed to break from the bowl-like shapes of most soccer stadiums and announce itself as Liverpool FC's stadium only and none other.

I think that there were some good intentions with this design especially with the "KOP" but HKS has created quite an ugly project but I guess that's what one could expect if the design team came up with their proposal after attending only one game in the original stadium. That's just like the Manchester based AFL proposing a design for say the Pittsburgh Steelers after attending one regular season game. I think that a lot more time should have been spent trying to get a feel for the culture of the club, the game of soccer and the fans.

Also, the street level view is not as interesting as aerial perspectives, just like the SF Transbay Terminal and this leads me to think that many firms seem to fall in love with how their projects look in aerial perspective and overlook how most people will view it-from the street level. Another thing that seems odd to me is that the images of the stadium are shown without a scrap of context around them so one doesn't even get a sense of how it will fit in with it's surrounding environment. I remember doing something like that with one of my fourth year school projects and was ripped into cause my building was "floating in space" but I guess when you become successful in this field you can do whatever you want with your renderings.

Well, the design has been selected already and the only people I feel for are the Liverpool fans cause they have joined the list of franchises that have been screwed by American owners cause we don't understand the culture of soccer in Europe even though we like to pretend we do.


Images obtained from www.liverpoolft.tv/news