Increased Demand for Green Buildings

In light of work in the private sector having fallen off the map for architects, it seems like the increased demand for energy efficient and environmentally friendly buildings is helping to bring more business to architects during the current lull in the building industry. But has this been a necessarily good thing for the building industry or environment?

In the last year, more clients become more familiar with the LEED ratings system, and the potential advantages of sustainable buildings and as such have begun to request that their projects meet the criteria to be at least LEED certified. So ultimately, the more LEED accredited professionals within a firm, the better positioned they are to tap into this market.

Although this has been hailed by many of my peers as a good sign, I am not as optimistic. I think what has happened now, is that the word "green" has become a label developers seek to apply to every ugly little box they want to market to the public as unique. I recently worked on an apartment complex in Southern California that the developer wanted to have meet the LEED certified criteria and provided the necessary strategies needed for the project to achieve this. Now, the building is still a piece of junk aesthetically and has many issues to be ironed out but the developer could care less. He feels that since he is applying the LEED "label" like some kind of beauty lotion, the project will magically transform into something potential occupant will fall over themselves to rent.

Having said that, I must add that I am appreciative of the revenue these projects are bringing in which help keep many of us working but I have noticed that these days, having a LEED certified building does not necessarily mean that you have an environmentally friendly building by any means.

Image obtained from: fivecat.wordpress.com

The Reality of Building Integrated Wind

With the recent push to move away from our dependence on oil, and into an era of energy generated from clean and renewable sources and an added 30% tax credit for more incentive, many misconceptions have been generated about wind energy and turbines.

For starters though they are usually very beautiful when integrated well with the building design, they often do not produce as much power as advertised because they can't overcome the major problem of "turbulent airflow." For turbines to work optimally, they need strong "laminar winds," in which all the wind flows from one direction but on top of tall buildings, where they are often mounted, the winds come from many different directions. Bob Thresher, director of the National Wind Technology Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, explains that as wind flow comes over the edge of a roof or around a corner, it separates into many different streams.

Ron Stimmel, wind technology expert at the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), added to this thought saying that, this turbulent flow confuses a wind turbine, affecting its performance. “Even if it feels really windy on top of a building, it’s probably more turbulent wind than steady wind,” he said.

Another issue is that of noise and vibration, contrary to common assumptions that turbines are generally quiet. The vertical-axis machines indeed are much more quiet than rotator blades but the vibration they cause on non-concrete buildings is generally detrimental to the general comfort of the occupants.

In one of the only extensive surveys of actual performance of building-integrated wind turbines the Warwick Wind Trials Project, the only turbines able to generate close to their projected electricity output were mounted on high-rise apartment buildings. And these wind turbines remained switched off throughout most of the test period because of complaints from the residents about noise. -www.buildinggreen.com, The-Folly of Building Integrated Wind

Another problem is that of the actual measured performance Vs the projected measured performance of the turbine. Manufacturers are constantly guilty of showing slightly elevated power curves for their products than what they can actually achieve which makes the process of figuring how much energy a set of turbines on our building is going to generate. The usually leaves designers and clients very disappointed in the end. For example, the vertical axis turbine (left) is nominally rated at 10kw but tests by Madison Gas and Electric showed that it has so far never produced more than 600 watts even though it is installed at a height that might be typical for a rooftop application.

So although they look nicer and sleeker as the years go by and they make a very bold and energy efficient statement for the building design, they do not help much practically for what they are meant to do. Of course if you are looking for a sculptural element to enhance a piece of your building, wind turbines do the job well and you might as well get something out of them but keep in mind that it will be minimal.




Images obtained from: www.buildinggreen.com
Article info obtained from: Alex Wilson's "The Folly of Building-Integrated Wind"

Sarkozy's Dream For A New Paris

In the summer of 2008, in much more optimistic times, the French government hired design teams of internationally known architects to put Paris back on the drawing board to re-imagine the capital as a "world class city." The teams have come up with 10 strategies for creating a metropolitan area known as Grand Paris – it's the first major redesign since the Napoleonic era.

The various ideas being proposed all seek address what most Parisian feel is wrong with the city-its public transit system saturated, its periphery spoiled by ugly housing projects, and its suburbs an undefined sprawl of disconnected towns – does not work. "It's slowly losing its vitality," says award-winning Paris architect Jean Nouvel. "What we laughingly call regional development is finished. If we want to maintain the prestige of Paris, we have to look after it."

These architectural teams, six of them French, were given the mission of envisioning the "post-Kyoto" metropolis. They were left to define the boundaries of this newly conceived Grand Paris as they saw fit, but it was to incorporate the best of sustainable design techniques, energy efficient structures, and a mix of housing for both rich and poor.

Most of the planners urged intense use of space within the limits of historic Paris. They talked of high-speed trams on top of the beltways, malls on top of subway stations, and gardens on the five square miles of rooftops in Paris. A new mixed-use neighborhood in the center of Paris could arise, they said, if only the neglected stretch of land between the Gare du Nord and Gare de l'Est train stations in central Paris were freed up for private development.

President Sarkozy is expected to define which of the various plans to follow up on when they go on public view at the national architecture museum next month though current details are still a little sketchy.

Other than the image above of Roland Castro's proposed "Central Park France" and Jean Nouvel's concept, I really haven't seen anything concrete to get a good sense of just what is being proposed so I'm not sure how to critic these plans. Still, the idea to completely revamp the infrastructure, especially the transportation system is a very good idea (something we are still trying to fix here in the States). So I am looking forward to seeing more of these proposals.




Image obtained from: www.csmonitor.com

The Nation's Largest green Roof

Mosholu Golf Course in the Bronx is one of a dozen run by the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation. Its compact layout is typical of New York’s urban courses—nine holes, tree-lined fairways, the odd sand bunker—save for one highly unusual obstacle: the $2.1 billion drinking water treatment facility under construction on what used to be the driving range.

When this heavily secured compound is completed in 2012, it’s due to be topped by far more than just new turf. Grimshaw and landscape architect Ken Smith have designed one of the largest and most intensive green roofs to date, which is also a fully functioning driving range. And an irrigation system for the golf course. And an integrated security program for the facility below. Think Pebble Beach meets the Biosphere meets Rikers.

“The distinction here is it’s not just a green roof, but a performative green roof that needs to provide all these functions,” Smith said in an interview. “I think we’re pushing both the design of the green roof and the design of the golf course in new directions. We’re working to see how far we can push the diversity of the ecology and still adhere to the constraints of the golf course.”

This quietly radical project is the result of more than a decade of debate over whether or not water from the Croton Reservoir, the smallest of the city’s three, needed treatment after more than a century of going without. That was followed by battles with Bronx residents over which and even whether the borough’s parks would be torn up to make way for the new plant. The city finally broke ground on the facility in 2004, and the driving range has moved to a temporary site while the complex roofscape takes shape.

The engineering challenges are formidable. At nine acres, the $95 million driving range is the largest contiguous green roof in the country. So when it rains at the range, it pours, which creates a paradoxical hazard for the plant below. “It’s of paramount importance to the City of New York that this building stay dry, despite being full of water,” said David Burke, the project architect at Grimshaw. So to handle the millions of gallons that can accumulate on the green roof during a storm, the design team has devised a natural filtration system to collect, process, and store the runoff.

The range’s unique topography not only provides green-like targets for golfers, who tee off from the perimeter of the circular structure, but helps channel rainwater into the collection basins, where it meets groundwater pumped in from the plant’s four sump pumps. The water then travels through a series of ten cells that ring the range, each one modeled on a different native ecosystem to serve different filtration purposes. It takes up to eight days for water to travel through the cells, at which point it’s collected and used to irrigate the golf course.

“We’re not just dumping it in the sewer,” said Mark Laska, president of Great Ecology & Environments, one of two ecological designers on the project. “It’s a true display of sustainable green design in an urban environment.”

The design team wanted to convey such sustainable lessons to the public, especially the kids enrolled in the First Tee outreach program at Mosholu, and so the cells were left in plain view. Furthermore, because they are sunk ten feet below grade, they serve as a moat of sorts that helps protect the city’s water supply, which is seen as a potential target for terrorists.

To that end, Grimshaw has also designed the guardhouse and screening buildings that security constraints required, in addition to the new clubhouse and tee boxes on the range. (Grimshaw is not designing the plant, however, which is the work of a specialized engineering firm.)

It's an unlikely commission, to be sure, but one the architects embraced. “It’s very fitting for Grimshaw,” as Burke put it. “We tend to gravitate toward these oddball projects.”

Story by Matt Chaban

Image obtained from: archpaper.com

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