Skyscrapers

Cities are becoming bigger and bigger, more people is moving to urban areas and high density seems to be the answer to all city problems.

I have already posted about density several times but I think skyscrapers need their own space and I have found that Boeri Studio has built this tower in Milan.

Bosco Verticale. Image from stefanoboeriarchitetti.net.

The two residential towers show a kind of vertical forest or ‘bosco verticale’ as Boeri refers to the project as a dense solution to an increasing population.

The problems of high rise buildings are several. On one hand they need a lot of energy to operate. Lifts, mechanical ventilation and more complex systems consume resources and energy in greater rates than less dense solutions. Their shape generates problems of shadow in a street level and requires expensive and complex structural solutions.

They also could produce mobility and transportation problems, among others, in the city as they increase the population in a single spot. Also when an unexpected situation arises, as a fire or black out, the ways to resolve it and/or evacuate the residents are costly and complex.

Building without Heating-Austria

House without Heating. be baumschlager eberle. From detail-online.com

This office building designed and built in Austria has not heating.

The weather in Austria is not really temperate but passive solar design and thermal mass can produce good sustainable architecture. Good sustainable architecture as our ancestors produced around the world and known as Traditional Architecture or Vernacular Architecture.

Nowadays, in part caused by a misunderstanding of the Modernist Movement, architecture schools, offices and professionals do not know much about traditional solutions and they keep copying a 100 years old style without attention to the site or the local culture.

Fortunately this is changing slowly.

Green Star

For some time now I have been reading and listening different complains about rating tools. Some say that their point system is influenced by different lobbies (a kind legal corruption?) and some scholars argue that they have a big deficiency in assessing passive design and other problems.

I believe that they have been a good first step, a tool that general people can use and apply but, now that I am dealing at work with the process of Green Star, I really think that it has become a huge business. I do not remember the actual data but just to register a building to be assessed you have to pay tens of thousands of dollar. That is insane.

Also, the majority of the systems assessed are related to energy consumption (nothing new), so to achieve a good rating it is necessary to work hard with the engineers and convince them that a passive solution is a good solution and that, for instance, it can reduce the amount of HVAC needed.

I think that working side by side with all the consultants is a really good thing, but I am really disappointed for Green Star after dealing with it.

Globalized Architecture

One of the biggest problems in the built environment is that schools do not teach passive design, build for the place, local strategies, materials and techniques.

After the WWII architects around the world have designed and built similar architecture for very different environments and cultures, and I think that is wrong.

I think this project is a good example of a positive solar city but still is following this new globalized architecture. Lets start building for and with the place!

Good passive design, bio-climatic architecture within a place, a culture. Lets use local materials as far as we will be able, lets build for the people that is going to live and use that spaces.

The problem is that maybe people prefer globalized architecture.

Poo2Loo

Behind this bizarre video there is a great UNICEF campaign in India supporting poo-free streets. Here their web and Facebook. In addition, UNICEF has an international campaign to provide toilets not only in India. Here.

2.5 billion people around the world do not have access to a safe and clean toilet. In India, half of the population has to do it in streets and surroundings. This is not only a huge health issue,  but a security issue as well. Every year, thousands of girls (women and children) are raped, and sometimes murdered after, when they were going to the ´toilet´. Here one of the latest cases.

In developed countries the sustainability is now focused on how to consume or need less energy, and sometimes materials, but in other countries there are bigger issues, issues that involve health and security. Big developing countries, such as India or Brazil, where big cities are growing rapidly but where simple actions can have a life-changing result should be the main objective of international programs.

If we want a sustainable and democratic world we should start being democratic with the people living in it.

 

Image from facebook.com/poo2loo

Climate Change

Some people argue that Climate Change does not exist, they are called Climate Deniers and there are some interesting webs that list the most famous or important of them. Here and here for instance.

The problem is that these deniers are generally supported by big companies and industry lobbies that are directly related to great CO2 emissions. So it is in their convenience to misinform the general public.

Even if this influential and powerful group of people is trying to present studies and data to prove their beliefs, the reality is that all the new studies presented by the IPCC or the US Global Change Research Program, for instance, found that the Earth is warmer than before and that this will produce consequences in the global climate.

Global Change has released their findings in a report last month and some of their graphs just talk by themselves:

Global Temperatures and CO2 Concentration

Natural & Human influences on Climate Change

Past & Projected change in Global Sea Level Rise (1ft=33cm/4ft=1.20m approx)

Past & Projected Sea Ice Decline (RCP=Representative Concentration Pathways)

Acidification of Oceans

Its projected changes with a rapid emissions reduction:

Global Temperatures

Annual Precipitation

Its projected changes if the emissions increase in the actual trend:

Global Temperature

Annual Precipitation

I think that the findings are scary because I do not trust in a big change in a short-term and the consequences will transform our world, our life. We are going to live in a changing world full of challenges.

*All graphs and images from nca2014.globalchange.gov/report