Sustainable Building Support centre

Floating City

In the Andes, on the border between Bolivia and Peru, lies lake Titicaca. And in the lake live the Uros. Yes, in the lake. They make their own artificial islands from reed, and create a floating city. What they do is cut pieces of Khili, dense roots that the reed plants develop and interweave naturally form a natural layer (about one to two meters thick) . These floating pieces are positioned in the lake and anchored via poles. The surface is covered by fresh reed, on which the people live. Every three months this has to be replaced, due to rotting , by new reed, , that has freshly grown around in the mean time. Houses are also of reed, so they can lift these and put them on the new surface. Part of the reason of living like this is that they are (were) safer in the lake, and even could replace the islands to somewhere else in case of danger. The reeds play also a major role in their diet and medicine. They seem reasonably happy, and use modern technology where needed, like solar PV panels.

And they live like this already for a thousand years or so….

Now why am I writing this: I was thinking about the Alaskan villages that have to be replaced, since the permafrost is de-frosting, and sea level is rising. A first showcase of what might happen on a larger scale in future.

The Uros will have no such problem, and have created a very robust lifestyle, which can deal with changing water levels...

In a way this is copied by the Dutch, In stead of abandoning the areas below sea level ( upto 7 meters below) which would be a smart move regardless climate change, as a reaction are developing plans for large scale floating cities. Try to stay ahead of nature and climate and beat them once again with technology.

Of course its not the floating islands of the Uros they will copy, the ones that need maintenance every three months, but the ones that consume large amounts of concrete and steel to construct, produced with fossil fuels . In fact proceeding in the same way of progress that created the problem in the first place, that will enlarge the problem they are meant to cope with. And of course the Dutch see this as e great opportunity for export and trade, as usual. So you will hear about it, undoubtedly. However, the questions remaining are: what will be there in a 100 years? Will the Uros still live on their islands in a 100 years or so? And will the Dutch still be constructing high tech islands, and trade and export these? Will for instance people in Bangla Desh have moved into these floating Ducth cities, or have copied a Uros model?

That's the question. Our children will know by then.

Happy New Year 2009 !!

(un-) employment

Everywhere its announced that we are in a crises, but for the moment it seems that only the bankers and economists are in a real crises. Of course economy slows down a bit, but in most countries not very dramatically. Some companies, that have no reserves built up for bad times, are in trouble, of course, and at the moment there is no growth. But crises? A real crises, looks a lot worth to me.

Anyway, the so called crises is used by many to shout and cry, and take the opportunity to put government under pressure to speed up with projects investments. They even want to put on hold the environmental legislation, like fine-dust, to be able to built in areas where fine-dust levels are too high, under the argument that in a few years cars will be electrical…!.

The government, which main concern is (un-)employment, is willing to co-operate in this…

So they bring investments forward, to construct roads that where planned for a few years later for instance ( in a time that traffic jams are less, and car sales plummeted…)

They do this also for large new building projects. And that's where I start missing the point. I understand the employment argument, but if you want real employment, you should focus at existing buildings, and start renovating, insulating and upgrading these, which will require a lot of local labour. Not follow the construction sector blindly in more new buildings…

Another similar approach is with cars. Everybody shouts for electric cars, and the first are imported now to the Netherlands. And government and cities all announce initiatives for thousands in a few years, and more. However these are all new, with the old ones thrown away. Creating a lot of waste and new steel and fossil energy use. Even if all would be 100 pct recycled, its still a lot of energy involved to melt the steel again and so on. And in the Dutch case the employment is mainly somewhere far abroad. Why does nobody advocate that we should not built new electric cars, but convert existing ones with an electric engine? Its done, here and there, though costly, but on a large scale could be cost effective. It saves huge amount of resources, and provides enormous employment. It's similar as previously mentioned for buildings: its the existing stock that should be used and improved. Otherwise we only consume more, and increase the CO2 emissions, and other environmental burdens.

There are many more examples where sustainability creates jobs and economic activity, like the German PV industry, now already involving 170.000 people. A change to services in stead of products can do the same. ( like local laundries in stead of millions of washing machines. Its even more comfortable.) But nothing of this. Why? It must be as Groucho Marx already years ago concluded : Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.

WISHLIST

for a house:

Energy neutral

0-energy

Climate neutral

Regenerative

Lifetime supportive

Prolonged lifetime

As god in France

Wellness outfitted

Sustainable

Renewable

Healthy

Ecological

Bio-ecologic

Bio-based

Family adaptive

Water neutral

Exergyhouse

Autarkic

Self-sufficient

Self duplicating

0-footprint

Footprintneutral

Multifunctional

Multicultural

Culture adaptive

Service oriented

Life prolonging

Autonomous

Generation ….

Survival prepared

Monsoon proof

Climate adaptive

Climate proof

Green

Child friendly

Safe

Crook unfriendly

Bicycle friendly

Car free

Women friendly

Comfortable

Anything else?

'renovating cars'

Just recently I bought, with some colleagues professors, an electric car. And its great! It's the Norwegian Th!nk, the first commercially available electric car with a European type certificate. (http://www.think.no/ )

The main reason was in fact that we do not allow fossil fuel to enter 'the District of Tomorrow", the construction site for winning graduation-designs. We start constructing there just after summer, and need to drive up and down there from the university. And that leaves us with just the electric car. Well you need an excuse anyway…

Students now do a thesis on designing loading stations based on PV panels for instance. And we try to make it drive as much as possible. One of our staff found recently a very effective way of using it. Just after the Tour de France there is a lot of small cycle courses where all the Tour de France hero's race, with huge amounts of public turning up for a good night of fun. He joined as a sponsor, and is now driving as a support car right behind the cyclists . 50 local laps of 1,5 km, 50 times passing a crowd of 70.000 spectators (!) showing logos on electric driving and the university. And the public speaker getting very enthusiastic about this. And of course: it's a perfect match: the cyclists don't compete in exhaust air of fossil fuelled cars anymore! its fun this way as well

Anyway, a new phenomenon turns up: its stealing electricity: to increase the range of the car, normally 180 km with one load, we connect it to the grid everywhere we can. Last time we had to wait for an hour to join a local event, and rolled out the wire and connected illegally to a hotel switchbox. They wont miss a few kWh…

But: we now think its not the future, buying new electric cars. Since this will cause millions of good cars to be banned to the waste dump, and replaced by new material an steel consuming cars .

Its much better to renovate cars, or do a "engine make over". Most of the cars nowadays are pretty good constructed and chassis and plate work last much longer as the engine. So replace the engine and install a electric motor and a battery pack. Its possible, though still expensive. But spent some research and this could be very cost and environment effective . And: we discussed it earlier: its similar to housing renovation or "architecture make over's" with insulation : its huge employment created for garages , which now are in crises. Who needs project developers and car manufacturers?