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.

'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?

You cant blame the building…

I like a good discussion, and evaluating or assessing buildings, for its level of sustainability always guarantees a strong debate. Trying to score a building in one figure, for instance, and the use of weighing factors, takes at least two beers to exchange pros and cons. Next beer is needed to exchange views whether yes or no to include the inhibitors behavior, and another one to yes or no evaluate the process of building, instead of only the performance.

By then the warming up is completed and the real issues can get to table. And I had a few of these discussions lately. Another beer please…

Since what are the real issues. The question is raised for instance if health issues or the acoustic performance be included in a sustainable building assessment? Some places in the world are more lively then others and people feel happy in either setting: If you make rooms deaf, in some cultures people get crazy. You could say that's a local adaptable indicator, but why isn't that regarded as part of a basic set of requirements of a building, documented in a countries building regulations? Whether these are good or bad, or not arranged at all, is another issue, but should not be part of a sustainable building assessment: The fact that the construction should be strong enough to withstand wind forces and other loads, is obvious, but part of building regulation, and not addressed in Sustainable building assessments!

Yes but what then if a building is in a remote location, requiring a car to go up and down to work? That should be assessed! , continues the arguing, and good for an extra round. Look at it this way: You cant blame the building to be in that spot… Also the choice to live there and to go by Petrol driven car to work, is by the owner, not by the building: the owner could take a bicycle for instance. Or, what we don't know when we assess the building: will there be 1 or 3 people living an commuting? Or maybe they all live and work from home, like an artist painter, or any other work that does not relate to distance: again its not the building that is responsible for that.

But when its new land, in stead of Brownfield: The building has not chosen the land, it's the municipality that has given the permission to appoint it as a construction site: You should blame the local policy for that, not the building… But they are corrupt, the project developer has bought the permission...: Well, It still can be a good building. We should not put all the worlds problems on that building. …

As you already guessed, I would like to make a strong plea to assess only what is really the building to blame, which is, being there, requiring a certain amount of materials, to provide m2's of a given quality ( the building regulations) and requiring a certain amount of energy to make it inhabitable . And yes, occupying land , but not the location is decisive but in how far that is compensated by making a productive roof ( in terms of energy or agriculture area: This way only causing lifting the land, not exclude it.)

In other words, to what extent the building is responsible for depletion of resources, and maybe emissions. That's what the building, and its composers can be blamed for.

I await discussions…., cheers!

PS I found an interesting book on the web, free downloadable as pdf: Sustainable energy, without the hot air. It aims to eliminate all the crap from discussions, and to look only to hard data making discussions (on energy) clear…

See http://www.withouthotair.com/