Nautilus, RE-visited…

Although this construction dates back to 2007, a Mexico City couple daringly did what some would have thought about, but never carried through, with the help of the astonishing imagination of those wild and wooly architects at Senosiain Arquitectos. This abalone replica is already lived in, with the couple and their two small children.

It’s more of a sculpture than a dwelling. Taking cues from a Nautilus shell, the house is put together using ferrocement construction, a technique involving a frame of steel-reinforced chicken wire with a special two-inch-thick composite of concrete spread over it, resulting in a structure that’s earthquake-proof and maintenance-free.

The open concept inside the house is dominated by smooth surfaces, spiral stairs and natural plantings that makes the inhabitants feel like they’re living inside a snail who swallowed the entire contents of somebody’s back yard. While the house is surrounded on three sides by the bustling Mexico City, its West side (where most of its portal-style windows are located) has a breathtaking view of the mountains.

The feel is completely whimsical, magical and evocative of what life with elemental curvature could be like.

“The metaphor was to feel like an internal inhabitant of a snail, like a mollusk moving from one chamber to another, like a symbiotic dweller of a huge fossil maternal cloister. This home social life flows inside the Nautilus without any division, a harmonic area in three dimensions where you can notice the continuous dynamic of the fourth dimension when moving in spiral over the stairs with a feeling of floating over the vegetation.” (World Architecture News).

Quite a poetic visionary statement.  We loved it!

Credits: Serengreenity, architectectura organica, inhabitat, WAN

Ask and you shall receive!  

Here in our own backyard, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, may have just activated a 1.2-MW (DC)/1-MW (AC) solar power system–said to be the largest PV installation of any U.S. transit facility and the biggest array to date within the City of Angels’ limits.

The public agency known as Metro has even grander solar ambitions. After providing more details about Metro’s earlier solar installations and the new multirooftop PV system designed and built by Chevron Energy Solutions (CES) near downtown L.A., Tim Lindholm, the agency’s director of capital projects,  hopes to put out a request for proposal in a few months to find a design/integration/construction private partner to start building out yet another 2.3 MW or so of PV power at various Metro locations next year.

Although the ribbon cutting on the new PV installation took place in May, Lindholm said the arrays were actually turned on in early April.

Deployed on several hundred thousand square feet across most of the Metro Support Services Center’s rooftops, the fixed, free-standing, nonpenetrating system consists of 6720SolarWorld SW 175 monocrystalline-silicon modules (which were manufactured at the company’s Camarillo, CA, panel factory, something that makes Lindholm “really happy”), four Satcon inverters (one 500 KW, two 225 KW, and one 100 KW), and SunLink racking (except for one roof), according to details provided by Chevron’s Ram Ambatipudi via email.

The system, which is expected to generate 1,450,000 KW-hr of solar-spawned electricity, is monitored by CES’s own proprietary Utility Vision system.

Lindholm said it took about a year from issuing the “notice to proceed” to completing the project, with panels beginning to go up on the rooftops by May 2008. Most of the roof surfaces were fairly routine to prep for the installation, with the exception of one of the oldest (and biggest) structures, which was substandard (”ramshackle” was Lindholm’s term) and had to be completely reroofed before any solar could be put on it.

Although the solar arrays are certainly “the cherry on top,” the Metro director notes that even more substantial energy efficiencies were achieved by redesigning the air compression loop, replacing old lightbulbs, and generally putting the buildings through total retrofits.

“The solar panels are the piece of the project that gets people talking, that gets you the PR, that’s the visual, compelling, sustainable thing that people see,” he said. “But the background details, such as taking care of the basics in your shop environment, changing out the lightbulbs, that’s the kind of stuff that pays back as well. We kind of missed the boat on that on our first few projects, and now with every single solar project that we do we’re going to bundle them together.”

The combination of the energy efficiency moves and the PV power pop should cut the facility’s power bill in half–from about $1.1 million to $550,000–with some three-quarters of those savings attributable to the efficiency efforts, according to Lindholm.

The new PV systems bring the total amount of solar power deployed by Metro since 2006 to more than 2 MW. A pair of  213-KW systems have been supplying renewable juice to a couple of bus divisions in the San Fernando Valley for a few years, while a 417-KW array resides mostly atop carport shade structures in Carson, Lindholm explained. All three of the existing installations employ Schott Solar panels.

After going through a learning period where he admits “we weren’t Johnny on the spot as a new solar panel owner,” he hired a dedicated employee–who Lindholm has nicknamed “Solar Man”–to be in charge of the quarterly module cleaning, inverter maintenance, and daily systems monitoring.

Lindholm just raves about the advantages of the public-private partnership approach taken by Metro and its solar partner, CES. “I will never do another solar project without it,” he said. In addition to overseeing the system for the long term, CES guarantees the energy savings and the amount of energy generated by the PV system for 10 years, and “if they don’t, they’re gonna pay me.”

“We were able to negotiate that with Chevron, and they’re comfortable with it,” he continued. “We need to comply with their strict maintenance plan in order to stay in the guarantee. We think that’s a good thing too since it pretty much took most of our risk off the table and guarantees our returns.”

Metro’s latest PV project also benefited from a healthy dollop of incentives, mostly from the L.A. Department of Water and Power–something that was also part of Chevron’s guarantee. In fact, the CES folks “chased down” the rebates, “shaking trees” to get an extra $1 million above and beyond the contracted $5.3 million–an cash windfall split 50:50 by the two partners, according to Lindholm. As a result of the money-tree shaking, the $16.5 million project–which was financed by Bank of America–came in at closer to $10 million.

So what’s next for Metro’s photovoltaic expansion? A project featuring some 2.3 MW of PV installations that will be “designed to show the different applications that you can do in a transit environment,” Lindholm explained.

The six sites he envisions include carport shade structures on top of a parking garage next to the Gold Line train station in Pasadena; a quarter-mile of solar-integrated soundwalls as part of the expansion of the 405 Freeway; sizeable arrays at the Red Line subway maintenance yard in downtown L.A. (the biggest single system of the six planned) and Metro’s light-rail maintenance yard in Hawthorne; a system at a bus division in Cypress Park; and a different kind of installation as part of a new bus division downtown, which will use “PV as part of the architecture, on kind of a louvered screen on one edge of the project.”

Lindholm “would like to get a request for proposal out and ready for competition by late summer,” then pick a partner and start negotiation. That partner must be “willing to do these six sites at the same time, and go and get us some incentives and rebates, build the projects, and guarantee the savings and power generated, just like we did on the Chevron deal.”

He estimates that from the time he puts out the RFP to the time that he’s “awarding the contract and getting ready to go” should be about five months, or roughly late 2009 or early 2010. Lindholm expects to capitalize on the federal stimulus package offerings for such projects. He believes they can “wrangle up about 37% of the cost in rebates and incentives” locally, so Metro would end up asking the Feds to “pitch in 67%, which is pretty attractive to them.”

Just in case those recovery act funds don’t flow as expected for the new project, the Metro director also wants to require whichever solar integrator signs up with the agency to bring along “a strong financial partner” as well.

“We’re going bigger,” Lindholm beamed. “We’ve got a bit of a pattern already where we like to double what we’ve done every project. We’d like to keep that going.”

Credits: PV-Tech.org, Tom Cheney

We would love to report that the first solar stadium is being built here is sunny Southern California.  Alas, no, it is but in Taiwan, and there again, the architectural genius flourishes.  

Although somewhat reminiscent of the Bird’s Nest in China, by virtue of the net use, Taiwan recently finished construction on an incredible solar-powered stadium that will generate 100% of its electricity from photovoltaic technology! Designed by Toyo Ito, the dragon-shaped 50,000 seat arena is clad in 8,844 solar panels that illuminate the track and field with 3,300 lux.

The project will officially open later this year to welcome the 2009 World Games.

Building a new stadium is always a massive undertaking that requires millions of dollars, substantial physical labor, and a vast amount of electricity to keep it operating.

 Toyo Ito’s design negates this energy drain with a stunning 14,155 sq meter solar roof that is able to provide enough energy to power the stadium’s 3,300 lights and two jumbo vision screens. To illustrate the incredible power of this system, officials ran a test this January and found that it took just six minutes to power up the stadium’s entire lighting system!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The stadium also integrates additional green features such as permeable paving and the extensive use of reusable, domestically made materials.

Built upon a clear area of approximately 19 hectares, nearly 7 hectares has been reserved for the development of integrated public green spaces, bike paths, sports parks, and an ecological pond.

Additionally, all of the plants occupying the area before construction were transplanted.

Non-sports fans in the community have a lot to jump up and down for as well. Not only does the solar system provide electricity during the games, but the surplus energy will also be sold during the non-game period.

On days where the stadium is not being used, the Taiwanese government plans to feed the extra energy into the local grid, where it will meet almost 80% of the neighboring area’s energy requirements. Overall, the stadium will generate 1.14 million KWh per year, preventing the release of 660 tons of carbon dioxide into atmosphere annually.

Credits: Inhabitat, Serengreenity

 

*The Venturi Effect is the reduction in fluid pressure that results when a fluid flows through a constricted section of pipe (in this case there were two towers and for to get the maximum speed of the mass of air across the tower the logic was to located close to each other and design the complete building with aerodynamic shapes plus all the other factors that I wrote in the original narrative of the project. The fluid velocity must increase through the constriction to satisfy the equation of continuity, while its pressure must decrease due to conservation of energy: the gain in kinetic energy is balanced by a drop in pressure or a pressure gradient force”.

After writing the initial article on the “Biosmic Egg” a few months ago, I was contacted by the architect, Richard Moreto  who shared with me the vision that prompted him to develop this graceful design, as well as more recent pictures.  I reproduce here part of his e-mail:

“The design of the tower it is not inspired from any flower as was the statement made before by my interior designer…The original program required two cylindrical towers separated…What I did was to put it together and take advantage of the “Venturi Effect“*and the implementation of aerodynamics lines to make it more effective for the concentration of the wind in the Wind Turbines  spots.

So what we have it is not longer the mantra of the modernist ” The form follow the function” and is not longer the mantra of the Postmodernism or Iconoclast ” The function follow the symbol”…This is a new approach of design in Architecture where ”The function follows the needs (Functional, Environmental and Cultural)”.

 

In character with the concept of Vertical Planning, “the structure itself acts like a living organism with its wind and atmospheric energy conversion systems and photovoltaic exterior sheathing that allow natural air into the interior without mechanical intervention. The lobular arch shape of The Wind Tower meanwhile can easily dispel loads from top to bottom. The design offers the stability and aerodynamic properties necessary for structures of such heights.”  

 

 

 

This is the alternative to  ”vast, energy-consuming machines.”

 

In the case of large commercial and office structures, the combination of green design techniques and clever technology can not only reduce energy consumption and environmental impact, but also reduce running costs, create a more pleasant living, recreation, and working environment, improve peoples’ health and productivity, reduce legal liability, and boost property values and rental returns. 

 

Credits:Richard Moreto, Serengreenity

Earth Day became an official celebration back in the early 1970’s, as noted in this New York Times article : ”Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation’s campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam…a national day of observance of environmental problems…is being planned for next spring…when a nationwide environmental ‘teach-in’…coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned….” .

Mostly a grassroot reaction that self-orchestrated, similar and parallel to the coming of women to some sort of economic equality that is still evolving.  One may be wondering where the green agenda has been headed in the recent economic turmoil.  I attended a great presentation at the Green Municipal Expo last week in L.A: during the Great Depression, parallels were drawn between wastefulness and anti-patriotism….

A much larger war is upon us this time; global warming is accelerating much faster than anticipated and demands that we all change to adopt sustainability as the only possible model.  I, the eternal optimist, still believe that we can do it, reaching outside our comfort zone to create a harmonious alternative.

I received today an eloquent email from the USGBC that I wanted to broadcast here: 

Dear friends,

I’m writing to you on Earth Day to share two very important milestones with you that resoundingly answer a question we hear every day: Has the economic crisis crushed the green movement?

The short answer is a loud and resounding “no.”

The long answer is this: As of April 2009, USGBC is proud to count 20,000 organizations among its national membership, and more than 100,000 LEED Accredited Professionals around the globe. Since January 1, 2009, we have broken records every month in new memberships and new LEED AP candidates – exceeding our best projections and demonstrating that green building, and the green movement, are here to stay.

The fact that the green building movement has continued to grow despite the economic crisis isn’t lost on us. “Going green” may not make a lot of headlines these days, but the fact remains that sustainability as a fundamental goal of any enterprise – large or small – is a smart strategy that saves money, water, and energy and creates jobs. 

Last year at Greenbuild, we challenged ourselves to focus our efforts where it really matters – our existing homes, schools and offices. The new construction marketplace may have slowed to a halt, but between existing residences and commercial buildings, there are more than 120 million energy hogs out there that need to be retrofitted for high performance. It could save more than $160 billion in energy costs, and it could put our industry and a lot of other people back to work.

The federal government, many of our cities and icons like the Empire State Building have already pledged their commitment to green building operations and maintenance and have put money on the table. The emergence of this new market for green building is not only good news in troubled times, it’s an opportunity to bring the scale of change to the built environment that we must to preserve our climate and fulfill our vision of sustainability.

Today’s green building movement is as vital as it’s ever been, but it isn’t just about big sexy new architecture anymore. It’s about that 1950s ranch that needs new insulation. And that school where the teachers open the windows to control the heat. And the 99 out of 100 buildings that we still haven’t touched.

So in closing, I’d like to challenge each and every member of USGBC to identify an existing building within your own portfolio to green. Start with the LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance checklist, identify the low-cost/no-cost improvements, and get on the path to greater gains. Adobe Systems Inc. is saving $1.2 million annually and getting a 121% ROI on their commitment to green operations and maintenance. How much can you put back in your bottom line?

Happy Earth Day,

S. Rick Fedrizzi
President, CEO & Founding Chair
USGBC

Credits: USGBC, New York Times

Built during the Great Depression, as a message of American grandeur and optimism, the Empire State Building does it again, this time under the auspices of the Clinton Climate Initiative and the Rocky Mountain Institute.  

In an effort to lower its carbon footprint, the green innovations include measures to also noticeably lower energy consumption. The project  is being carried out  via a breakthrough process to retrofit existing structures for environmental sustainability  The green refab will neighbor $13.2 million dollars, while reducing its energy consumption by 35 to 40 percent and saving $4.4 million annually in energy costs. 

RMI’s newly created website, esbsustainability.com, showcases the tools and processes that resulted from the project, and includes a video, interactive model, and information on best practices for future building retrofits.

While emerging green building codes tend to address new construction, the plat de resistance really lies in retrofitting the huge inventory of existing buildings, the well-known culprits of energy squandering. Let this innovation achieve two things: setting up the well-needed blueprint for eco-fitting while documenting financial benefits that are so needed by green building advocates.

Credits: RMI, Serengreenity, photo: flickr

If you happen to be in Vancouver these coming days, do visit the long-awaited and spectacular new addition of Centre West, at the Vancouver Convention Center.   The city’s latest flagship eco-development triples the total square footage and functional capacity of the Centre and completes the development of the public realm. With 6 acres of green roof it boasts the largest in Canada, and the largest non-industrial green roof in North America. This combined with many other eco-measures is set to help the project achieve LEED Canada Gold certification.

The project consists of 1.2 million sq ft divided into exhibition space, meeting rooms, 90,000 sq ft of retail space, a 55,000 sq ft ballroom and 400,000 sq ft of public realm including walkways and bikeways. All in, the project promises to be “a celebration of people and place and a model of sustainability”.

Architects LMN worked in collaboration with Vancouver-based Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership and DA Architects & Planners to design the centre which will be used as a hub to support 7,000 media during the XXI Olympic & Paralympic Winter Games.

But not suffice to support homosapiens, a key element of the design was the restoration of the shoreline and marine habitat. 

Having worked with marine scientists, an underwater habitat skirt or artificial reef was developed as part of the centre’s foundation and now provides new habitat for barnacles, mussels, seaweed, starfish, crabs and various fish species. The green roof too is home to 400,000 indigenous plants and grasses, providing natural habitat to birds, insects and small mammals. But it will also provide vital insulation for the building.

Other eco-measures include black water treatment and desalinization, a heat pump system that takes advantage of the constant temperature of adjacent seawater, extensive use of controlled daylighting and energy efficient fixtures. The water management plan is expected to reduce potable water use  by 60-70%.

Local materials including locally harvested Douglas fir and Hemlock have been used for wood finishes reducing the harmful effects of transportation on the environment.

Vancouver is a mixed bag of spectacular natural environment with an impressive urban core. This latest addition attempts to blend the two and create a synergy, acting as a powerful visual ambassador of the Pacific Northwest region’s commitment to sustainability.

Credits: WAN, LMN, Vancouver Convention Center

 

Imagine asking today how the Internet affects business. It’s an absurd question, like asking how electricity changed business. Asking the same about sustainability, it turns out, is equally absurd. Like the Internet, sustainability spurs innovation in everything, from how you see your business model to whether you see your employees (why not let them work at home more?). Here are our favorite ways companies today are greening up–and saving money and making better widgets in the process:-

 

1. At $100 a ton, feeding a landfill is pricey. But in the past two years, General Mills has turned its solid waste into profits. Take its oat hulls, a Cheerios by-product. The company used to pay to have them hauled off, but realized they could be burned as fuel. Now customers compete to buy the stuff. In 2006, General Mills recycled 86% of its solid waste, earning more from that than it spent on disposal.

 

2. Trains were already the cleanest way to move massive amounts of freight long distances, but General Electric raised the game with its Evolution locomotives, diesel engines launched in 2005 that cut fuel consumption by 5% and emissions by 40% compared to locomotives built just a year earlier. Up next, a triumph of sheer coolness: a GE hybrid diesel-electric locomotive that, just like your Prius, captures energy from braking and will improve mileage another 10%. According to GE, the energy dissipated in braking a 207-ton locomotive during the course of a year is enough to power 160 homes for the same period.

 

3. First we counted calories, then carbs. Now it’s carbon, as retailers introduce product labels that encourage customers to weigh their eco-sins. The most ambitious: British grocery giant Tesco, which has a program to label all 70,000 of its products with carbon breakdowns.

 

4. Taking the packaging revolution a step further, the liquid-laundry-detergent industry, goaded by Wal-Mart, has cut the size of its bottles by 50% or more by concentrating the liquid to two and sometimes three degrees of magnitude. Unilever’s triple-concentrated All Small & Mighty detergent has saved 1.3 million gallons of diesel fuel, 10 million pounds of plastic resin, and 80 million square feet of cardboard since 2005. This fall, Procter & Gamble is converting its entire collection of liquids to double concentration.

 

5. Timberland awards its employees who buy hybrids not only with a primo parking spot but also with $3,000 toward the car’s purchase. Bank of America has a similar program. Google is one-upping both with a $5,000 incentive.

 

6. The corporate restroom isn’t fully green without Dyson’s new Airblade hand dryer, which does its job in half the time (12 seconds) and with half the energy (1,400 watts) of conventional dryers. It costs four times as much up front, but the energy savings can pay you back in three years. AMC Theatres is testing the units now.

 

7. Unlike most big-box retailers that are debuting discrete green product lines, Staples has eco-modified a whopping 3,000 of its mainstream private-label products to include at least 30% post-consumer waste. From sticky notes to shipping boxes, nearly all of the new offerings do not have a nonrecycled alternative in the product line. The end goal: to pressure the entire industry to follow suit.

 

8. Another kind of network is sprouting in an old lamp factory in Chicago as Baum Development unveils the Green Exchange, a 250,000-square-foot retail and office space reserved exclusively for green companies. Billed as the country’s first “green business community,” the development’s concept is that proximity will foster the exchange of ideas. Set to open in Fall 2008, the building is already 40% leased, with tenants including an electric-car dealer, energy consultants, and even a green pet-supply store.



9. On the subject of hiring: Companies everywhere are suddenly clamoring to snag a vice president of sustainability. Or a director of environmental affairs. Someone whose job is to understand the environmental impact of the company and look for ways to turn it inside out. (Why aren’t you using your empty roof to generate solar power, anyway?) Ten years ago, the job essentially didn’t exist. But in the last two years, it has become common across a startling variety of industries. Starbucks has one. Ford too. Also Airbus, Albertson’s, Alcoa, Alaska Airlines, and Anheuser-Busch. Dow Chemical and DuPont have even given the position C-level heft–chief sustainability officer.



10. At its Manhattan headquarters, JPMorgan Chase is starting renovations at the top–on the roof, 53 stories up, where the bank is building what is essentially a giant pan to collect rainwater. The water will be funneled into a 55,000-gallon tank in the basement, filtered, and then piped up for toilet flushing. Coupled with new low-flush urinals and toilets, this system will cut the building’s water use–and cost–by 30%.

Of these we would like to add one: Ban styrofoam from fabrication altogether!

Credits: FastCompany

If you have ever been to Venice, you sure have noticed the green algae swimming atop the gorgeous canals.  Back in 2006, Asian Kelp (aka Undaria pinnatifida) became the unlikely vedette in this article .  

In a prime example on how to turn apparent obstacles into advantages, the folks over in Italy are proposing to transform  this algae (as well as growing new ones in laboratories) into an emission-free  fuel, enough to power  half the city center (40 megawatts of electricity).  

The power plant would function as such: The algae will be cultivated in laboratories and put in plastic cylinders where water, carbon dioxide, and sunshine can trigger photosynthesis. The resulting biomass will be treated further to produce a fuel to turn turbines. The carbon dioxide produced in the process will be fed back to the algae, resulting in zero emissions from the plant. 

The project is slotted to cost about $200 million euros (about $270 million dollars).  It is a collaboration between  Enalg Srl and l’Autorita Portuale di Venezia, using the technology from Solena Group.

More details for those who read Italian on this great blog  Progetto Nuova Energia.

Credits: Reuters, Progetto Nuova Energia, Buzzle, Ecowordly, Photo: Courtesy of Flickr

On March 28,  from 8:30 to 9:30 PM local time, more than 1,000 cities around the globe will turn off their lights in a symbolic gesture designed to save energy of course, but also to draw attention to the huge waste we are all party to.

The event, organized  by the W.W.F shows more participation compared to the 370 committed cities last year.  Fiji will kick off to roll around the globe by time zone throughout the day. Cities slated to participate include Cape Town, Chicago, Copenhagen, Dubai, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Las Vegas, Lisbon, London, Los Angeles, Manila, Mexico City, Moscow, Nashville, Oslo, Rome, San Francisco, Singapore, Sydney, Toronto and Warsaw.

60oneminutes.org is taking submissions for one-minute movies that support Earth Hour with the theme, “Take Back Your Power”. A selection of submissions will be broadcast on Current TV starting on Earth Hour through to Earth Day as an interactive way of continuing the conversation past 9:31 p.m. on March 28

One would ask: what is the point? Is it really worth it? How much energy are we really saving by merely turning off lights for an hour?  Well, because climate change is essentially a political problem, and the language of politics is symbolism. Just because an act is symbolic doesn’t mean it is empty. The only way to truly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to take the pressure off global warming, is an international regime that puts a cap and a price on climate pollution.

The question remains: when will we accept to be be inconvenienced for the sake of our planet?  which of course is intrinsically linked to our survival, only we choose not to see it. 

Credits:  WWF, Times, Serengreenity