Geeko friendly's List: Architecture

• In the immediate post-independence period a new generation of young architects emerged in Slovenia, known as the 'Six Pack'
• The 'Six Pack' has linked Slovene architecture with the global scene, concepts of temporal dimensions, and how to think, feel, hear, smell, touch and see architecture.
• Since that time several members of the 'Six Pack' generation, including Jurij Sadar (b 1963), Tadej Glažar (b 1964), Vasa Perovič (b 1965), Boštjan Vuga (b 1966), Matija Bevk (b 1972), Aljoša Dekleva (b 1972) and Tina Gregorič (b 1974) have won awards overseas, followed by considerable media coverage.
• But in comparison to the previous generation, a deep sense of cultural responsibility can be sensed in their work. They consider what they do not as architecture alone but as activity within a broader cultural context.

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• three sections housing a theater/lecture hall, a bookshop/galley and a workshop. 
• Endo’s design aesthetic throughout his career has focused on numerous experiments with steel and the seemingly limitless possibilities the material has in the built environment.  He continually sets out to prove that architecture can possess diversity while simultaneously following the rules of geometry, and Bubbletecture H is certainly not an exception.
• the superstructure was prefabricated from local Japanese cedar.
• And like a cliff temple, the supporting structure clings to the earth only where necessary – the building is over 10,000 square feet in size, but it is connected to only sixteen deeply buried five-foot wide beams – and that’s all that goes in the ground.

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• A large percentage of municipal landfill waste is from construction and demolition debris, estimated to be between 20 and 30 percent nationally.
• We recycle cans, bottles and even plastic bags, so why not reuse older buildings? There are many good reasons to do so, and opportunities and benefits abound to reduce such waste.
• First, it's very costly and energy consumptive: Municipal waste that must be loaded, hauled, transferred from trucks to trains, processed and dumped into landfills costs between $50 and $75 per ton.
• Second, it pollutes:
• Most construction debris — such as land clearing, wood, metal, glass, asphalt and concrete rubble — is fully reusable at lower cost than the production of new materials.
• Third, it's wasteful:
• Upstream, reducing construction and demolition waste reduces the need for the extraction and processing of raw materials, product manufacture and eventual disposal.
• And finally, the preservation and adaptive reuse of older buildings — especially historic landmarks — as compared with new construction is considered to be one of the most sustainable "green building" practices achievable.
• Climate-protection strategies must address the issue. In the United States, building construction and operations account for 48 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions.
• While preservation laws help protect our valued historic landmarks, incentives and possibly new regulations are needed to address waste of building stock. For example, Portland, Ore., mandates that all building projects valued at over $50,000 separate on site and recycle all nontoxic construction materials. New York City provides tax incentives, electric rebates and employs rezone strategies to encourage reuse and conversion of commercial buildings to residential.
• • Main thought
• The bottom line: Landfills should no longer be an option for used but otherwise clean and durable building materials.
• Policymakers, preservationists and architects need to push green building practices into the 21st century by promoting the environmental, economic and community benefits of building reuse and recycling.
• State and local governments should establish working guidelines, programs and incentives to promote the reuse, retrofit and reinvestment of older buildings.
• The energy invested in the existing built environment must be seen as a tangible resource of economic, environmental and cultural value, not to be wasted. In this way, preservation and reuse can be our "greenest" tools of sustainability.

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• After nearly a decade in the making
• the Academy will house 38,000 live animals and is on track to receive LEED platinum.
• It is currently the only institution in the world to feature an aquarium, a natural history museum, a living rainforest, a planetarium, and world-class research and education programs - all housed under a 2.5 acre green roof.
• the roof’s native plants absorb 90-98% of the building’s rainfall.
• All around the roof’s edges runs an encircling halo of photovoltaic cells, providing 60kW of electricity - enough to supply 5-10% of the structure’s energy needs.
• Incredible architecture aside, perhaps the most stunning aspect of the revitalized institution is it’s steadfast commitment to a vital, living, and changing study of life.

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• At 410,000 square feet, it’s expected to be the largest public building ever to attain a LEED Platinum rating. And, with a $488 million price tag, it also represents the largest fund-raising effort for a cultural institution in San Francisco history.
• In 1997 one of the Academy’s own scientists, Patrick Kociolek, became its interim director. A researcher accustomed to approaching problems through data, Kociolek wanted to test the hypo­thesis that the planned upgrade was really in the museum’s best interests. “I said to the board, ‘Why don’t we step back and, instead of being driven by the facilities, ask ourselves: What’s a natural history museum in the twenty-first century?’” he recalls. “I had no idea this naive question would lead us so far.”
• And so the Academy—the only museum in the coun­­try to combine a natural history collection with a planetarium and an aquarium in one ­building—spent a year and a half studying the role of the science museum in contemporary culture.
• First, the museum analyzed 20 years of attendance data and found a dramatic but consistent decrease. Then it crunched more numbers and realized that other science museums across the country were doing even worse. To confirm some suspicions about the state of scientific knowledge in the community, it commissioned a poll with Harris Interactive. As suspected, it showed that while science is a bigger part of our lives than ever before the public’s understanding of it is lower than it was a generation ago.
• the need and desire for science education were great, but the existing paradigm, the Victorian cabinet of curiosities, was not up to the task.
• the Academy’s trustees realized they didn’t just need a new building; they needed a forward-thinking design that could carry the whole institution into the new century.
• there were only about 40 firms in the world who could take on the scale of the project, so the Academy sent out a request for portfolios and narrowed the field of 38 respondents down to six: Toyo Ito, Moshe Safdie, Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, James Polshek, and Renzo Piano.
• The first five architects to meet with the Academy all gave the kind of polished presentations you might expect. One arrived with two slide projectors, 50 poster boards, and five staffers, “literally and figuratively surrounding the committee with an answer,” as Kociolek puts it. But the final architect to interview, Renzo Piano, arrived with one ­associate—his daughter, Lia—and took just ten minutes to set up.

  • svashta
• When the committee members entered the room, they were surprised to see that he had no presentation materials with him. He had used the ten minutes to pull a table from the corner and rearrange all the chairs into a circle around it.
• Piano told them that he didn’t know how he would design a new California Academy of Sciences. He would need to hear from them before he could answer that question. “If you go into a meeting and you already know everything,” Piano says, “you lose the capacity to understand.”

  • presenetljivo iskren tale tip
• As the committee members spoke, Piano sketched ideas.
• After the interviews, Kociolek says, a number of the trustees wanted to hire the architect who had done the elaborate presentation. But one board member offered a different view. “She said, ‘Do you want to have a lecture from that person, or do you want to have a dialogue with Renzo Piano? That person already told us the answer. Renzo Piano is waiting to talk to us about an answer.’” Her question changed the tenor of the deliberations, he says, and led the board to choose Piano to design the new museum.
• Once he was selected, the first thing Piano knew was that he wanted the new roof to be the same height as the one he’d stood on top of: 36 feet. It was an appropriate scale for the park yet tall enough to offer a view, and it retained a vestigial memory of the old building, a local landmark. It was only later, when he learned that some program features—the planetarium and the rain-forest exhibit, for example—would need to be taller, that Piano developed the rooftop’s signature hills. “The idea was: keep the roof at thirty-six feet, and every time you need more, just wave up,” he says. “It’s a landscape that witnesses what is underneath it.”
• The other big idea behind the roof—that it should be a habitat for native California plants, birds, and insects—developed more slowly, as Piano’s team worked with botanists from the museum.
• it also insulates the building, reducing energy consumption, and absorbs 98 percent of storm-water runoff.
• Meanwhile, Piano’s “waves” mean that most of the building doesn’t need air-conditioning: cool air from outside flows down the hills and into the building’s central piazza, while hot air on the ex­hibit floor rises, hugging the planetarium and rain forest, and is released through automated skylights in the hills.

  • tuki pojasnjuje kako deluje prezracvanje in ogrevanje
• Late in the design process, when the Academy hired the Rocky Mountain Institute to find out how much the green features would cost, it found out that Piano’s design was just two points away from a LEED Platinum rating.

  • svashta! sploh se niso potegval za LEED Platinum al kwa?:)
• Neither Piano nor the Academy had heard much about the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program. They had worked not from a checklist but from a total dedication to the value of sustainability to the Academy’s mission.
• The aquarium, planetarium, and natural history museum are no longer separate silos—there are live penguins alongside the dioramas and a coral reef surrounding the planetarium.

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• Shimizu, one of Japan's great construction dynasties with Minoru Industries, has developed a rather interesting one that looks good and seems relatively affordable at 80,000 yen per square metre, about 80 bucks per square foot. This "wall surface afforestation system" (parabienta) is light, can be designed in different patterns and grids, and cools the building significantly.

  • alternative to Patrick Blanc?
• How about a green air-purifying grass wall in your apartment? Believe it or not, it’s possible without having a mess thank to these grass panels from Argentinean company Ustatic. The “Wall Grass” is a system of grass rectangular panels, which function with a structural substrate, a humidity retainer substrate with small conducts that warrantee the homogeneous distribution of water in the entire surface, and a basement formed by the grass’ roots, which add support.

  • indoor grass

• print it remotely, and have it delivered to your house in just 10 days, even without knowing any 3D software
• Shapeways is a spin-off from Philips' Lifestyle Incubator. On one side, it's a website where you can upload your 3D models—which can even have joins—or use an online 3D creator with access to everyday models. The online 3D creator is extremely easy to use, so anyone can modify them without any technical or product design knowledge.
• Advanced users to access to 3D packages can upload any model they can imagine in a 3D standard format, like STL, Collada or X3D.

  • RA!!!
• On the other side, there are different types of rapid prototyping machines that can create that model using a variety of materials, from nylon to plastic composites, each with different properties
• Once you select the material and submit your model to 3D printer, you will get it in your hands in 10 days, with an average cost of $50 to $150, including shipping.
• While the system is not perfect yet, there's no color yet and you can get different textures for the surfaces, the start is very promising and the possibilities are endless.
• There are loads of other companies out there doing this. Here in Europe I use Materialise (materialise.com). They're able to print in all sorts of great materials. In the US, I've used RedeyeRPM before. Typically these places just require an .STL file (which can be exported from any 3D CAD program, it's just your design replicated using a triangular mesh).

  • RA!!!

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• Dutch architects MVRDV and Spanish architects GRAS have won a competition to design a new carbon-neutral city in La Rioja, Spain.
• The development will cover two hills and will include 3,000 social homes with sports facilities, retail, restaurants and gardens. The buildings will occupy 10% of the 56 ha site, with the remaining space used for energy production and as a public park.
• All energy required by the city will be generated by solar cells and and wind turbines. The city will also incorporate a greywater circuit and natural water purification.

• A museum and viewing point hidden in the top of one of the hills will house a research and promotion centre for renewable and energy-efficient technology.

   

  

  • Eco center!
• The remaining landscape becomes an eco-park: a mix of park and energy production. As the slopes are south facing solar energy is easily generated. A tapestry of PV-cells clad the mountain, covering the hills in golden reflection. On top of the two hills, windmills generate part of the energy needed for the 3.000 social houses and at the same time they work as landmarks for the development. 100% of the energy demand is generated on site by a combination of solar and wind energy. A greywater circuit and on site natural water purification are parts of the plan that combines dense urban living with real ecological improvements.
• Next to this, by building as compact as possible (following the optimal height line of the hill) the building costs are minimized.
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• The total sum of investment is 388 million Euro of which 40 million will be invested in renewable energy technology.

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• Porte de Versailles area of Paris, France.
• the triangular profile will prevent the structure casting shadows on adjacent buildings, and allow for optimum solar and wind power generation.
• Projet Triangle, Porte de Versailles
   Paris, France
   2006 –, planned completion 2014

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• Only 3 percent to 5 percent of homes in the U.S. are designed by an architect, so considerably fewer are architect-designed prefab. It’s a niche market.
• It is only recently that prefab housing emerged onto the real-estate radar after languishing for two or three decades after a burst of interest in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

• If prefab did catch on, what would the economic implications be?

   

  Arieff: The way houses are built today is tremendously inefficient; building waste accounts for at least half of our nation’s landfills. Prefab can reduce waste, shorten construction times, and also reduce the amount of time you’d have to carry a construction loan.
• prefab homes can have “no energy” systems built into them — meaning there are little or no utility costs, there’s lower water usage, etc.
• On the downside, depending on where the prefab factory is located relative to the construction site, the energy costs associated with the transportation of the components can be very costly.
• When there is a boom, prefab has the advantage; in a recession labour is cheap and available and prefab’s overhead and transport and crane costs kill it

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• Integrity Block
• The blocks are made of up to 50% pre-consumer recycled content, require 40% less energy to manufacture, and emit 39% less CO2 than traditional materials made into blocks.

• Straw Wall is also an old building method made into new with some added science. The panels are made of rice straw and hulls that are highly compressed with a custom-designed machine. Steel mesh (made of 100% recycled steel) is layered on either side of the panel keep the straw compressed.

    

  The straw is a natural insulator, so no additional insulation is needed for construction, and the panels can be covered in plaster, sheet rock or siding for our modern tastes.

    

  The straw is too compacted for rodents and vermin to burrow into, ensuring it is a natural and sanitary method of construction.
• highly compressed straw is less flammable than dried lumber."
   --http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/10/stroh_house.php
• Fire: stawbale walls are too highly compressed to support an ongoing fire. Basically, they smolder for a while but can't burst into flame because the material is so compressed that the fire can't get enough oxygen to actually burn.

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• I still can’t decide what looks best. Is it the sophisticated large spaces interior or the stunning contrast at the exterior between the white walls and the black windows? Or the fact that it avoids detailing using homogeneous transitions? Maybe all of them.
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• Some office towers and buildings are keeping their AC use to a minimum by using an energy-saving system that relies on blocks of ice to pump chilly air.
• Officials said there are at least 3,000 ice-cooling systems worldwide.
• Because electricity is needed to make the ice, water is frozen in large silver tanks at night when power demands are low. The cool air emanating from the ice blocks is then piped through the building. At night the water is frozen again and the cycle repeated.
• Ice storage can be used as the sole cooling system, or it can be combined with traditional systems to help ease the power demands during peak hours.
• In the basement, three main cooling rooms house chilling machines and 64 tanks that hold 800 gallons of water each. Credit Suisse has a traditional air conditioning system, but engineers use the energy-saving system first.
• Construction on the system took about four months, and company engineers say it is extremely efficient.
• “The idea of not only saving money for large companies, but doing something that benefits the environment, is win-win,” he said. “It’s doing the right thing.”
• The technology is not for every office space. There has to be room to install the large tanks—and costs are considerable. Credit Suisse spent more than $3 million to renovate its cooling system and Morgan Stanley’s costs were comparable, meaning the technology is best suited to large companies.

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• Ministrstvo za okolje je predstavilo pravilnika o učinkoviti rabi energije v stavbah in o spodbujanju učinkovite rabe energije in rabi obnovljivih virov energije. Gre za pravilnika, s katerima zaokrožujejo prenos evropske direktive o energetski učinkovitosti stavb v naš pravni red.