Sustainable Buildings

U4SSC - Case study: Energy efficiency in buildings

When it came time to replace the roof of the Church of Nativity, Episcopal, the building’s board of directors wasn’t the only group who had a say in what material would be chosen — the National Parks Services did too.

Location: Electronic Resource- 

Location: Engineering Library- TH7417.M33 2015

It doesn't take long for a really old building to fall apart…

The Government has issued an RFP for rooftop solar for “approximately thirty Government owned buildings across Bermuda.” The notice said, “This Request for Proposals [RFP] is an invitation by the Government of Bermuda to prospective proponents to submit proposals for Government Solar Development Project, as further described in Section A of the Request for Proposal […]

In this year’s Budget, “$400,000 will be spent to complete the installation of solar panels on several government buildings,” the Minister of Public Works Lt/Col David Burch said. The Government tweeted the graphic below, saying, “Capital funding will be allocated to installation of solar panels on several government buildings, to Forts & historical sites, continuance of […]

While most teachers have online access at home, internet service for many educators in rural areas is spotty, expensive, or nonexistent.

Spending millions to guard against COVID-19 spread, district leaders also must convince parents school buildings are safe.

Home to more than 300 artists, the neighborhood was submerged under the record-high waters of the French Broad River

Pedestrians in Montreal, Grand Rapids and other locations can time-travel thanks to installations that map historical scenes directly onto the cityscapes

South Africa's national government said it will, for the first time, ask private companies to help revive dilapidated buildings it owns in inner cities in the country's biggest urban centres.

Governor John Carney has ordered the Delaware state flag at State facilities be lowered to half staff on Monday, August 31 in observance of Overdose Awareness Day. The Governor’s order only applies to State facilities, however local governments, businesses and Delawareans flying the Delaware state flag are encouraged to participate as well. The Delaware state […]

To drive the enforcement of the compulsory insurance of public buildings across the country, The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) in Abuja has inaugurated a technical committee. The committee was inaugurated by NAICOM’s Commissioner for Insurance, Mr Mohammed Kari, and it has membership drawn from NAICOM, the Federal Fire Service (FFS) from all the zones and […]

NAICOM moves to enforce compulsory insurance of public buildings

Buildings are a major source of carbon emissions because they use vast amounts of energy — 34% of global demand—from fossil fuels for heating and cooling.

Kerala Hotel & Restaurant Association leaders warn the tax will severely impact small and medium establishments lacking input tax benefits

Jewish-origin architecture in the country appears to advocate a community-led way of life. What’s unique is that the restoration and adaptive reuse of synagogues, hospitals and houses is often funded by people of other faiths

Ubiquity Press

Visva-Bharati is concluding a two-week workshop called Heritage Awareness Camp

Anyone interested in architecture should read this book by Stewart Brand. Brand won a National Book Award for the Whole Earth Catalog, and is a co-founder of Global Business Network, a futurist research organization fostering "the art of the long view." How Buildings Learn features a lot of illustrations and insights about building and buildings. I especially enjoy the comparison of two structures on the campus of MIT:

The legendary Building 20 (1943) was an artifact of wartime haste. Designed in an afternoon by MIT grad Don Whiston, it was ready for occupancy by radar researchers six months later... In an undertaking similar in scope to the Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb, the emergency development of radar employed the nation's best physicists in an intense collaboration that changed the nature of science. Unlike Los Alamos, the MIT radar project was not run by the military, and unlike Los Alamos, no secrets got out. The verdict of scientists afterward was, "The atom bomb only ended the war. Radar won it." ... Author Fred Hapgood wrote in 1993 of Building 20, "The edifice is so ugly that it is impossible not to admire it, if that makes sense; it has ten times the righteous nerdly swagger of any other building on campus... Although Building 20 was built with the intention to tear it down after... World War II, it has remained... providing a special function... Not assigned to any one school, department, or center, it seems to always have had space for the beginning project, the graduate student's experiment, the interdisciplinary research center.

In a later chapter, Brand describes famous architect I.M. Pei's third MIT building, known informally as the Media Lab and formally as the Wiesner Building:

It may have been my familiarity with MIT's homely, accommodating Building 20 just across the street that made the $45 million pretentiousness, ill-functionality, and non-adaptability of the Media Lab building so shocking to me... Nowhere in the whole building is there a place for casual meetings, except for a tiny, overused kitchen. Corridors are narrow and barren. Getting new cabling through the interior concrete walls - a necessity in such a laboratory - requires bringing in jackhammers. You can't even move office walls around, thanks to the overhead fluorescent lights being at a Pei-signature 45-degree angle to everything else.

The Media Lab building, I discovered, is not unusually bad. Its badness is the norm in new buildings overdesigned by architects...

Brand finishes How Buildings Learn with a list of good books, writing, "They are the texts I would reach for if I was going to work on a building..."

Covering walls with plants can significantly reduce the temperature of building walls during hot summer months. A recent study of three different types of these ???living walls??? in Italy suggests that they can be 20??C cooler than a bare wall on sunny days. An added advantage is that living walls can be retrofitted to existing buildings.

A method has been developed to compare how EU Member States have implemented the Energy Performance Buildings Directive. It suggests that implementation varies widely across Europe but that the Czech Republic, Finland, Portugal and Slovakia have kept to the Directive’s aims and guidelines most closely, based on data available in 2009.

There is a wide range of systems for assessing and communicating the sustainability of buildings, but the variation can be confusing. Recent research has analysed the elements needed for effective assessment and examined the needs of stakeholders to inform the presentation and communication of assessment results.

Staff in buildings that have been certified as ‘green’ under the LEED scheme are just as satisfied with their indoor working environment as people working in non-LEED buildings, according to research on commercial buildings. The study suggests that investment in the thermal and acoustic aspects of buildings, however, would further improve occupant satisfaction.

A recent study in Finland suggests new building regulations will lead to a substantial reduction in the total energy demand and CO2 emissions in new apartment buildings. This could have an impact on the source of energy used for new buildings. In particular, the demand for space heating will fall, which could have an impact on the source of energy used for new buildings.

A free online system for assessing the sustainability of buildings is due to be launched across Europe in July this year. The tool captures scientific complexity whilst being accessible and easy-to-use, its developers say.

Denmark aims to develop an energy system based only on renewable energy sources by 2050. Energy saving buildings are an essential part of this plan, according to new research, which investigates how excess heat production from net zero energy buildings (NZEBs) can benefit district heating systems and reduce reliance on combustible fuels.

Over half of a low-energy building’s environmental impact occurred before it was even occupied, a new case study from Italy calculates. The researchers recommend expanding the environmental assessment of buildings from just the operational stage of a building’s life, when it is in use, to include production and transport of materials, construction activities and building maintenance. A wide range of environmental impacts should also be considered, they argue, and not just energy use.

Green walls, designed so they are covered in vegetation, could help cut the amount of noise that enters buildings, a new study has found. In lab. tests, researchers found that a modular green wall system reduced sound levels by 15 decibels (dB). This leads them to believe that it is a promising sound reduction device that could improve quality-of-life for city residents.

Which types of buildings will require the least energy for heating and cooling under climate change? A study in Vienna, Austria, looked at the balance between heating and cooling demand in four different types of buildings. The research provides a method that could be useful for other European cities trying to adapt to climate change.

Researchers in Lithuania have assessed and ranked the sustainability of buildings on a wide range of criteria, from pollution caused by the building materials to the running costs of the building. An overall sustainability index based on these criteria allows the comparison of different buildings and, using this index, the study estimated that a wood-based building is 7.5% more sustainable than a house made of bricks.

Pioneering methods used in the Netherlands combine remediation of brownfield sites with the use of groundwater for heat cold storage (HCS, or ATES: Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage) to achieve both low-cost remediation and sustainable use of energy.

Zero Energy Buildings (ZEBs) are a viable means to reduce global energy demand, a new study suggests. However, in response to the drop in energy costs for the household due to better energy efficiency, people may begin to consume more energy than they otherwise would. These so-called ‘rebound effects’ can undermine emissions reductions, the study says, and it proposes approaches that could lessen these impacts.

Weathering and abrasion are reported to cause titanium dioxide nanoparticles to escape from a self-cleaning coating for buildings. These particles may be toxic to humans and wildlife. The researchers have developed three indicators from the test results to help predict levels of nanoparticle release from these coatings.

A new study aimed at increasing knowledge of indoor air quality (IAQ) in recently built or refurbished office buildings has found that levels of pollutants are mostly within World Health Organization (WHO) air-quality guidelines, however they vary between seasons. In addition, some levels of particulate matter were found to exceed WHO guideline values. The OFFICAIR project was funded by the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme.

Garrison Architects creates a series of green modular structures to grace NYC's Sandy-ravaged beaches by Memorial Day.

A new system created by a French energy firm heats about 6 million square feet of office space, creating no emissions in the process.

Located on the Mississippi Flyway, Chicago is one of the deadliest American cities for migrating birds. But the Windy City is trying to change that statistic.

Recession proof green jobs, $7 million in energy efficiency savings and more.

Speaking at a sustainability and design conference in Atlanta, LEED pioneer Rob Watson explains that 'there are good buildings, and there are bad buildings.'

From Apple's Spaceship HQ to GE's Boston campus, these solar-integrated designs are raising the bar.

A major source of indoor air pollution may be at your feet. That’s why carpet for LEED buildings is an issue not to be overlooked.

Deadlier than Glenn Close with a kitchen knife, light's 'fatal attraction' kills millions of birds each year.