Posts Tagged ‘collaboration’
Working Together Towards a Sustainable World: Call for Papers
Posted in Events, Research, seeking by Kate Archdeacon on November 7th, 2011
The International Academic Forum in conjunction with its global partners is proud to announce the Second Annual Asian Conference on Sustainability, Energy and the Environment, to be held from May 3-6 2012, at the Ramada Osaka, Osaka, Japan.
CONFERENCE THEME: “Working Together Towards a Sustainable World”
Sustainability has emerged as the most important global issue for business, industry, government, and academia, and yet to begin with sustainability was associated only with environmental concerns such as energy and global warming. It is now recognized that the concept of sustainability is applicable to all areas of human society, for example in terms of social/economic justice, or responsible business practice. Issues such as poverty, hunger, education, health care, and access to markets should be a part of the evolution of any comprehensive sustainability paradigm as we work together to achieve a sustainable future.
ACSEE 2012 will address these various dimensions of human sustainability as we invite scholars from around the world to address questions and search for solutions to the complex issues surrounding sustainability in a forum encouraging serious and thoughtful exchange between academics, members of the global business community, and practitioners in the fields of human endeavor that link these.
We call on scientists from around the globe to meet and share our respective outlooks and collective wisdom on a critical issue of common concern: the pursuit of a sustainable world. It is a sincere hope that attendees will use this time together, not just for intellectual discovery and discourse, but to establish a common vision and to motivate each other to do our part in the creation of a better world. We greatly appreciate your attendance and encourage your active engagement throughout the conference.
Call for Papers Now Open: Abstract Submissions Deadline February 1 2012
Visit the website for more information.
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Design with the Other 90%: Cities
Posted in Events, Models by Kate Archdeacon on November 1st, 2011
Photo: iTrump: Warwick Junction
Design with the Other 90%: CITIES features sixty projects, proposals, and solutions that address the complex issues arising from the unprecedented rise of informal settlements in emerging and developing economies. Divided into six themes—Exchange, Reveal, Adapt, Include, Prosper and Access—to help orient the visitor, the exhibition shines the spotlight on communities, designers, architects, and private, civic, and public organizations that are working together to formulate innovative approaches to urban planning, affordable housing, entrepreneurship, nonformal education, public health, and more.
Design with the Other 90%: CITIES is the second in a series of themed exhibitions that demonstrate how design can be a dynamic force in transforming and, in many cases, saving lives. The first exhibition, in 2007, Design for the Other 90%, focused on design solutions that addressed the most basic needs of the 90% of the world’s population not traditionally served by professional designers.
Organized by Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Design with the Other 90%: CITIES will be on view at the United Nations in New York City from October 17,2011 through January 9, 2012, and is available to travel in the United States and internationally beginning February 2012.
http://designother90.org/cities/home
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Check out iTRUMP: Warwick Junction – a transformation of informal markets in Durban to flexible, low-cost structures and furnishings that support the local economy and provide opportunities for other industries to develop. KA
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Affordable Solar- & Water-harvesting House, built by students
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on October 18th, 2011
Graphic by Leah Davies
WaterShed, the University of Maryland’s [winner of] the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon 2011, is a solar-powered home comprised of systems that interact with each other and the environment. A home that harvests, recycles, and reuses water, WaterShed not only conserves but produces resources with the water it captures. Inspired by the rich, complex ecosystems of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, the home displays harmony between modernity, tradition, and simple building strategies, balancing time-trusted best practices and cutting-edge technological solutions to achieve high efficiency performance in an affordable manner. The home was built by a multi-disciplinary team of students over the course of two years.
About the Design:
WaterShed is a solar-powered home inspired and guided by the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem, interconnecting the house with its landscape, and leading its dwellers toward a more sustainable lifestyle. The house is formed by two rectangular modules capped by a split-butterfly roof that is well-suited to capturing and using sunlight and rainwater. The spacious and affordable house features:
- constructed wetlands, filtering storm water and grey water for reuse
- a green roof, retaining stormwater and minimizing the heat island effect
- an optimally sized photovoltaic array, harvesting enough energy from the sun to power WaterShed year-round
- edible landscapes, supporting community-based agriculture
- a liquid desiccant waterfall, providing high-efficiency humidity control in the form of an indoor water feature
- a solar thermal array, supplying enough energy to provide all domestic hot water, desiccant regeneration, and supplemental space heating
- engineering systems, working in harmony and each acting to increase the effectiveness of the others
- a time-tested structural system that is efficient, cost-effective, and durable.
About the Solar Decathlon:
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon is a biennial competition challenging 20 student teams from universities around the world to design and build houses powered entirely by the sun. Over ten competition days, the teams compete in ten different events such as architecture, engineering, and affordability. The team with the highest overall score is the winner. Each day the winner of one of the ten contests is publicly announced, providing the opportunity for individual recognition among the decathlete teams. The winner of the 2011 competition will be the team that best blends affordability, consumer appeal, and design excellence with optimal energy production and maximum efficiency. This year’s competition [was] on public display in the solar village at West Potomac Park, Washington, DC from September 23 – October 2. The house entries will be judged in subjective contests such as market appeal, communications, and home entertainment, and objective measured tests such as comfort zone, hot water, and energy balance. The houses are on public exhibition with the intent of educating visitors about environmental issues, emerging sustainable technologies, and energy-saving measures.
http://2011.solarteam.org/
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Collaboration for Urban Renewal in Quebec
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on September 27th, 2011
Source: Nourishing the Planet: Worldwatch Institute
Photo: Jardin St Roch by meddygarnet via flickr CC
From “Citywatch: Quebec City uses food as pioneer species of urban revival” by Wayne Roberts:
I’ve long felt that Quebec deserves to be known as one of the world’s best examples of an oppressed minority – commonly referred to as “pepsi’s” and “French Niggers of North America” as recently as the 1960s – who’ve made it economically while enriching their traditional culture and distinctive identity. My chance overnight stay gave me a glimpse of the secret formula behind this success. Ironically, it’s very close to the strategy proposed in Jeb Brugmannn’s recent book, Welcome to the Urban Revolution, arguably one of the most important studies of city possibilities since Jane Jacobs. Those running as or voting for candidates in municipal elections across Ontario this fall might want to consider ways of translating Quebec’s success here.
Dog-tired and worried about the high cost of rooms in the height of Quebec’s summer tourism, we dragged ourselves into the reception area of a hotel called L’Autre Jardin Auberge, the Other Garden Inn. The first thing we saw was a wooden sculpture from Africa. The second thing we saw was a fair trade gift store, Boutique EquiMonde. Then we saw a sign describing the place as Quebec’s first “social economy” hotel. The hotel, launched in 1996, is the money-making arm of a Quebec charity, Carrefour Tiers-Monde (Third World Meeting Place), devoted to education for children’s rights and international solidarity and to the economic revival of the surrounding neighborhood. All 28 rooms boasted fair trade towels and rugs, eco-certified writing pads, and nighttime reading booklets on sustainable tourism and responsible shopping. The breakfast nook featured organic and fair trade foods. We knew that at least we would sleep and rise with a clear conscience.
Our early morning walk showed we were in the midst of more than a socially conscious rooming district. The other garden referred to in the hotel’s name was a block away, where a campus of the University of Quebec abutted the commercial district, serving as a meeting place where students, a few homeless people and other wanderers could share a quiet and green space dominated by a tiny waterfall. This was the project that launched the renewal of this down-on-the-heels district in 1992.
[...]
Food specialty shops are the city equivalent of the pioneer species that burst forth after an area has been ravaged by a forest fire. But very quickly, signs crop up that this is more than a unique shopping experience based on the delightfully spontaneous jumble of cultural creative-and counter culture-inspired hangouts. A huge church, as was standard in Old Quebec, is at the centre of the street scene. Nearby is a public library that shares a section of the street with a low-end eatery, a budget hotel, regional headquarters for a credit union and trade union. A block away is a provincial office of the ministry of tourism and a large Mountain Equipment Co-op store. Since 2000, the entire street has been pedestrianized, given over to those who jaunt through neighborhood at a walker’s pace.
Almost all the housing in the area comes from Quebec’s iconic balconied triplexes, a mainstay of dense and affordable communities. A typical triplex has one floor for the, who pays a major portion of the mortgage with rental from two triplex tenants, thereby allowing working people to afford to buy handymen’s specials while providing tenants with low rents. What we see here is a distinctive culture of collaboration, not just a distinctive language group. In Quebec, which has pulled itself up by the bootstraps, people from many walks of life and all levels of government have learned to work together. In French, it’s called “concertation.” It doesn’t cost more. It’s about leverage from partnerships, not money.
[...]
Quebec’s traditions lend themselves to what urban expert Jeb Brugmann calls the Strategic City. It’s the antidote to the “crisis city,” torn apart by a two-way conflict that destroys both sides. It’s also the counterpoint to the “opportunity city,” where a jumble of creatives can’t break through to win support from political or economic power brokers. Brugmann, who lives in Toronto, doesn’t miss the chance to describe his adopted as the epitome of an opportunity city.
[...]
Read the full article by Wayne Roberts on Nourishing the Planet
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Support Systems: Rebuilding for Resilience
Posted in Models, Movements by Kate Archdeacon on June 30th, 2011
Source: The Fifth Estate
From “Resilience planning for wild weather and climate change” by Leon Gettler:
Queensland, the state of floods and cyclones that devastated property, has become Australia’s laboratory for sustainable building, for creating resilient homes, offices and structures in the face of climatic volatility. In a radical scheme, Grantham residents who had confronted a deadly mountain of water in the floods, have been invited to apply for land swaps to higher ground after the small southeast town was declared the first designated reconstruction area under the new Queensland Reconstruction Authority’s powers. The local council is working with reconstruction authority to create the land swaps.
Green Cross Australia, the non profit group working with developers, insurers and the Property Council of Australia to encourage sustainable thinking, plans to launch a Harden Up portal in August.
The scheme is a world first. Using social media, it aims to makes people aware of the history of the weather patterns in their region, helps prepare them to protect their homes, families and communities and encourages them to share their insights. People will be able to tap into the portal to assess the weather patterns in their suburb or town over the last 150 years, using data from the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO. They will be taken on interactive multimedia tours and encouraged to share their insights through a page on Facebook. The exercise is not only about creating awareness, it’s about empowering communities and giving them the know-how and information needed to create more resilient housing.
Green Cross Australia has also run Build It Back Green workshops that seek to reduce household greenhouse gas emissions, improve community resilience through good design and engagement, invest in green school infrastructure, invest in commercial, government and public buildings, invest in green infrastructure projects and develop solutions for low income residents that reduce energy, water and waste.
Significantly, the Build It Back Green model is now being used by 7000 Victorians whose homes were destroyed in the Black Saturday fires. It is also now being taken up by residents in Perth who faced the bushfires there in January.
Read the rest of this article by Leon Gettler on The Fifth Estate.
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2011 Brisbane Ideas Competition
Posted in Events by Kate Archdeacon on December 7th, 2010
Source: Contour Newsletter
“What is missing from Brisbane?”
“What does Brisbane need for the future?”
By proposing these intentionally broad and ambiguous questions we hope to encourage debate and discussion across a wide fields about the future of our city. As a practice of ethical professionals who understand and appreciate our responsibility to the future generations who occupy our city, we hope the inaugural Brisbane Ideas competition will facilitate debate, discussion and discovery.
It is the hope that the broad entry requirements will solicit entries across a wide range of disciplines, from Architecture, Art, Science, Urban Design, Engineering among others. While we expect a wide range of entries, please ensure they are all graphically represented and meet the submission requirements. We would encourage entries from the large urban scale through to the bespoke artefact.
The final outcome of the competition will be a series of exhibitions throughout the city, opening with a one month exhibition of the grand prize winner and the honourable mentions. Held in a public venue in the heart of the central business district, adjacent to the government precinct of the city. It is through this wide and continued exposure that the the competition will encourage discussion and debate about the proposals and the future of our city. Finally this is expected to be a fun competition.
Deadlines:
Registration – 3 January 2011
Stage 1 Submissions – 10 January 2011
Visit the competition website for more information, including prizes and how to enter. (http://competition.heise.com.au/)
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Integrating Sustainability Into Design Education
Posted in Models, Research by Rob Eales on September 9th, 2010
Source: Core 77
From “The designers’ accord educational toolkit: what does it really take to encourage sustainable practice?” by Valerie Casey:
How can we start thinking about sustainability as intrinsic part of good design, instead of an addendum? How can we embrace the potential impact of our craft to design new services, shape organizational behavior, and enable policy change, not just churn out artifacts? How can we assume accountability for what our designs influence, and not just the design itself?
These are the questions many of us have been asking constantly—and answering with only with limited success—for years. I am reminded of the confusion designers have around this topic each time I publicly speak about sustainability—the first comment from the audience during Q+A is always the same: “Tell us what to do!” We are a profession who spends our entire lives generating new ideas, challenging the status quo, and building glorious concepts from nothing, yet remarkably we are paralysed when confronted with the issue of how to meaningfully engage in the most important issue of our time.
One of the best ways we can advance our mission to practice sustainable design is to make sure the next generation of designers will graduate with a value system that reflects the new realities of our profession.
This is the challenge the Designers Accord sought to address when it started 3 years ago. The concept was simple: if designers, educators, and business leaders could openly share knowledge and experience about sustainability, we would collectively (and more quickly) build our intelligence around these issues, and then generate more innovative and world-changing ideas.
We all know that a single solution, technology, or person will not solve the humanitarian and climate change challenges we face. There is no silver bullet, but there is silver buckshot. One of the best ways we can advance our mission to practice sustainable design is to make sure the next generation of designers will graduate with a value system that reflects the new realities of our profession. With this in mind, two weeks ago the Designers Accord launched another means of sharing knowledge with the Toolkit to integrate sustainability into design education.
Read the full article by Valerie Casey on Core 77.
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Urban Heat Island Effect: Research & Collaboration
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on September 8th, 2010
Source: Environmental Research Web
From “Urban cool” by Roland Ennos:
Cities are hot, noisy places with poor air quality that are prone to flash flooding during storms. In cities we are guilty of using huge amounts of energy for cooling in summer, heating in winter and transport the whole year round. Making cities more pleasant and sustainable places in which to live is therefore one of the key goals of environmental research, and it is one that physicists are ideally suited to contribute to, since most urban environmental problems are best understood in physical terms.
Physicists across the world, particularly those working in environmental physics and meteorology, are now collaborating with scientists from other disciplines to study the environmental performance of cities and establish how “green” these urban environments are. One particularly important environmental characteristic of cities is the “urban heat island”, whereby urban areas are hotter than their surrounding countryside. This is a real problem, which will be made even worse by climate change. It has therefore become a prime focus of research.
The urban heat island
Cities are typically about 4 °C hotter than the surrounding countryside and the larger they are, the bigger the difference. To understand why, we must consider the energy balance of the two areas (figure 1). Although heating, air-conditioning and transport all produce energy in cities, this is a surprisingly small component of their heat balance – only about 50 W m–2. Except for in winter, this is dwarfed by the energy we receive from the Sun, which even in the UK peaks at more than 800 W m–2. The difference between temperatures in a city and the surrounding countryside is therefore mostly due to what happens to the Sun’s energy in the two environments.
In rural areas, vegetation reflects about a quarter of the incoming short-wave radiation (visible light or shorter wavelengths). Of the three-quarters that is absorbed, much of the energy is used to evaporate water from leaves – a process known as “evapotranspiration”. This cools the vegetation, which therefore radiates little long-wave radiation (infrared), and even less energy remains to heat the air by convection and to heat the soil by conduction.
In cities, where vegetation has largely been replaced by buildings and roads, the energy balance is dramatically altered. Dark, artificial materials reflect less – and absorb more – radiation than vegetation. This lower “albedo” means that only about 10% of the Sun’s radiation is reflected; this figure is even lower in high-rise cities where light is reflected down into urban “canyons”. Almost all of this energy goes into heating the dry roads and roofs, where it is either stored in bricks and mortar or heats the air above, thus raising daytime surface and air temperatures well above those of the surrounding countryside.
At night the difference in temperature between the countryside and the urban heat island can become even more pronounced. Cities cool down more slowly because there is more heat stored in its buildings, which continues to dissipate into the night; there is more pollution to trap long-wave radiation; and within urban canyons less of the cool sky is visible, so less radiation can escape.
All this causes major problems for city-dwellers. The rise in urban air temperature above that of the surrounding countryside, which can reach 7 °C in a metropolis like London, makes cities less comfortable places to live in during the summer months. Soaring temperatures increase ill health and can even kill people during heatwaves: it is thought that more than 35,000 people died in Europe as a result of the 2003 heatwave, most of them in towns and cities. The urban heat island also makes cities less sustainable, since it increases the amount of energy used for air-conditioning – energy that is pumped into the open air and just makes the situation worse. Fortunately, physics shows that two very different methods could be used to alleviate the urban heat island: using “cool surfaces”; and using vegetation, or “green infrastructure”.
Read the rest of this informative article by Roland Ennos on Physics World.
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Fit Cities: Design & Policy Collaboration
Posted in Models, Movements by Kate Archdeacon on September 7th, 2010
Source: MetropolisMag
From “Design + Policy = Fit Cities” by Susan Szenasy:
George Miller, the current president of the American Institute of Architects and a local [NY] practitioner, opened the fifth annual Fit City symposium at the Center for Architecture, in Manhattan, by challenging the crowd to rethink the planning, architecture, and design of our metropolis, with the goal of encouraging physical activity and healthy lifestyles. Our city is in the midst of a health emergency: 43 percent of elementary school children are overweight or obese, and diabetes rates are climbing, driving health-care costs up and life expectancies down. Clearly, a shift in mind-set is needed. “Ninety percent of the game is half mental,” Miller quipped, channeling Yogi Berra, master of the malaprop. That morning in May foretold an era of collaboration between policy makers and the creative community. Fit City 5, a partnership between the local AIA chapter and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, attracted stakeholders from public health, education, and design as well as other concerned citizens.
Sustainability in the Tropics: Whole-Community Approach
Posted in Movements by Kate Archdeacon on May 7th, 2010
Source: Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF)
From Green Home Community Profile: Cairns
If you had to nominate the most beautiful place in Australia it would be hard to go past the lush rainforests and coral reefs of far north Queensland. But the very natural icons that make this place so special also make it vulnerable, and in response to this threat, organisations and individuals throughout the local community have banded together to do their bit to reduce their environmental footprint and limit the impacts of climate change.
As Sarah Hoyal, the coordinator of the Cairns and Far North Environment Centre (CAFNEC) explains, “The impacts of climate change on our World Heritage rainforests and the Great Barrier Reef will be extreme, and the local community realises how important it is to act. Whether it’s residents who don’t want to see our unique ecosystems harmed or local businesses concerned about the economic impact this will have, we’re all moving in the same direction.”
As for where this action needs to take place, the answer is simple: everywhere.
“When you’re in a regional area you can’t afford to draw artificial distinctions between individual behaviour at home, communities protecting their local environments, planning decisions by local councils and overall government policy,” says Sarah. “They’re all part of the bigger picture.”