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The first line of this article echoes my opinion of the LEED ratings:
“Building green is not about building structures that use lots of materials and energy, and then fixing them so that they become a little more efficient.”
The rest of the piece dives into the foolishness of glass façades, reasons to go local and the need for mandatory green standards in the National Building Code.
Read the full article :: Sunita Narain: Redoing green buildings
I recently wanted to use solar lightpipes for an interior design project but couldn’t find a supplier. Now, there is at least one company making them in India – in Hyderabad to be exact. I haven’t yet asked what the costs are though…
Go to :: Skyshade
Laterite blocks
I’ve never done a factory design before so this is going to be a lovely challenge. The clients contacted me because they want a plant which is as ecologically sound as is possible. The site is a 2-acre plot in Cuttack, Orissa on the banks of the Mahanadi. I spent most of my two days in Cuttack absorbing the processes and work-flow of the packaging industry.
It was my first visit to Orissa and a couple of things really surprised me:
calotropis
:: Laterite: I always thought it was a stone found only along the Konkan but apparently the Eastern Ghats have it too. Being found locally, we’ll be using it.
:: Calotropis: This shrub – food plant of the beautiful danaus chrysippus – grows more abundantly than I have seen anywhere before. The local horticulturist called it a weed which was not surprising.
Not exactly a name I’d choose for a website, but never mind. The content is wonderful.
Stair Porn via :: TreeHugger
The price of electricity in India has gone up substantially of late and the argument for eliminating incandescent bulbs has become even stronger. Scroll towards the bottom of this article to see cost comparisons for Bulbs, CFLs and Fluorescent Tubes.
View of the verandah which overlooks the river
It’s been a while but I finally got this page uploaded. The [RaBV] bungalow has been completed and the owners are living there already. Teething problems are still being sorted out–rather slowly–by the local contractor and they should be done soon. more…
This is absolutely wonderful. When it comes to inexpensive, self-help construction, you can hardly go wrong with this extremely low-tech system.
See :: Earth Bag House in Haiti
via :: Sustainable Design Update <http://sustainabledesignupdate.com/> (no longer available)
Just a few days ago, a friend of mine emailed an article from the NY Times talking about Orange County in California treating their sewage and then piping it back into people’s taps. Conceptually, it’s the correct thing to do but the cost attached is much too high. Of course, this is not the first place in the world trying to do something like this:
“Namibia’s capital, Windhoek, among the most arid places in Africa, is believed to be the only place in the world that practices ‘direct potable reuse’ on a large-scale, with recycled water going directly into the tap water distribution system”
Ironically, just a couple of days later, I came across an article about a county near Atlanta, Georgia, which has enough water in their system even though the surrounding areas are facing the spectre of drought. Instead of thinking along the lines of a sewage treatment plant, they created wetlands and planted forests so that the water got treated more naturally. It cost a lot less and it sounds a far more sustainable idea.
More: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (page no longer available)
Via : TreeHugger
After being a while in the pipeline, The Energy Research Institute – TERI – released GRIHA, (Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment) which has been developed keeping the Indian scenario in mind. GRIHA evaluates a building’s environmental performance over its life cycle and rates it based on a number of criteria. Now, the Ministry for Renewable Energy has said that they are thinking of giving incentives to green buildings in the form of tax breaks.
The Green Building Council, meanwhile, already has their own version of LEED here: LEED-India which is, apparently, more restrictive than its US counterpart. LEED has got the backing of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), which is not surprising given that their centre in Hyderabad received a Platinum award from the GBC.
Whether both rating systems survive or one will become the standard is unknown at this point and I had, so far, thought that GRIHA would be pushed aside by LEED’s marketing muscle. However, with the government stepping in with the promise of tax-breaks for GRIHA, it might just emerge the winner. If, on the other hand, the government is seen as interfering and the awarding of points is thought to be biased, it will serve nobody.
In the meanwhile, there are many who feel that neither system is holistic enough. See the article in Down To Earth magazine
UCLA has recently released a new version of a free software called HEED that helps architects in designing energy efficient homes. This supersedes “Solar” which I had tried a few years ago and been totally befuddled by. I’ve just given HEED a spin after downloading the climate data for Bombay (Mumbai) from the EnergyPlus site and I will need time to fiddle with it before I can really make good use of it. However, I can say, even now, that it’s worth getting the hang of. If only it would give us more options for, say, materials and take graphical input from 3D dxf files instead of the primitive graph-paper-like drawing window… That would really make it a killer app.
Another useful tool from the same source is Climate Consultant v.3 – also recently released – which takes raw data (the same as used by HEED) and displays it as charts and graphs. Architects keen on improving the energy efficiency of their designs must try both of them. It may look daunting at first and the choices within HEED are somewhat limited but it still gives a good overall picture.
Go to :: Free Energy Design Tools