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Taking Recycling to New Heights

Travelodge, an international hotel chain, recently opened a new hotel in Uxbridge, England, on the outskirts of London. While this news isn’t particularly noteworthy, the materials and resultant construction method used are noteworthy. Using Verbus Systems prefabricated shipping containers, the 120-room hotel was completed with an estimated savings of more than 500,000 pounds and 10 weeks of construction. The hotel used 86 containers of varying size, which were retrofitted and bolted onsite. The exterior was clad with windows after installation, creating a seamless-looking hotel from the outside.

But Travelodge isn’t stopping there. Excited by the combination of a hotel that combines building materials that are more durable than some traditional materials and significantly cheaper to install, the chain is building a 307-room hotel in Heathrow. Because of the containers’ modular form, Verbus estimates that installation is 40-60% quicker than traditional building methods and doesn’t require specialized labor, another cost savings for project owners. Verbus also claims a 70% reduction in onsite waste.

Travelodge isn’t the first project owner to construct a project with either prefab or recycled shipping containers. In New Zealand, industrial design lecturer Ross Stevens built a residential house using recycled containers, which are ideal for vertically-inclined projects. And despite the rugged and modular form of the containers, the house still maintains a modern living aesthetic that is offset by balconies and terraces. You can also scroll down the page and check out “Related Posts” for additional projects.

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Posted by Paul Riccardi on October 22, 2008 9:36:00 AM EDT #

Proposed changes to ADA regulations

 

The Justice Department recently completed a draft totaling 1,000 pages of proposed changes to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). The sweeping changes would affect facilities of all kinds, including courthouses, drinking fountains, amusement park rides, stadium and theater seating, fishing piers, boat slips, and bowling lanes. The regulations would establish specific design requirements catered to each facility.
Business owners see the changes as a financial drain, leading to expensive construction costs and potential losses in revenue while construction is completed. Disability rights advocates praise the legislation as long overdue, but also view it as only one major step in a process to make public facilities more easily accessible to the disabled.
The Justice Department is estimating that more than 7 million businesses will be affected, with construction costs to bring those businesses into compliance totaling more than $23 billion over the next 40 years.
The rules would apply to new businesses and facilities and to alterations of existing ones. Businesses also would have to remove ‘readily achievable’ barriers — changes that don't require a lot of difficulty or expense. The proposal was published by the government last month. Final regulations could take effect next year, after a period for public comment.
While the costs to bring facilities into compliance may severely impact small businesses, the potential revenue stream from the roughly 51 million disabled Americans could prove to be a financial boon to those same companies.
Critics from both sides of this issue are already weighing in on the potential consequences of passage of this proposed legislation. Disabled rights advocates are concerned about a “safe harbor” provision that would let small businesses meet their obligation to remove barriers in a given year if, in the preceding year, they spent at least 1 percent of their gross revenues on barrier removal.
“We are worried about people claiming ‘we did this, this and this, we renovated the bathroom on the second floor’ but you still can't get in the three steps at the front door,” said Kleo King, senior vice president of accessibility services at United Spinal Association. “There’s too much room for abuse here.”
Business groups fear the changes will lead to a new round of lawsuits from “drive-by” ADA lawsuits that are attempts by lawyers to get quick cash settlements. Both sides have said that much uncertainty remains and are asking the Justice Department to clarify some points before releasing the final rules.
While waiting for the changes to be passed, design and construction professionals would be wise to familiarize themselves with some of the changes. This would give firms a head start on methods to bring facilities into compliance. To see the proposed changes, go to the ADA website at www.ada.gov/NPRM2008/ADAnprm08.htm.
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Posted by Paul Riccardi on July 25, 2008 9:56:00 AM EDT #

New Green Building Standards

In May, a new version of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) ratings system for buildings was released for public comment. Rick Fedrizzi, President, CEO and Founding Chair of the U.S. Green Buildings Council, the organization that oversees LEED, wrote that the new system “delivers against key environmental and human health impacts, and puts in place a transparent framework for weighting credits accordingly, based on the best available science.” The public comment period will be open until June 22.

The 2009 version of LEED was crafted to increase the rating system's emphasis on a building's environmental, economic, and social impact. As Ted Smalley Bowen of the Architectural Record writes, the new version “consolidates the many LEED variants, such as the versions for new construction and commercial interiors, into a core set of requirements.” Smalley continues:

Other key changes include the addition of bonus points (eventually core points) for addressing regional environmental conditions, and a methodology for reallocating points within the scoring system to give greater weight to human health and the environment.

The new version also shifts the scale of credits to 100 points, up from the current 69, and places greater emphasis on limiting greenhouse gas emissions. An interesting exploration (and a slightly more critical and humorous one) of the changes can be found at the blog Real Life LEED.

The new release comes on the heels of a study by The American Institute of Architects (AIA) of the three green building rating systems, LEED, Green Globes, and SBTool 07, which asses how the programs “resonate in various dimensions with the goals of the AIA position statements on sustainability.” The statements, part of a larger AIA goal to achieve carbon neutrality in construction by 2030, can be found here.

The study seems to find LEED the most complete system, noting that Green Globes needed more “stringent and specific requirements in the areas of energy reduction and operational performance” since they have a direct relationship with carbon emissions. Similarly, the study looked for SBTool 07 to be more rigorous in their standards, preferring “‘required’ items vs. those that are simply ‘encouraged.’"

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Posted by Stephen Levay on June 19, 2008 3:51:00 PM EDT #