Schinnerer's RM Blog - sustainable design tag

Green Buildings Surviving Disasters

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:42:00 GMT

The ability of a building to withstand natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes is not currently taken into account by the United States Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system that rewards buildings for being sustainable. However, this may eventually change, as architects have been pointing out that a green building is one that doesn’t have to be rebuilt after a disaster. This is a valid point, due to all of the energy and materials that are necessarily expended during new construction. While it may take years for LEED to incorporate the resiliency of a building into its rating system, LEED does recognize that the ability to withstand disasters is an important aspect of sustainable structures.

Planting Roots for Sustainable Living

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:17:00 GMT

They say that old habits die hard. A Connecticut prep school is taking action to ensure that good habits as they pertain to sustainable living are instilled at a young age. Choate Rosemary Hall, in Wallingford, CT, will open the Kohler Environmental Center next fall. The center was made possible through a $20 million gift from Choate alumnus Herbert Kohler (CEO of Kohler Co), and was designed by Graham Wyatt and Kevin Smith of Robert A.M. Stern Architects.

As reported by Fast Company magazine, the 31,325 LEED Platinum facility will allow students to live there while competing against each other as they attempt to live their daily lives in the most sustainable way, in addition to creating and implementing an environmental project. As Linda Tischler writes:

The challenge is that while they're enjoying their new digs, they will constantly be managing their environment to try and be net zero—that is, they can't consume more energy than the building produces. The building's needs will be provided by a 325-kilowatt photovoltaic array, a roof-mounted solar water-heating system, a geothermal heat pump, a water-recycling system, and waste vegetable oil. Choate is considering installing stationary bikes so students themselves can generate power.

As a member of the Eight Schools Association, Choate is hoping that this experiment will spread to other schools and teach students about how their daily activities impact the environment and how little changes can add up to a big difference.

Creating an Urban Village

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:40:00 GMT

As the world’s population increasingly heads to cities for work, designers are faced with the daunting challenge of creating sustainable dwellings for these new urbanites. Creating sustainable buildings within limited space while maintaining some trace of village life poses unique parameters for designers.

A new exhibition in Taipei aims to show one possibility for a “vertical village.” A collaborative effort between MVRDV (an international design firm), The Why Factory (an urban development think tank), and the JUT foundation for arts and architecture, the vertical village is a “three-dimensional community that brings personal freedom, diversity, flexibility and neighborhood life back into East Asia.”

For more information on the exhibition and design efforts, go to the JUT’s website.

Computer Servers as Heating Systems

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:30:00 GMT

The EPA reports that servers and data centers are responsible for around 1.5 percent of the electricity consumption in the U.S. With the rise of cloud computing, that number is likely to climb in the future. A research paper from Microsoft Research suggests distributing some of these servers to offices and homes where they would function as heating systems under the term “data furnaces.” The temperature of the exhaust air generated by a computer server is over 100 degrees F, which would be perfect for heating a building space. The data furnaces would be managed remotely, and the research paper suggests that the owners of the computer servers (most likely cloud computing service operators) could provide free heat to host families. This arrangement would provide for a more sustainable IT industry; the industry could continue to grow without increasing its carbon footprint or its electricity consumption, and with significant cost savings.

For now the “data furnace” solution expressed in the research paper may be far-fetched, but in the future the rapidly growing IT industry may need to explore creative solutions such as this one.

Managing Sustainability Risks via Contract

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 18:21:00 GMT

We’ve written about the challenges of managing green design project risks (subheading “Green Design/Sustainability”), particularly in using written contracts to manage professional liability and client expectations. Managing client expectations is only the first step in navigating the risks that green designs pose.

With that in mind, the author behind the Green Real Estate Law blog, Stephen Del Percio, offers a law review article to help firms contractually manage their sustainability risks. Green Building Contracts: Considering the Roles of Consequential Damages & Limitation of Liability Provisions, co-written by Professor Darren Prum of Regis University, offers a comprehensive overview of consequential damages and limitation of liability provisions and how these concepts apply to the various stakeholders (design professional, contractor, and owner) in a green design project. The article then talks about the contractual provisions in the documents published by the AIA, EJCDC, ConsensusDOCS, and Design-Build Institute of America, and how these standard forms allocate the risk of consequential damages between the various project stakeholders. As Del Percio states,

"It concludes by providing a set of recommendations for owners, design professionals, contractors, and consultants to consider when negotiating similar provisions, most of which are relevant for any type of construction project whether green or not."