Week 4 - Urging for Alternatives Energy? Think through!

Comes along with urban sprawl is the increasing demand on energy. Energy consumption is becoming one of the major sustainable issue around the world. Traditional fossil fuel generation of electricity is not favourable any more. Alternatives need to be established in order to reduce GHG emission from energy generation.

Of course, the mostly talked about clean energy, is solar energy. The absolutely clean, free of use and unlimited provided source of energy. There are a great amount of technologies and energy plants have been developed in order to use solar energy.

Instead of urging the government and institutions to go for alternative energies, why don't we think about it by ourselves?

The uptake of innovative technologies is actually the "true way" to save the world. As US president Obama priorities the creation of a more sustainable future, it is said that innovative technologies are the "key to success".

For example, electric cars. We probably all know that instead of using petrol or gas, electric cars uses electricity, which reduces the GHG emitted from motor vehicles. But, to be honest, I did not know that electric cars can feed energy back into the power grid.

Not only for the electric cars, but also another technologies. We have been talking about how to transform the wastes into benefits. There are actually developed technologies to transform the waste into energy. Therefore, it comes to the scenario that by waste becomes others' treasure. Apart from benefits to the whole society, going for sustainable technologies can also increase personal savings. Some home technologies such as solar panel and solar hot water systems can significantly produce sufficient energy or hot water. Self-generating means less demand from the grid and a smaller amount of bills received. A lower demand would as well decrease the generation from traditional fossil fuel systems.

Heaps of Green Products already available on the market.

Therefore, in my opinion, alternatives of energy is not the matter of governments or institutions, but the actions by ourselves. There is already a large amount of innovative products on the market. We have to stop blaming the governments of not developing and improving the technologies. Demand influents supply, if we all trying to use these innovative technologies, the technologies will naturally be improved by the market.



So, let's start. Considering the new technologies when you purchase your next goods. Al though it might cost you extra money, it will pay off in the future.








Resources:
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/05/innovation-and-collaboration-are-keys-sustainable-energy-future

http://www.northeastern.edu/magazine/the-very-big-issue-of-urban-sustainability/

https://www.uml.edu/News/stories/2016/Trelles-NSF-award.aspx

http://inhabitat.com/15-green-household-products-that-can-save-you-money-and-cut-down-your-energy-bill/

Week 4 - Turning your drink into the way you walk on

Have you ever thought of the coffee ground after you drink could become a proper road or pavement underneath your feet?

As an architectural student, I have been drenched in the obsession of new type of building and construction materials. Not saying those proper building materials like steel and concrete, but those unexpected materials from our lives.

The material I have been studied on earlier was Tyres. With urbanisation, vehicles are taking up the road. A higher demand on vehicles means a larger consumption on tyres. As tyres are made of rubbers which is undegradable, used tyres is becoming one of the largest  volume of waste on the earth. As tyres is a rather stable material, it has been studied how to be used on building constructions, which needs this stable properties as well.

It is very interesting to start seeing how the waste turning into usable things. I have always been thinking it is one of the greatest recycling idea I know, until I come to this news. It is about turning the coffee grounds into the road we all walk on!

Lately, Professor Arul Arulrajah and his research team has announced that they found a new type of material for our road construction. And, the most interesting part is, this material is more usual than waste tyres! It is coffee grounds from our daily coffee consumption!

In their studies, they just simply sourced the coffee grounds from the campus cafes, then they dried them out in the oven for five days at a degree of 50 degrees centigrade. After that they filtered the coffee ground and mixed it with one more waste product from steel manufacturing, slag. After adding a liquid alkaline solution and bind the materials together, they compressed the mix into cylindrical blocks.

It turns out that the mix is strong enough to be a subgrade material, which sits underneath the road surface.

Professor Arul Arulrajah in experiment.

Inspiration of the experiment is from the team's daily observation. After they saw baristas disposing a huge amount of coffee grounds everyday, they started to research then found out that a cafe can produce 150KG of coffee grounds waste per week. This triggers their thinking on how to get the waste into sustainable materials. 

The successful experiment brings a great news to the world. For wasted tyres, only drivers are the "maker" of the waste, however for coffee grounds, everybody drinks a cup or more per day. As professor Arulrajah says, "We estimate that the coffee grounds from Melbourne's cafes could be used to build five kilometres of road per year. This would reduce landfill and the demand for virgin quarry materials."

I admire this experiment. It is a huge step for human being, by turning the daily waste into a material of the infrastructure we use everyday. The exciting news gives hope to the world, that our world is being changed, to a more healthy living environment.






Resources:
http://www.gizmag.com/coffee-grounds-road-material/43328/
http://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/latest-news/2016/05/coffee-more-than-a-just-drink-for-swinburne-engineers.php
http://www.thefifthestate.com.au/education/how-your-coffee-habit-could-lead-to-more-sustainable-roads/82158

Week 3 - Sustainable Ideas that Architects Should Aware Of

Maybe large scale commercial or public buildings need a lot of people to work in the projects, as well as a large amount of consultants. But, small scale residential buildings seems to be closer to architects' personal decisions. Even if it is not their call, they would have their chances to design their own home. In this case, implying sustainable design in the houses can save up a lot of energy consumption in the long run.

The term is called Passive design. As it is pretty well known that cooling and heating requirements are the largest energy consumption in average Australian homes (about 40%). Therefore controlling heating and cooling can save a lot of energy in households. Passive design is one of the most effective way to do it, as it is the design that "takes advantage of the climate to maintain a comfortable temperature range in the home".

To me, I am not an Australian, I am from China where high-rise apartment takes place predominantly. In the high density apartments, compared to detached dwellings, there is no or very weak idea of what passive design is, as well as climate in China is not as clearly identified, therefore I have never noticed the importance of passive design at home.

Fortunately I started my architectural studies in Australia. In Australia, sense of sustainability is very strong, as well as Australia has the best resource - the sunlight. By using that sunlight correctly, heating requirement in homes can be reduced significantly. 

There are a few points in considering passive design in households, including design for climate, orientation, shading, passive solar heating, passive cooling, sealing properly to avoid the violent wind in Sydney, insulation, thermal mass, glazing and skylights. The basic principles in designing a simple home are as shown below:

A diagram showing passive design principles

Of course, they might not be the same in every housing due to the site constraints or regulation constraints. But the principles are the same, and they are transformable. 

I think, as an architect, contribution to sustainable living environment is essential. Buildings can make massive impact to our built environment, therefore every building we design is somehow changing the environment. A home built can last for over decades. If we can reduce energy consumption in every homes we design, and the effort lasts for decades, our contribution would be large to protect our planet. 


References:
http://www.yourhome.gov.au/passive-design
http://www.envirotecture.com.au/
http://www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/wp-content/uploads/passive_solar.jpg

Week 3 - Am I doing it right?

After last weeks' blog entries, I started to think about how am I doing in responding to the sustainability?

Written about the "deceptive" greenery on green buildings, it reminds me about a project I did in my architectural design studio in university last semester. Kind of like a self critic, I am starting to review how am I doing on the specific project.

The project located in George Street in Sydney CBD, adjacent to Wynyard Station. The brief is to design a mixed-used middle rise building on the site, including offices and other programs.

Of course start with site analysis. It is found that generally the site is lack of green spaces, therefore the idea firstly generated in my mind was - green building!

Subsequently the design strategies are developed - design a building with sufficient greenery, in order to improve working efficiency inside the building, provide relax space to tenants, as well as giving back the opportunity to enjoy greenery to public domain.

Image courtesy of my design.

The strategies including set up different scales of sky gardens, mid rise public garden and rooftop garden bars. Tenants also have smaller scale external sky gardens to relax during work. As well as, green façades to provide natural shading and thermal comfort to the tenants, and providing visual attraction to the city itself.

I actually quite like the design concept, until I came to the technical part of the design. To actually make the building work, there are a lot of aspects to consider, including how to make the sky gardens prolonging, how to make the green façade work, also the most important parts, how to provide maintenance and services to the green elements, not only on the sky gardens but also on the façade.

One of the details for sky garden in my design.

Figuring out the details are already some very painful works. I had to make sure it works, can survive from the wind and weather, as well as how it responses to solar. Choice of vegetation is important as well, to make sure the leave do not gone in the winters. I had to understand how much water these plants need as well.

To a more technical part, the irrigation and maintainence. This part was even more painful as it contains how to collect rain water, distribution after collection, energy consumption of the systems, etc. I had to also ensure that the media which the plants are planted on is suitable for the selected plants.

All these matters, all the technical issues are making the project extremely difficult. It kind of making me start to think about, how efficient is building "green" buildings in order to green the city? How much does it cost to create this kind of green buildings? Not only the upfront cost, but also the ongoing cost in order to make it prolonging.

Thinking about that, I admire those green buildings that are built, for example, central park in Sydney. I admire the architects and engineers to figure out such complicated systems to build the building. At the same time, I doubt that how much are they paying, to maintain the greenery on the buildings?

I still like my idea for this project, just that I will think more critically in similar projects in the future. Sometimes be realistic is more than be nice and idealistic.

Week 2 - Faulty Fantasy of Sustainable Sydney 2030

Australia is a highly urbanised country. After a long period of urbanisation process, Australian has realised the issues are coming along with population growth: pollution, water supply, garbage and urban sprawl. All these issues point toward environmental impact due to urban development. In some countries, it is realised that too many wetlands, forests and farming land are destroyed in order to make place for infrastructure and houses. 

Consequently sustainable development plans are raised all over the world. Things are also happening close to us. Sydney has make a set of goals to achieve and make the city greener, the whole development plan is called Sustainable Sydney 2030.

"What if Sydney had a light rail loop in the city centre, an indigenous Cultural Centre, a major new park at Darling Harbour, George Street reclaimed for people, and sustainable development over Central Railway Station's rail tracks?" By all means this is a beautiful vision of future Sydney. It is a vision that comes from people who care about climate, convenience of the city, and public space.

There are three main principles of Sydney Vision 2030:  A Global City, aims to place Sydney among key global players and stakeholders who depends on the global status of sustainable Sydney; A Green City, refers to the long term sustainability of the city; A Connected City, it promotes a future of a pedestrian based city as proposed by the architect Jan Gehl. It also promotes bicycle and public transport as the major travelling methods in metropolitan area. All of these strategies including learning from other successful cities and councils.

Artists Impression on Circular Quay Light Rail Station

Artists Impression of Light Rail on George Street

Major changes have already taken place in Sydney CBD. Buses have been moved away from Sydney CBD to give way to light rail construction, all bus routes are bypassing on the roads that parallel to George Street. Although the government has warned Sydneysiders that there might be interruption on their commuting, the problem still occurs severer than expected. 

As a sydneysider, I can feel the inconvenience from this movement. Due to the high demand and scarce land in Sydney CBD, parking fees are unbelievably high, and amount of parking slots are incredibly low. it is almost impossible to travel to city by driving. Before the movement, bus is the major method to travel to city from eastern suburbs, as there is no train available as well. Therefore travelling to city now seems more troublesome than it used to be.

Driving to city is also an issue. Since all buses have been bypassed on other roads, traffic congestion around city is severer. Traffics around Hyde Park is getting worse. It is claimed that these are all short term problems. Once the light rail construction is finished, travelling to city will be more efficient and sustainable.

However, some also said that it could be expected that there is a "permanent havoc". Once the light rail construction finished and light rail gets to run, "congestion will gridblock the city", as it will block all traffics travelling east-west through the city. Also moving bus lines to other streets, for example, Elizabeth Street, would line up the vehicles as the streets are not designed for that amount of traffic. The extra traffic is creating more carbon emission in the air. How sustainable is it? It worth a discussion.

It is understandable of all these doubts, judging by the current traffic condition due to the "big move". There is no doubt that the visions are beautiful. But how practical is it? The city is suffering, although it is claimed to be short term problem. Let's look forward to the future, maybe time will tell.







References: 
http://www.sydneymedia.com.au/3556-city-of-sydney-presents-2030-vision-for-a-green-global-and-connected-sydney/
https://www.planning.org.au/documents/item/459
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/sydneys-george-street-light-rail-construction-too-few-commutes-ready-for-bus-changes-20151005-gk1dqq.html

Week 2 - Deceptive Greenery? - "Green" Building

When urbanisation is taking up increasingly more lands,the amount of urban green space is decreasing over the decade. Architects therefore seek to give back greenery to public domain on high buildings. That is the reason of the prosperous of urban green building.

Green buildings here are not referring to the broader concept of sustainable/energy saving buildings, but merely to buildings with green. Generally, there are three categories provided in "green" buildings: green roofs, green sky gardens and green walls. Green wall, as the primary element deciding the building's appearance, being the most controversial one.

Green wall is famous for its lively appearance in urban condition. As time changes throughout the year, the colour, density and shape of the plants change. As a result, green wall is also called living wall. It is claimed to be beneficial - not only to the building tenants as it improves energy efficiency, protects building structure, improves indoor air quality, reduces noise and improves health and well-being, but also to the environment as it increases biodiversity in urban area, reduces urban heat island effect and improves air quality, also provides onsite wastewater treatment (including mitigates storm water runoff).

Artists Impression on Greenwalls in Sydney City

The benefits are attractive, however, it is sometimes questionable to say greenwall is sustainable, when considering the viability and longevity of the wall, we can see the difficulties of maintenance and possibilities of failures.

Living wall maintenance is highly relied on skills from individuals or companies in long run. There are examples that plants on green wall are expected to be replaced every single year because they are expected to die after a year (from a high profile college outside of Philadelphia). This is, no doubt, a very deceptive sustainable option.

In summary, there are two types of failure on green wall:

1. Material Breakdown
2. Plant Mortality, including cultural reasons and physiological reasons (disease, old age)

Choice of material to hold up plants is important. A poor material choice would lead to the failure of green wall. Therefore choice of holding material should provide sufficient strength (compression and tension) to hold up the plant, and also possibly contribute to biological processes to  the plant.  

Cultural reasons mainly refers to lack of education. Over watering or under watering, over fertilising or under fertilising, even temperature, lighting or wind condition change can destroy the green wall. Being delicate, means it needs delicate care to live.

There are heaps of reasons causing living wall failure. Yet, we cannot deny its benefits to the environment. There are methods to avoid green wall failure in reality:

1. Careful choice of material to drain water freely and to avoid anaerobic conditions in the root systems;
2. Careful choice of likeminded plants to avoid different maintenance needs;
3. Careful maintenance to selected plants, including proper amount of water, light and nutrients
4. Careful design with the greenwall area, avoid any elements that could change the micro-climate and affect the wall

I wouldn't say it is deceptive greenery, even though sometimes the maintenance cost excesses our expectation. I believe that with proper selection of material and plant, proper design of the irrigation system and the building, and education to the users, green wall in urban area could be effective in building sustainable cities.






Reference:
http://www.greenroofs.com/content/green-wall-deception-death-of-a-green-wall.htm
http://www.cityforest.com.au/
http://www.greenroofs.org/index.php/about/green-wall-benefits
http://www.greenroofs.com/content/articles/145-Living-Wall-Breakdown-Material-and-Flora-Relationship.htm#.Vy_IzjB96Uk