New Cooling Technology for Buildings Works In the Full Heat of a Sunny Day – electrical engineers at Stanford have discovered a “metal-dielectric photonic structure” that acts like a mirror to solar light reflecting the Sun’s energy, emits what it reflects within a specific range of …
A Building Not Just Green, but Practically Self-Sustaining – the about-to-open Bullitt Center in Seattle hopes to be “the world’s greenest” office building. It’s aiming for certification with the Living Building Challenge, “the built environment’s most rigorous performance standard” and which requires 12 months of continuous occupancy to qualify. The article …
Living Willow Hedges – post with photos of hedges, or hedgerows, made with live willow. Living fences woven from the genus Salix work in the Northern Hemisphere where they are native and root easily. More on living fences: Multifunctional Living Fences – includes benefits / disadvantages, suitable species, how …
Keetwonen (Amsterdam student housing) – called “the biggest container city in the world” Keetwonen provides popular housing for students in Amsterdam, 1000 units. Each has its own kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, study room, and balcony. The initial fears of some people that the container homes would be too small, too noisy, too …
First Large Wave Power Generator Installed in Lysekil, Sweden – Uppsala University is installing the first generator of what will become the first large-scale wave power farm for producing electricity. “The generator will be the first in the world not to use permanent magnets. The materials in …
Happy Pi Day! Here’s Some of the Wackiest Celebrations Around the World – about how people around the world celebrate this day (March 14) honoring the Pi, a ratio that’s written in shortened form as 3.14 . …one of the most beautiful and confounding numbers in mathematics. … Pi …
Quick, how many engineers or engineering firms can you name? If you’re having a little trouble, now’s your chance to become more aware of the huge contribution these inventive thinkers make to our built environment. Here are a couple of links with practical information on what engineers do and what …
Circular bicycle bridge hovers over busy highway – walkers and bicyclists in the Dutch city of Eindhoven have a great way to cross a major intersection, via this wonderful floating bridge designed by ipv Delft. You get a taste of it in the 1-min clip accompanying the post and also …
Earthen Architecture: A Technique of the Past Helping Us Toward a Greener Future – UNESCO and Building Green Futures are working together to build a women’s center in Palestine made out of earth, or mudbrick, an ancient tradition that’s excellent at conserving energy. … over one third of the world’s population lives …
Instructional Video of the Day: How to Build Skyscrapers Over Moving Trains – 2:46 min video shows method of construction to be used by ‘mega-developer’ Brookfield in Manhattan West. The company intends to develop two 60-story towers without interrupting train traffic, though a dozen tracks connecting Penn Station to …
Two from Data Center Knowledge: The Evolution of Facebook’s Data Center Cooling (Dec 4, 2012) – Facebook is making changes in a phase of its fresh air cooling system that manages humidity and heat removal. In the first building of its data center campus in North Carolina, Facebook used …
We’re In This Together: What the Dutch Know About Flooding That We Don’t – The Dutch attitude toward flood control is very different from that in the U.S. Being a much smaller country where everyone shares the dangers of flooding, the Dutch have developed a collective approach to mitigation. That collectivist …
Knocking Down Huge Buildings Quietly, Floor by Floor – Japanese construction firm Taisei has developed a new system for taking down a building that reduces noise and dust pollution dramatically. It involves housing the crew and machinery in a structure at the top of the building, called the “big …
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat’s Year in Review: Tall Trends of 2012 is filled with statistics and observations on tall buildings, from 2012, trends from 1960-2014, by location, material, and function, and by global region. Although the pace of completions slowed in 2012, there is no indication of a …
Largest modular high-rise – post about recent groundbreaking in Brooklyn for what will be the world’s largest pre-fabricated building. The 32-storey / 363-apartment structure is the first of a planned 15. Designed by SHoP Architects (also image source). As quoted from the New York Times: …next spring, 125 …
Post on the Blog of the Long now, India’s Living Bridges, is about traditional bridges grown from roots in Northeast India. Check out the 4:30-min clip and the link to more images on Atlas Obscura’s website (a site that’s definitely worth a look). The root bridges, some of which are …
Fascinating article from The New York Times, True Blue Stands Out in an Earthy Crowd, with observations of interest to designers: In healthcare: Sick children like their caretakers in blue: A recent study at the Cleveland Clinic found that young patients preferred nurses wearing blue uniforms to those …