Alec 2.2 is Solar Powered, made of Nontoxic Materials, and LEED compliant

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Sustainable design is a particularly hot topic in architecture because buildings consume nearly half of ALL energy produced in the US. Of that, most energy is spent on Heating and Cooling and Lighting

Wednesday was another "mandatory" lecture. I finally pieced together why the faculty are using such aggressive language: the faculty are getting into trouble with the administration because the student turn out at the lectures are low. Wednesday's lecture was actually quite interesting because it was webcast called The 2010 Imperative. Click here to see it. For those who don't know, a webcast is usually live digital video which is published on the internet at a specific time for anyone on the internet to log in and watch and comment. I was surprised at how realistic the speakers were, discussing the necessary moves by politicians, building material manufactures, colleges, etc. more importantly, setting specific timetables and goals. The Imperative of 2010 is that by then design schools will be teaching mainly ecological instead of architectonic design.

This whole thing is actually part of a larger program called the 2030 challenge issued to cities. The gist is that by 2030, all buildings will be carbon neutral to operate- i.e. need no outside energy. Possible, but difficult.

The tone of the speakers was really interesting to me. They talked very straight, very dry, but they seemed to have the manner of instructing the passengers of the Titanic to move to one side of try to tip the ship enough that it misses the iceberg. There was a palpable nervousness and desperation which seemed to come through which was the unnerving thing. Like Noah giving swimming lessons.

Interestingly, there was little talk about developing nations. We're still the number one emitter of carbon dioxide and pollution, but China and Russia will surpass us in less than 2 years I bet. China's already using more coal and fast gaining on oil consumption. The fires that slash and burn squatters set in Indonesia account for an obscenely huge slice of the global CO2 emissions, but we didn't discuss them either. I have a feeling we're going to arrive at a very Danish point in 2010-2020, when we've cleaned up our act mostly through legislation and pop demand/culture, and we're going to look around and realize that while we've struggled so hard to curb and diminish our emissions and pollution, China and Russia will be hitting their stride economically speaking. I have to tell you, there aren't many ecological lobbyists in those countries. To be blunt, it will have to be strictly economic, and short-term at that, imperatives for those countries to take note and change their power and consumption practices.

But I digress.

The "simple little box" I titled my earlier blog referred to a speaker who asked "why can't they just put a simple little box in the bottom of the screen in whatever design program you're using which will tell you how much carbon emissions your building would have. That way, whenever you made a design decision, it could show you if it increased the carbon emissions or reduced them." There are a few small problems with this little box.
It would have to be a massive program which could calculate not only heat gain depending on the position and location of windows AND shading by other structures AND taking all the materials of the structure into account working interdependently, but it would also have to account for the carbon cost of every quantity of material, AND take local weather and lighting into account in all of its calculations. Besides the heating and cooling, it would also have to be a light-rendering engine which could calculate wattage, lumens, AND required lighting levels for each state code applied to every space in the building. In short, you're talking about three or four stand alone programs along with some that don't even exist yet. This is hardly a little box.

OK! Enough with that day!