Friday, November 20, 2009

How do we structure the Energy PROJECT?

As a general guideline, it appears that we first have to define best practices in energy efficient buidling/ town planning.
The next step could be to evaluate existing buildings based on our best practices priniciples. That's after the first presentation.


Lots of best practices exist in different countries.


"The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), provides a suite of standards for environmentally sustainable construction."


Another U.S. group that is sometimes said to be more progressive then LEED is Architecture 2030. "Architecture 2030 is a U.S. based, non-traditional and flexible environmental advocacy group focused on protecting the global environment by using innovation and common sense to develop, and quickly implement, bold solutions to global warming."


Germany, the UK, Switzerland and many other countries have similar rating systems in place, some of which are governmental, some which are private. By evaluating and comparing the main aspects of these systems, we hope to define what a Best Practice in Architecture should look like. At this point, we are not aware of similar systems in place for urban development. But there are also lots of good examples in place for urban developments, Freiburg, Copenhagen or Masdar City to name a few. We should also be able to develop best practices guidelines by looking at those.


Questions that arose from our first discussion are:
What is the motivation to build green? Why do architects/ developers want to pay to get their buildings certified? Also, how do we deal with existing building vs new buildings? Can they all follow the same standards and guidelines?


Do these existing rating systems consider the initial purpose of the architect? Or do they only rate energy performance? How can we evaluate "good architecture"?

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