Environnement

Energy Neutral Portable Classroom – Anderson Anderson Architecture

Energy Neutral Portable Classroom – Anderson Anderson Architecture.

This portable classroom is designed to provide an optimized educational environment for students and teachers while advancing sustainable design principles. The classroom maximally conserves as well as collects and generates natural resources, including electrical energy, daylight, wind energy, and rainwater. As well as being strong, efficient and conserving, natural forces and resources are highlighted and exposed throughout the structure, and all systems and performance criteria are monitored and broadcast to the web. The building acts as a learning tool for occupants, other schools and the general public.

World's First Solar Powered Stadium In Taiwan | odd and funny stuff

World's First Solar Powered Stadium In Taiwan | odd and funny stuff. 

Taiwan recently finished construction on a solar-powered stadium that will generate 100% of its electricity from photovoltaic technology Designed by Toyo Ito. The 50,000-seat arena will officially open later this year to welcome the 2009 World G ames which features many sports not included in the Olympics Such as parachuting, tenpin bowling and rugby sevens

Traitement des eaux de pluies en ville

Ultra-Urban BMP - FHWA.

 Stormwater Best Management Practices in an Ultra-Urban Setting: Selection and Monitoring.

Best management practices (BMPs) are used to mitigate the effects of highways and roads on local conditions, in terms of both water quantity and water quality effects. BMPs are used to reduce peak flows, to reduce runoff volumes, and to reduce the magnitude and concentrations of constituents in runoff. Numerous studies have been done on the effectiveness of BMPs, although past studies have emphasized more traditional BMPs such as wet and dry ponds and vegetative practices. A new, emerging area of BMPs includes technologies for highly urbanized, highly impervious ("ultra-urban") areas. Many of these practices use existing stormwater and wastewater technologies, modifying them to fit into the ultra-urban environment.

The Wetland Machine of Sidwell

Pruned: The Wetland Machine of Sidwell.

Typically, wastewater is drained away via a complex network of tunnels that requires vast financial resources just for its maintenance, an infrastructure that's undoubtedly deteriorating just as fast as tax revenues get siphoned off away from public works budgets to General Motors and Bank of America. Miles and miles away from its point of origin, the water then gets treated in an energy intensive process. But it still isn't entirely clean afterwards. Thus, when discharged, it still poses a risk to bodies of water, contributing in many instances to elevated bacterial count and eutrophication. At Sidwell, wastewater is treated on-site, somewhat off-the-grid and using comparatively minimal infrastructure. The treatment cycle begins inside the building in a tank filled with anaerobic bacteria. Among other things, these bacteria help break down solids. The effluent is then pumped outside to a trickle filter before continuing on by gravity to a series of tiered wetlands. To lessen the health risk of contact with students and to mitigate any odor problems, water flows through beneath layers of pea gravel; there's no surface flow, in other words. This planting medium contains phytoremediating plants which, together with the microorganisms attached to their root hairs and to the gravel stones, extract contaminants from the water.

  

• Pour en savoir plus : le site de l'agence Andopogon