Environnement

Land Art Generator Initiative

Land Art Generator Initiative.

The goal of the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) is to design and construct Land Art / Environmental Art installations that have the added benefit of large scale clean energy generation. Each sculpture will continuously distribute clean energy into the electrical grid with each land art sculpture having the potential to provide power to thousands of homes. Land Art is an art movement in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked. Works of Land Art are sometimes created with only the natural materials of the surroundings. In this case, we are asking interdisciplinary artist teams to use technology as the medium for art in a way that is sympathetic to and inspired by the natural surroundings. Art has the proven ability to create movements and stimulate creative dialogue. The artist community has long taken a critical approach to the problems of energy use and production, which has helped to open the public eye to the severity of the problems facing us. The time is now for artists to go further and take an active role in solving the problem through their own work: "solution-based art practice".

Straw: The Next Great Building Material? - EBN: 4:3

Straw: The Next Great Building Material? - EBN: 4:3.

When the idea of building houses out of straw bales began gaining popularity about ten years ago, you could hardly mention the idea without generating a plethora of jokes about the three little pigs. Today—hundreds of houses later—straw is being taken a little more seriously. Books on the subject are selling like hotcakes, and even code officials in some areas are accepting this building system. While straw-bale construction is where most of the interest lies today, the use of straw in panelized construction systems will likely prove to be more significant for the building industry in the long term. This article takes an in-depth look at straw as a building material, including both straw-bale building systems and building products produced from straw.

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

About the Centre | Centre for Design

About the Centre | Centre for Design.

The Centre for Design promotes sustainability through research, consulting, and capacity building through active dissemination and professional development. We are recognised internationally for our innovative design methods and tools to support sustainable design of products and services – everything from packaging and consumer products to buildings, suburbs and cities. As Australia’s key node of activity in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), the Centre is dedicated to all aspects of achieving environmental sustainability outcomes, and undertakes fundamental research to inform policy and practice to this end.

About Us : Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT)

About Us : Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT)

About Us An Innovations Center for Urban Sustainability Founded in 1978, the Center for Neighborhood Technology has been a leader in promoting more livable and sustainable urban communities. In fact, our work focused on sustainable development before the term became as popular as it is today. As a creative think-and-do-tank, we research, invent, and test urban strategies that use resources more efficiently and more equitably.

Les balcons fleuris de la nouvelle modernité 1 - La végétation prend l’ascenseur. - Laboratoire de la ville du futur

Les balcons fleuris de la nouvelle modernité 1 - La végétation prend l’ascenseur. - Laboratoire de la ville du futur.

Depuis quelques années, on remarque mille formes de végétation grimper toujours plus haut sur les bâtiments, qu’il s’agisse d’édifices de plusieurs dizaines d’étages ou de gratte-ciel.

(photo : projet de logements - James Wines)

+ Le site d'Emilio Ambasz

+ Le site de James Wites

+ Les balcons fleuries (suite)

La paille sans la poutre ! - ArchiUrba

La paille sans la poutre ! - ArchiUrba.

Construire une maison en paille sans ossature bois Cela peut étonner... mais il est possible de construire des maisons en bottes de paille sans aucune autre structure ou support pour porter le poids de la toiture. Les maisons en paille les plus vieilles au monde ont été construites ainsi, au Nebraska, à la fin du XIXème siècle. Depuis lors, cette méthode de construction, où les bottes de paille, empilées en quinconce portent la toiture, est appelée la technique « Nebraska » ou « murs porteurs ».

Toward the Sentient City » Trash Track

Toward the Sentient City » Trash Track.

Nobody wonders where, each day, they carry their load of refuse. Outside the city, surely: but each year the city expands, and the street cleaners have to fall farther back. The bulk of the outflow increases and the piles rise higher, become stratified, extend over a wider perimeter. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities Imagine a future where immense amounts of trash didn’t pile up on the peripheries of our cities: a future where we understand the ‘removal-chain’ as we do the ‘supply-chain’, and where we can use this knowledge to not only build more efficient and sustainable infrastructures but to promote behavioral change. In this future city, the invisible infrastructures of trash removal will become visible and the final journey of our trash will no longer be “out of sight, out of mind”.

Lutter contre les GES

TIROLE Jean,  Conseil d'analyse économique

 

Organisé en décembre 2009, le Sommet de Copenhague a pour objectif de donner suite aux engagements pris dans le cadre du Protocole de Kyoto de 1997, qui fixait aux 38 pays les plus industrialisés, des objectifs de réductions des émissions de gaz à effet de serre (GES) sur la période 2008-2012. Le sommet a également pour but d'élargir la lutte contre le changement climatique à l'échelle mondiale. C'est dans ce contexte que le présent rapport a été réalisé.

Jean Tirole estime que " la réaction institutionnelle au défi climatique n'a jusqu'ici pas été à la hauteur des enjeux malgré de nombreux efforts concertés à partir de 1990, date du premier rapport du Groupe d'experts intergouvernemental sur l'évolution du climat (GIEC) ".

 

Pour Jean Tirole les conditions nécessaires à l'élaboration d'un accord international sur le changement climatique sont :

• l'efficacité d'une politique fondée sur un système mondial de quotas échangeables, assurant l'unicité du prix du carbone ; 
• la crédibilité des engagements des Etats qui requiert la mise en place de mécanismes incitatifs et de sanctions; 
• l'adhésion des principaux acteurs qui peut être obtenue par des allocations initiales de quotas plus généreuses aux Etats logiquement réticents, en leur laissant le soin de les redistribuer en interne. 

Le rapport est accompagné de commentaires et de nombreux compléments sur le sujet.

 

Télécharger le rapport

The World's Water

The World's Water.

In an ongoing effort to understand the connections between water resources, water systems, and international security and conflict, the Pacific Institute initiated a project in the late 1980s to track and categorize events related to water and conflict. A list of water-related conflicts in the myths, legends, and history of the ancient Middle East was published in Environment magazine (Gleick 1994) and this has formed the basis for our Water and Conflict Chronology.

+ Environnement & security water conflict chronology

Grenelle 2

Tandis que la loi "Grenelle 1" adoptée en juillet dernier restait au stade des orientations et des objectifs, beaucoup de choses vont maintenant se jouer avec le "Grenelle 2", autrement dit le projet de loi portant engagement national pour l'environnement. 

Tous les volets de ce texte souvent décrit comme la "boîte à outils" du Grenelle auront un impact direct pour les collectivités : bâtiments et urbanisme, transports, énergie et climat, biodiversité, risques, santé et déchets, gouvernance... Ce projet de loi déjà volumineux au départ (104 articles), a été enrichi de 349 amendements lors de son passage en commission.

Pas évident, du coup, de s'y retrouver. 

Pour vous permettre de suivre de près l'évolution de ce texte et de mieux cerner ses enjeux concrets, Localtis a réalisé un dossier législatif dédié, piloté par Anne Lenormand et réalisé avec l'appui du Cabinet de Castelnau. 

Au fil d'une série de 23 fiches détaillées, vous saurez tout ou presque sur ce qu'il prévoit en matière, par exemple, d'autorisation d'urbanisme ou de PLU, de performance énergétique ou d'énergies renouvelables, de transports urbains ou de nuisances sonores, de déchets ou de pollution des sols, d'évaluation ou de débat public.

+  Téléchargement Grenelle 2

Alternative for 53 West 53rd Street / Axis Mundi | ArchDaily

Alternative for 53 West 53rd Street / Axis Mundi | ArchDaily.

MoMa completed an $858 million expansion, yet the museum is still in need of additional room to house its growing collections. The Modern sold their Midtown lot to Hines, an international real estate developer, for$125 million. Hines, in turn, asked Pritzker Prize Laureate French architect Jean Nouvel to design two possible solutions for the site. “A decade ago anyone who was about to invest hundreds of millions on a building would inevitably have chosen the more conservative of the two. But times have changed. Architecture is a form of marketing now, and Hines made the bolder choice,” reported Nicolai Ouroussoff for The New York Times