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M Moser Associates’ office in New York’s 1913-vintage Woolworth Building to be retrofit to Platinum WELL Building Standard

International architecture and design firm M Moser Associates is retrofitting and revitalizing their new office space on the 24th-floor of Manhattan’s Woolworth Building.

The Woolworth Building was built in 1913 and was, at the time, the tallest building in the world, engineered to maintain its own electricity, heat, and subway entrance, with windows that could, and still can, be opened when outdoor pollution levels are low.

While acknowledging challenges in retrofitting old office space, such as dealing with old electrical, old plumbing, and old HVAC, M Moser Associates points out that all buildings represent embodied energy and that embodied energy best be recognized and optimized.

As M Moser Associates revitalizes their office space on the 24th floor, the company will pursue both a Platinum Well Building Standard and USGBC LEED certification.

Initiated by Delos and the International WELL Building Institute, the WELL Building Standard is evidence-based, rating the quality of water, air, and light, and is geared toward occupant health, wellness, fitness, and productivity. The WELL Building Standard “marries best practices in design and construction with evidence-based medical and scientific research – harnessing the built environment as a vehicle to support human health and well-being.”

M Moser & Associates brings a similar focus on restructuring and re-engineering office space towards employee health, wellness, and productivity in all of its office spaces, including those in Hong Kong, London, San Francisco, and Guangzhou.

See:

“Woolworth Building Office in New York Becomes a Retrofit Lab” | Alyssa Danigelis, Environmental Leader, 30 October 2017

“Learning from Plans to Retrofit One of America’s Oldest Skyscrapers” | Adele Peters, Fastcodesign, 30 October 2017

Delos

#architecture #design #officespace #InternationalWELLBuildingInstitute #Delos #health #wellness #fitness #urbanliving #urbanluxury #luxury #realestate #commercialrealestate #CRE #builtenvironment #buildingtech #engineering #H2O #CO2 #HongKong #London #SanFrancisco #Guangzhou #resilience

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elegance in design & engineering meets recycling

Ten years in the making, a public-private partnership between the New York City Economic Development Corporation and Sims Municipal Recycling, a division of Sims Metal Management, designed and master-planned by Selldorf Architects, New York City’s 11-acre South Brooklyn Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility performs.

Opened in December of 2013, the 140,000-square-foot facility is the principal processing facility for all of New York City’s residential metal, glass, and plastic recyclables. The facility has the capacity to process 1,000 tons of recyclable material every day.

Selldorf Architects (architect to museums and galleries worldwide, including the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego) organized the buildings to create the site’s own urban context and designed the facility to optimize environmental performance.

The buildings are made from 99% recycled American-made steel. The buildings, wharf, recycling equipment, and electrical substations are elevated four feet – using a blend of recycled glass and crushed stone from Second Avenue subway tunneling operations – to prevent damage from sea level rise and storm surges. New York City’s first commercial-scale (100 kW) wind turbine and the City’s largest solar installation (600 kW) generate energy on site. On-site storm water management is included as are two acres of native plantings.

Access by barge will help eliminate 150,000 annual truck trips (240,000 truck miles). Newly-renovated freight rail will be used for the export of processed recyclables.

See:

“Sustainability and Design Tour of Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility” | AtlasObsura, May 2017

“Selldorf Architects’ Sunset Park recycling facility in Brooklyn sets a new standard in sustainable design” | Pei-Ruh Keh, Wallpaper, 13 December 2013

“Mayor Bloomberg, Deputy Mayor Holloway and Sanitation Commissioner Doherty Announce Opening of New State-of-the-Art Recycling Facility – Able to Process Metal, Glass and All Plastics in One Location” | Office of the Mayor, City of New York, 12 December 2013

“Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility” | Selldorf Architects

Sims Municipal Recycling

Sims Recyling Solutions

Sims Metal Management

#sunsetparkmaterialrecoveryfacility #Brooklyn #NewYork #NewYorkCity #SimsMetalManagement #SimsMunicipalRecycling #SelldorfArchitects #NYCEconomicDevelopmentCorporstion #recycling #architecture #design #art #museums #galleries #luxury #smartluxury #urbanluxury #resilience #energy #solar #solarenergy #windenergy #engineering #construction #buildingtech #tech #sealevelrise #stormsurge #CO2 #H2O #realestate #commercialrealestate #CRE #finance #ROI

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SFMOMA・optimizing for sustainability was the fun part

After three years of construction under the direction of architectural firm Snøhetta and environmental design firm Atelier Ten, the expanded and high-performing San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) opened to the public in May of 2016.

Doubling the size of the museum and tripling gallery space, the museum achieved and surpassed LEED gold, working towards maximum sustainability. Optimizing for maximum sustainability was the fun part.

Building on the the science of conservation, born out of the World-War-II-era movement of London artworks to slate caves in Wales, and on the San Francisco mandate that all new construction meet USGBC LEED gold criteria, the SFMOMA initiated a Sustainability Roundtable to research solutions that would work for the museum. Participants in the Sustainability Roundtable included museum staff and representatives from Atelier Ten, Snøhetta, Taylor Engineering, The Getty, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), the Indianapolis Museum of ARt, and Stanford University’s Anderson Collection.

Testing approaches and combinations of approaches iteratively, the group determined to optimize “seasonal set points” and customized every aspect of the structure’s design and systems including mechanical, lighting, water, and HVAC.

See:

“Optimize, Optimize, Optimize: Museum Conservation in the LEED Era” | Lindsey Westbrook, freelance editor and writer specializing in art, architecture, and design; clients include SFMOMA, SFMOMA

“SFMOMA reopens with Snøhetta extension that triples its gallery space” | Dan Howarth, Dezeen, 28 April 2016

#art #museums #artmarket #SFMOMA #SanFrancisco #architecture #design #resilience #builtenvironment #buildingtech #construction #tech #energy #conservation #luxury #smartluxury #urbanluxury #realestate #LEED #Snøhetta #AtelierTen #TaylorEngineering #Getty #MFABoston #IndianapolisMuseumofArt #AndersonCollection #CO2 #H2O #collectionsmanagement #contemporaryart #engineering

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towards ‘net zero’ construction for all buildings

“Our vision is to create possibilities to make net zero construction in an efficient way, giving everyone the possibility to do so.”

So articulates Jonathan Karlsson, Founder and CEO (with degrees in theoretical and construction physics) of Innenco, an international company based in Malmö, Sweden that performs.

Reports Inhabitat,

“It starts with their active systems: pipes are integrated into the frame construction to utilize a building’s thermal mass. Adding heat pumps and chillers to the system allows Innenco to get four to six times greater efficiency in heating and cooling. At this point they’re able to reduce energy by 85%, so to cover the last 15% they install Innenco Quantum Solar panels. ‘This makes an investment in solar cells much lower than a traditional system, and we can get net zero for a really cost-efficient investment.'”

See:

“This new energy concept from Sweden can make any building net zero” | Lacy Cooke, Inhabitat, 11 October 2017

Innenco

#Innenco #Malmö #Sweden #JonathanKarlsson #architecture #design #energy #netzero #CO2 #H2O #buildingtech #tech #physics #builtenvironment #resilience #thermalmass #efficiency #energyefficiency #costefficiency #performance #luxury #smartluxury #urbanluxury #urbanliving #realestate #finance #ROI #construction #Inhabitat

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iconic glass buildings ・energy neutral & aesthetically beautiful

Looking beyond roof surface to make modern commercial and residential buildings energy neutral, Physee, a tech startup headquartered in the Netherlands, has developed and installed the world’s first commercial, fully transparent solar-power-generating windows.

Ferdinand Grapperhaus, co-founder and CEO of the startup and a graduate of Delft Technical University, says “Right now, we are looking for iconic projects all over the world to show that a large glass building can be made energy neutral in an aesthetic way.”

“Large commercial estates consume a lot of energy. If you want to make these buildings energy neutral, you never have enough roof surface. Therefore, activating the buildings’ facades will significantly contribute to making the buildings energy neutral.”

Physee’s PowerWindows have solar cells installed in the edges at a specific angle. The angle allows the incoming solar light to be efficiently transformed into electricity.

The company is already working on second-generation technology that will triple the efficiency of the PowerWindows. The new technology is based on the ability of thulium to transform a broad spectrum of light into near-infrared light. Grapperhaus and his classmate Willem Kesteloo discovered this ability of thulium to transform a broad spectrum of light into near-infrared light in 2014 while studying at TU Delft.

The surface of the second generation of PowerWindows will be coated with a special, thuliam-enhanced material. This material will transforms oncoming visible light into near-infrared light. The near-infrared light will then be transported towards the solar cells at the edges of the windows.

The headquarters of Rabobank, the Netherlands’ largest bank, commissioned the first installation of Physee’s PowerWindows. The installation was unveiled in June in Eindhoven, in the south of the Netherlands.

Observes Physee’s Ferdinand Grapperhaus, “Large commercial estates consume a lot of energy. If you want to make these buildings energy neutral, you never have enough roof surface. Therefore, activating the buildings’ facades will significantly contribute to making the buildings energy neutral.”

The innovative solar technology has won Physee a place on the World Economic Forum‘s Technology Pioneers 2017 list.

The WEF’s 2017 list of Technology Pioneers,  announced on June 14, includes companies developing technologies including artificial intelligence, cyber security solutions and biotechnology. The pioneering companies are selected for their potential to change the world.

Physee’s presence on the list, observes Grapperhaus, shows that the world is starting to take climate change seriously:

“Ten years ago, sustainability was something that wasn’t taken very seriously — not by venture capitalists, not by many governments and neither by large corporations. What I have seen over the last three years is that corporations are becoming more and more responsible, governments are becoming more and more supportive, and venture capitalists are becoming more and more interested.”

See:

“Transparent solar power creating windows debut” | BlouinNews, 29 July 2017

“More Than a View: Windows Double as Solar Panels” | Tereza Pultarova, LiveScience, 3 July 2017

“Introducing the Technology Pioneers 2017” | World Economic Forum

Physee | Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe

“Fully tranparent solar charged PowerWindow” | Materia, 19 September 2016

#Physee #FerdinandGrapperhaus #PowerWindow #solar #solarenergy #architecture #design #climaterisk #Rabobank #finance #TUDelft #sustainability #venturecapital #WEF #WorldEconomicForum #TechnologyPioneers2017 #tech #buildingtech #startup #techstartup #CO2

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PassivDom houses are very, very smart & very beautiful

PassivDom, a start-up based in Ukraine and California, is a tech-based manufacturing company.

PassivDom 3D prints self-learning modular houses, some of which are fully autonomous. “Autonomous” means “off the utility grid.” Solar energy is produced and can be stored in a battery connected to the house. Water is collected and filtered from humidity in the air. The house may feature an independent sewage system.

The manufacturing process works like this: The team develops a “map” for the 3D printers / seven-axel robots in its factories in Ukraine and California. The 3D printer / seven-axel robot prints the roof, floor, and walls layer by layer. The material used is composed of carbon fibers, polyurethane, resins, basalt fibers, and fiberglass. This material is six times stronger than steel.

Doors, windows, appliances, an alarm system, solar panels, and the septic, electrical, healing, cooling systems are then added – by people.

According to the PassivDom website, PassivDom has the highest thermal performance among residential buildings. PassivDom windows are the warmest in the world. PassivDom exceeds the energy efficiency requirements of both the Passive House Institute and LEED.

PassivDom provides a 40-year materials warranty for the preservation of thermal characteristics. There are no materials that will lose thermal conductivity.

A PassivDom house is not only a smart house, it is a “very, very smart house.” All devices are networked to the Internet of Things and can be controlled from a smart phone. The micro-climate system is self-learning, monitors oxygen and carbon dioxide, and maintains the temperature and humidity desired by the occupant.

And PassivDom houses are beautiful.

Wow.

See:

PassivDom

“A robot can print this $32,000 house in as little as 8 hours — take a look inside” | Leanna Garfield, Business Insider, 6 April 2017

#smart #smarthouse #PassivDom #Ukraine #California #tech #buildingtech #realestate #art #smartluxury #resilience #luxury #3Dprinting #autonomous #offgrid #solarenergy #electricity #water #CO2 #PassivHaus #LEED