Posted on

R8 Property’s energy positive Powerhouse Telemark

Powerhouse Telemark, an energy positive (producing more energy than it consumes) 6,500-square-meter (70,000-square-foot), 11-story office building, has been commissioned by real estate developer Emil Eriksrød for the Norwegian town of Porsgrunn.

Eriksrød has commissioned the American-Norwegian architecture and design firm Snøhetta to design the building. Powerhouse Telemark is set to be completed in February of 2019.

 “The future is all about thinking big, bold, and long term,” says Snøhetta founding partner Kjetil Trædal Thorson, “and we need someone to pave the way. With its innovative solutions and design, we believe this building will inspire commercial real estate developers worldwide to push the limits of what buildings can accomplish”.

“The world needs a lot of energy-positive buildings,” observes the developer, Emil Eriksrød, CEO of R8 Property. “I hope we will be plagiarized and copied, replicated in all seven continents.”

“This building should do wonders in lowering the bar for daring to do both spectacular and environmentally forward buildings, hopefully in a combination”.


See:

“Snøhetta Designs World’s Northernmost Energy Positive Building in Norway,” Patrick Lynch, ArchDaily, 18 January 2017

“Snøhetta designs ‘potentially world-changing office building’ for small Norwegian town,” Amy Frearson, Dezeen, 19 January 2017

 

#powerhousetelemark #emileriksrød #r8property # snøhetta #porsgrunn #norway #design #architecture #engineering #realestatedevelopment #realestate #commercialrealestate #energy #energypositive #solar #solarenergy #co2 #resilience #luxury #art #artmarket #collections #collectionsmanagement #museums #newyork #berlin #milan #beijing #shanghai #hongkong #seoul #taipei #jakarta #singapore

Posted on

A Tesla of Real Estate Development

Perch Harlem is a style-intensive newly-constructed market-rate rental building at 542 West 153rd Street in Manhattan that uses 90% less gas and energy than a traditional building.

“One of the goals we had was to build this at market rate, so that we could prove it could be done,” says Justin Palmer, founder of Synapse Development Group. “We really look to a design company like Tesla for a lot of inspiration, because everyone was a naysayer. The traditional car manufacturers told them, nobody will ever buy it, you don’t have enough range, it can’t be done. Well, we heard it all, too.”

Developed by Synapse Development Group with Taurus Investment Holdings and designed by Brooklyn-based architect Chris Benedict who builds to passive standards at no extra cost, Perch features triple insulation, windows strategically placed and sized to maximize natural solar heat, and high-tech heat exchangers that recycle air to heat and cool its interior.

“Using using innovative construction methodologies, like Passive House, that have direct, tangible benefits for our investors, tenants, and the environment, [the Synapse Development Group] approach is laser focused: reduce energy consumption in our buildings while still maintaining the amenities of 21st century living. Through relentless innovation, we bring the latest technology and design practices to what we build.”

Far from compromising the “direct bottom line,” placing environmental interests alongside the interests of investors and tenants makes sense observes Justin Palmer, founder of Synapse Development Group, and provides the development industry a better paradigm for evaluating and leveraging risk and profit.

Building passive is necessary for a changing climate, both figuratively and literally, he says, and the energy cost-savings are a win-win scenario for developers and tenants. “We’re trying to provide a solution to the high carbon footprint that most cities have from the built environment, as well as solve the ongoing affordability issue through intelligent design,” Palmer says, and through reliable energy-performance metrics, “provide better risk-adjusted returns to our investment partners.”

See:

“Meet the Developer Who Wants To Be the Tesla of Housing” | Aileen Kwun, FastCoDesign, 12 March 2018

Synapse Development Group

#realestate #realestatedevelopment  #luxuryrealestate #builtenvironment #Tesla #passivhaus #passivedesign #architecture #design #innovation #tech #energy #luxury #risk #return #CO2

Posted on

Paris floods | the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, & the Musée de l’Orangerie launch their Plans de Protection Contre les Inondations (PPCI)

The Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, and the Musée de l’Orangerie have each launched their Plan de Protection Contre les Inondations (PPCI; protection plan against flooding). The Musée du Louvre has closed the lower level of its department of Islamic Arts until Sunday (28 January) as a “preventive measure” from flood damage.”

See: “Rising River Seine causes closure at Musée du Louvre” | Anna Sansom, The Art Newspaper, 25 January 2018

#Louvre #MuséeduLouvre #Muséed’Orsay #Muséedel’Orangerie #art #artcollections #collectionsmanagement #risk #riskmanagement #Paris #flooding #PPCI #PlandeProtectionContrelesInondations #museums #resilience #luxury #smartluxury #CO2 #realestate #culturalrealestate #design #engineering

Posted on

Southern California collections management: fire rescue & restoration

Fueled by seasonal winds and dry conditions, Southern California’s Thomas Fire has become the largest, in terms of acreage, since 1932 when reliable recording began. State officials are saying that the 2017 fire season has been the most destructive that people in state have seen.

As of the Vanity Fair December 20 publication of Jane Borden’s article “In Southern California, Even the Art Has a Fire Rescue Plan,” the Thomas Fire had destroyed about 800 homes, nearing Santa Barbara, Montecito, and Ojai, collectively home to the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, working artists, art collectors, and celebrities.

On the evening of December 4, artists living in Ojai had no time to pack up their work before evacuating. Those with studios in Ventura spent evenings sleeping beside their work.

Works from four collections were moved to purified, closed rooms at the MCASB.

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, with van and crew ready at short notice, safeguarded works of art, valued at millions of dollars, retrieved from homes in the area.

The Conservation Center of Chicago is described as the “most prepared art-rescue team working in Southern California” during the fire.

As the air quality was rendered “really bad” by the Thomas Fire, teams from The Conservation Center rotated every four or five days. Works of art that were not damaged were stored in a safe location in Los Angeles. Works with minor damages were restored locally. More damaged works of art were shipped to Chicago for full restoration.

An industry leader in rescuing works of art after disasters such as fires or floods, The Conservation Center brings over 30 years of experience caring for individual, private, and public collections.

“In addition to restoration and packing and shipping services, The Conservation Center in Chicago specializes in disaster response. The Center’s national clients include corporations, museums, nonprofits, and private collectors, and the response team is trained to triage a variety of situations, most notably flood and fire. This year alone, the 36-person team has responded to hurricane damage in Houston and Miami, and rescued or restored 1,350 works from a Georgia museum damaged by a tornado. Now, the fires. “I’ve been with the company for 29 years, and this is definitely unprecedented, to have these things happening so closely together,“ explains Heather Becker, C.E.O. of The Conservation Center.”

See:

“Thomas Fire is Now California’s Largest Wildfire in History” | Doreen McCallister, NPR, 23 December 2017

“In Southern California, Even the Art Has a Fire Rescue Plan” | Jane Borden, Vanity Fair, 20 December 2017

The Conservation Center

#art #SouthernCalifornia #ThomasFire #SantaBarbara #Montecito #Ojai #MuseumofContemporaryArtSantaBarbara #MCASB #SantaBarbaraMuseumofArt #SBMA #conservation #rescue #restoration #artcollections #collectionsmanagement #CO2 #luxury #smartluxury #design #architecture #engineering #fireresistance #TheConservationCenter #Chicago #resilience #health #wellness#realestate #culturalrealestate #culturalheritage

Posted on

HouseZero ・retrofitting a 1924-era wood-frame house

Harvard University’s Center for Green Buildings and Cities, in collaboration with international architecture and design firm Snøhetta, is retrofitting a wood frame house built in 1924 in what is now an historic district of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The house now serves as the Center’s headquarters.

The retrofit is intended to fulfill multiple objectives:

A focus on inefficient existing buildings. In the United States, buildings consume around 40% of energy produced annually. This equates to more than $230 billion spent annually by property owners heating, cooling, and powering the nation’s 123.6 million homes. Housing consumes 18-23% of that.

A focus on using current technologies together with better design.

The use of zero energy for heating and cooling. A retrofitted building that produces more energy than it consumes.

100% natural ventilation and daylight autonomy

Zero CO2 emissions, including embodied energy in materials

A positive rather than a negative impact on the surrounding environment. A house conducive to occupant health, encouraging productivity and creativity.

Use of self-generated data that will allow the building to self-adjust. The house will adjust itself seasonally and daily to achieve thermal comfort targets.

The development of ideas and a working model that can be used by homeowners as they seek to renovate existing houses towards significant energy and carbon use improvements without costly or wasteful tear-downs.

The Center for Green Buildings and Cities will not seek any kind of independent certification, such as USGBC LEED, WELL, or Living Building certification. The intent is, rather, to exceed those standards’ criteria.

The renovation, says Ali Malkawi, professor of architectural technology and founding director of the CGBC, is guided not only by the goal of net zero energy consumption with 100% natural light and ventilation but also by the understanding that a green building is “a sustainable building, which means it has the lowest impact on its surrounding environment as possible. It might have a positive effect on its environment—the surrounding as well as the global.” Such a building is, furthermore, “healthy for its occupants” and encourages productivity and creativity.

See:

“Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities unveils HouseZero project, an ambitious retrofit of its Cambridge headquarters” | Travis Dagenais, Harvard Graduate School of Design, 25 May 2017

“Harvard’s ‘HouseZero’” | Alisha Ukani, Harvard Magazine, 3 August 2017

“Future Home: HouseZero” | Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities”

#architecture #architecturaltechnology #buildingtechnology #technology #design #engineering #netzero #energy #resilience #CO2 #home #luxury #smartluxury #retrofit #homeownership #realestate #commercialrealestate #culturalrealestate #culturalheritage #art #collectionsmanagement #museums #galleries #snøhetta #harvard #harvardcenterforgreenbuildingsandcities #Cambridge #data #health #wellness #family

Posted on

Architect Stefano Boeri-designed Liuzhou Forest City

Recognizing the capacity of trees and plants to absorb carbon pollution and the critical need for urban forests, Italian architect and urban planner Stefano Boeri has contributed to the design of Liuzhou Forest City, now under construction in China.

Intended to help provide homes for a rapidly growing population without creating more carbon pollution, the plan calls for terraced buildings with almost a million plants and 40,000 trees.

Should you have interest in tangible assets such as works of art, art collections, luxury, and/or real estate, all of which interact physically with their surroundings and all of which are affected by carbon pollution (excess of CO2), this news will be of interest.

Should you wish your tangible assets to perform at an optimal level, please feel free to be in touch.

See:

“China is building a futuristic ‘forest city’ with more trees than people” | Daisy Simmons, Yale Climate Connections, 26 December 2017

#architecture #design #urbanplanning #engineering #StefanoBoeri #CO2 #carbonpollution #trees #urbanforests #resilience #luxury #urbanluxury #smartluxury #urbanliving #tangibleassets #art #artcollections #collectionsmanagement #realestate #commercialrealestate #culturalrealestate #Yale

 

Posted on

issues of condition ・ too complex to be explained?

Extraordinary that there may be ” … a consensus that issues of condition, and the work of conservators, are too complex to be explained to gallery visitors as a matter of course” (Burlington Magazine, as reported by The Art Newspaper).

Physical condition is a fundamental component of value of tangible assets, inclusive of works of art, buildings, and houses.

Neither the art market nor the real estate market are “hermetically sealed,” or entirely self-sufficient, existing apart from condition, as some believe and might like to believe.

See:

“How to identify a wreck” | Bendor Grosvenor, The Art Newspaper, 18 December 2017

#art #conservation #conservators #connoisseurship #collections #collectionsmanagement #condition #value #artmarket #tangibleassets #luxury #smartluxury #urbanluxury #architecture #design #engineering #resilience #CO2 #realestate #commercialrealestate #culturalrealestate

Posted on

The Getty | a Type 1-rated complex, designed & built to resist fire

The Getty Center in Los Angeles performs.

The New York Times and Reuters highlight how the Getty Center has been designed and built to provide resilient stewardship and protect its art holdings, even in a fire- and earthquake-prone area.

The Getty’s design, “and a plan developed with insurers eager to keep the valuable collection safe” [the Getty works with commercial property insurer FM Global], help protect the art from damage.

The Getty’s architect, Richard Meier, built fire resistance into the billion-dollar complex, said Ron Hartwig, vice president of communications for the J. Paul Getty Trust. These hills are fire prone, but because of features like the 1.2 million square feet of thick travertine stone covering the outside walls, the crushed rock on the roofs and even the plants chosen for the brush-cleared grounds, “The safest place for the artwork to be is right here in the Getty Center,” he said.

Within that lovely milky travertine skin, the buildings have reinforced concrete walls and automatic fire doors that can trap fires in sealed-off areas. A carbon-filtered air conditioning system pushes smoke out instead of letting it in, and the internal sprinklers — whose pipes remain dry until needed, to avoid damaging accidents – stand ready to douse flames.

“Should any fire move within one of those compartmentalized areas, it can’t get anywhere,” said Michael G. Rogers, director of facilities at the Getty. Since water supplies can be cut off in a disaster, The Getty has its own million-gallon water tank buried under the parking garage. The result is a complex that is rated Type 1, the highest level of fire resistance.

See:

“Why the Getty Center’s Art Stayed Put as Fires Raged Nearby” | John Schwartz and Gilbert Gates, The New York Times, 12 December 2017

“California’s Getty museum survives wildfire, ready for quakes” | Suzanne Barlyn, Reuters, 8 December 2017

The Getty Center

#Getty #GettyCenter #art #museums #collections #collectionsmanagement #stewardship #scholarship #conservation #preservation #resilience #fire #smoke #particulatematter #airfiltration #design #architecture #RichardMeier #engineering #California #LosAngeles #luxury #urbanluxury #smartluxury #realestate #commercialrealestate #culturalrealestate #insurance

 

Posted on

San Diego performs ・three San Diego scientists awarded the Breakthrough Prize for 2018

San Diego performs.

Three of the seven Breakthrough Prize awards (each of $3 million; founded in 2012 by tech entrepreneurs including Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder; Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook co-founder; and Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of personal genomics company 23 and Me) for 2018 went to San Diego scientists in recognition of their research and achievements in life science, bio-medicine, and math. The prize for achievement in math is shared equally between UCSD and the University of Utah collaborators.

It is a short distance from downtown San Diego walk-ability and luxury, such as the Kohn-Pedersen-Fox-designed Pacific Gate, with interior design by Hirsch Bedner Associates (HBA), not only to the airport but also to the universities and research institutes.

See:

“Sweet recognition — and major cash — for three San Diego scientists with Breakthrough Prize” | Bradley J. Fikes, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 3 December 2017

Breakthrough Prize

#realestate #luxury #smartluxury #urbanluxury #BreakthroughPrize #UCSD #SalkInstitute #science #tech #engineering #commercialrealestate #walkability #downtown #downtownofcourse #education #PacificGate #international #global #globalluxury #KPF #KohnPedersenFox #HBA #HirschBednerAssociates #architecture #design #interiordesign

 

 

Posted on

the newly-opened & very lovely Louvre Abu Dhabi

The result of an intergovernmental agreement signed in 2007 and opened to the public on November 11, the $1 billion Louvre Abu Dhabi is a museum of juxtapositions and chronology that serves many purposes.

The museum is an integral “part of the town and of life [La ville et la vie],” (the museum’s architect Jean Nouvel). The museum is an expression of “soft power” and enhances a cultural strategy to serve as a bridge between civilizations and counter tensions in the region (Zaki Anwar Nusseibeh, the U.A.E. minister of state). The museum presents “a narrative of humankind from the beginning of knowledge, using art as a witness of the times,” (Jean-François Charnier, the project’s chief curator and scientific director for Agence France-Museums).

An iteration of a north African medina and rising no more than 30 feet in most places, the museum is composed of 55 separate pavilions, some beneath a 180-meter-diameter, 7,500-ton dome. The dome is comprised of eight layers of interlocking steel and aluminum effecting more than 7,800 perforations that filter the hot Arabic sun into brilliant spots of light that dapple the walls.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi is designed to achieve LEED silver. It has already achieved a 3 Pearl Estidama Design Rating. The museum creates a comfortable micro-climate with passive design techniques. Such techniques include a concept based on traditional regional architecture, passive water and energy conservation techniques, and highly efficient HVAC systems, lighting, and sanitation. Other techniques include the use of solar shading provided by the dome roof, the self-shading of buildings, the roof perforations that allow daylight without excess solar gain or wind flow, and exposed thermal mass such as stone floor and cladding that benefit from night-time cooling.

There are 23 galleries for the permanent collection, a huge, 2,000-square-meter temporary exhibition space, a children’s museum, and a waterside restaurant. The complex is designed to be used as a social space in the evenings.

See:

“Inside the Louvre Abu Dhabi with architect Jean Nouvel” | Caroline Roux, The Telegraph, 14 November 2017

“The Louvre Abu Dhabi Puts a $1 Billion Spotlight on Globalization – But Makes Some Glaring Historical Omissions” | Javier Pes, Artnet.com, 8 November 2017

“Louvre Abu Dhabi, a Cultural Cornerstone Where East Meets West” | Doreen Carvajal, The New York Times, 7 November 2017

The Louvre Abu Dhabi | About Us, Architecture