on the zero carbon house

Barratt Developments has unveiled what it calls the first zero-carbon house developed by a volume housebuilder, built at the Buildings Research Establishment in Watford, packed with the latest technology, including solar panels, rainwater harvesting and an air source heat pump.
Its new kind of concrete walls and floors, combined with super insulation and triple-glazed windows, means [...]

on greening existing buildings

Within a month of the release date for the UK Construction Sustainability Strategy ( due 11 June) we see another initiative announcement from government:
a parliamentary enquiry into the greening of existing offices, shops and warehouses, aimed at providing industry leaders and public figures the opportunity to contribute evidence that will go into the final [...]

08 thoughts from think 08

I attended Think08 yesterday afternoon, visiting some of the free seminars and chatting to a good number of exhibitors. It was also good to meet up with fellow bloggers Phil, Mel, Paul, Rob and Casey for an early evening drink.
My impressions from the afternoon was that it didn’t quite have the buzz of last [...]

… on what makes a building green

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and
implement solutions to the environmental crisis.
Patagonia’s Mission Statement
I have mentioned Patagonia the outdoor clothing organisation a few times before on this blog, and recently searching for a model CSR policy or statement for a Masters course I am in part delivering, went [...]

zero carbon ‘floating’ development for Preston

Green, innovative and zero carbon project development on our doorstep in Preston, Lancs, !

The RIBA have recently awarded a zero carbon design as the visitor center at the new Brockholes Wetland and Woodland Nature Reserve in Preston, to regenerate a former quarry site into a major visitor attraction.
The project called “A Floating World”, consists of [...]

ecological cities

Now the Eco City World Summit 2008 has concluded there is a rich source of live blog reports, reviews and videos over at the Eco City blog.   Go view and mine the collective source of global views on the future of cities
If you take away one thing from the summit : the ecological city message [...]

Facilities Management now in Second Life

The inaugural Centre for Facilities Management Second Life (SL) seminar took place today, Wednesday April 2nd 2008. The seminar, facilitated by Martin Brown, (aka Brand Woodin in SL) focused on Sustainable FM, but also referred to the developing research area of Community-based FM which looks at FM outside of the traditional boundaries and organisational settings [...]

Reducing the environmental impact of existing non-domestic buildings

Addressing the existing uk building stock and in particular non domestic stock is mush talked about - but unlike housing not too much action as yet.
The All Party Urban Development Group is undertaking its latest inquiry, exploring ways to reduce the environmental impact of existing non-domestic buildings that are concentrated in our city centres and [...]

… on st georges day

Today being St Georges day I thought some typically english and traditional post would be in order, but that has relevance to our sector and the themes of sustainability.

I recently  heard a reading of Elliots East Coker, which may be a troubled peice of literature but the opening few lines stuck in my head:
In my [...]

new sustainability forum

I really should promote Phil’s new sustainability forum at Building.  There is a danger of being awash with forums and blogs and comments, but the caliber of those registered so far gives this forum much promise.
Now trying to sort out the RSS feed from the forum into my igoogle homepage, and wondering how long before [...]