I know we’ve been doing quite a number of “green” themed posts lately, and hopefully you’re just as interested as we are in the conservation and longevity of our natural resources. If you’ve been reading the blog you’d of course recall our mentioning some of the things we are doing to be greener graphic designers.
For me particularly (because of my background in architecture) I am extremely interested in green building technology, so I was very intrigued at the news that Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM), one of the premier architecture firms in the world has designed the very first ‘Energy Plus’ and ‘Carbon Zero’ office building (70,000 sq m), to be constructed near Paris.
The entire roof of the structure will house solar panels and the resulting power will be enough the run all air conditioning, heating and lighting required to keep its 5,000 occupants comfy. While most modern buildings of this scale consume between 80 and 250 kilowatts per square meter (older buildings as much as 300kw/sq m), this new building will employ a new type of insulation that will help cut consumption down to as little as 16kw/sq m. [1 sq m is equal to roughly 10.8 sq ft].
Admittedly this is quite an ambitious undertaking and has required some big-name backing to bring it to this point, but hopefully this will be the first of many projects that radically change the way we view large commercial structures and their impact on the environment.
Try building an entire carbon-neutral, energy-neutral, and waste-neutral city! (Masdar, Abu Dhabi, scheduled to open 2009!) http://www.masdaruae.com/index.aspx
Also, see he Califronia Academy of Sciences – ARUP does tons of this stuff. http://www.arup.com/americas/project.cfm?pageid=7714