Week-12 Post-Session Reflections

1. What are the energy/emission related impacts of your actions and lifestyle currently? What do they mean to you? What are the impacts of your actions and lifestyle on energy and emission?

ANS: Wastage, energy consumption, there are my daily life routine. My daily life routine produces a lot of waste and consume a lot energy.

2. Which areas of your lifestyle are of particular concern to you? Why?

ANS:  The wastage produced by my daily life routine is of particular concern to me, as there are always expired or leftovers in my dwelling.

3. What have you already done in response to these energy/emission impacts and your concerns?

ANS: I am trying to use natural ventilation or natural cooling approach for daily living rather than usinng the air conditioning facility. By using natural ventilation or natural cooling approach rather than air conditioning facility, I’m trying to minimise these energy and emission impacts.

4. What are you currently working on or would like to do in the future in response to the remaining issues? What is preventing you? How will you overcome them?

ANS: I will be looking at how to reuse the rainfall water for daily house using. I’m considering to reuse the rainfall water for daily use.

5. What other positive impacts do you see yourself making beyond your immediate personal lifestyle? How?

ANS: I see myself contributing in developing a more sustainable built environment in the architectural perspective.

6. Are you indirectly investing in or financing climate change and fossil fuel industry? Have you checked if your banks and your Super funds are funding climate catastrophe? Do you know you can switch, divest and go fossil free?

ANS: I don’t think I am currently investing in or financing climate change and the fossil fuel industry. I'm interested in these corporate initiatives. The natural environment is always important to us.

Week-12 Pre-Session The problem with net-zero building

To design a total net-zero building, so many aspects should be considered, such as construction, designing and operation. Moreover, some other constraints should be taken into consideration as well, including total costs and energy consumption both direct and indirect. Apart from investment, the location could be another important factor. It is more likely to build a single net-zero building in remote areas because of sufficient solar energy compared to urban area, which, however, causes significant high cost and energy consumption.

Therefore, just as the article states, it is too idealistic to achieve the concept of net-zero buildings by a single building. However, it is possible to achieve in a larger scale: net zero community, which does not mean all the buildings should be net-zero building in the community but the community as an integrate part can be more sustainable. . In order to achieve the best use of the equipment and more efficient energy using, “energy” and infrastructure can be shared together in a community. We can find this mode mostly in university campus, such as Cornell University. Admittedly, there may be some potential issues related with net-zero community which prevent the wide spread of it, such as ownership and financing conflicts. As a result of this, It is still a long way to go for both the net-zero buildings and communities, which should be given careful consideration before construction.

Week-11 Post-Session Josh' House

Josh’s House

In this video, Josh analysis the overall data of his house, there are around $2,500 dollars saved through the monitoring system. Large amount of savings are from existing and common technology, including solar hot water, PV cells and water collection. It is a good approach for a house to put initial effort on the energy saving perspective without make a dramatic change to the house itself. Also, the operational knowledge of the approach should be accumulate with the development of the efficient energy saving approach. Therefore, to consider the eco conscious is the most efficient way to contribute to the energy reduction.

Week-11 Pre-Session All-Glass Facades Won’t Exist in Sustainable Cities?

All-Glass Facades Won’t Exist in Sustainable Cities?

All-glass building should be designed with daylight adopting, solar radiation gaining and other characteristics. David Baggs in this article illustrates that all glass building trend is not sustainable enough for future urban development.

And also, the author presents new ideas against to the current design of skyscrapers. In this article, firstly, the process of glazing development is found as new problems. The unshaded glazing building use fossil fuel energy to complement the lack of internal comfort. Air conditioning is a typical equipment in this type of building to control the temperature. Trying to reduce the heat loss, double or triple glazing technology is a efficent approach to absorb or reflect radiation. However, this single technology cannot adapt the influence from season change. The type of glass which can absorb and reflect the heat can be used to reduce solar radiation. Finally, tinting facade can be used for absorbing radiation, however, it also can cause internal comfort problem. In addition, the article also demonstrates that architect should well consider the potantial issues on technology for the specific use within the building.

Secondly, David also demonstrates the significance of radiant heat that affect on human comfort. Most of building with glazed facade contain advanced glazing techique to control heat gain/loss, however, these methods are hard to control the radiant heat.