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Green Building Worldwide |
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Summary October was another big travel month. I continued my trip through The Netherlands and Germany. I saw both individual buildings and neighborhoods designed with sustainability in mind and met more great people along the way. The cities I visited were Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Leiden, Etten-Leur, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, and Freiburg. Although I visited many projects throughout both countries, the best city for sustainable projects was the last one I visited: Freiburg, Germany. There were so many projects in this city that were pioneers in solar energy and passive design. During my last weekend of the trip, I went to see Geneva, Switzerland and during that trip made it out to Annecy, France, bringing the total to six countries visited for this northern run. I was only in Barcelona for 2 days after the 40 day trip around Northern Europe before heading out again. This time back to Monterrey, Mexico for both the WorldGBC annual summit, and “Edificación Sustentable 2006 Congreso y Expo,” the green building conference I helped organize with Mexico GBC this summer. My return from Mexico completes 9 weeks of pretty constant travel and I’m now ready to settle into an apartment and get into a routine writing case studies and planning the next adventure. |
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The Cities Amsterdam This was the one city where it rained more than it was sunny. Nevertheless, I rented a bike and rode around the city. Part of the time spent in Amsterdam was working on case studies, since it was raining outside. However, I also had the chance to visit an apartment complex called GWL Terrein. This neighborhood has 600 mixed-level income apartments. There is a central cogeneration unit supplying the neighborhood with heat and electricity. There are also green roofs and rainwater collection for toilet flushing. On the social side, communal gardens are located in the area where people can work side by side planting and harvesting vegetables. |
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GWL Terrein Social Housing |
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More GWL Terrein Social Housing |
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City view from canal bridges |
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Leiden I met with Mieke Wetering at the Bear Architecture sustainable townhouse project, Orangerie, that consists of 12 single family townhouse style apartments. Mieke is both a resident of and consultant for sustainable design and construction. This project has a solar roof that produces a total of 24,000 kWh/yr. It also uses collected rainwater for toilet flushing and site irrigation. Information is made available to residents on sustainable living practices and the community gardens are fed by composted food wasted contributed by everyone Green roofs cover all the garden sheds made available to each townhouse. Etten-Leur This was another day trip out to a small town located half an hour south of Rotterdam by train. The walk from the train station to de Keen, the new part of town where much of the sustainable construction is happening takes another 1/2 hour. On the way there, I passed by a mix of old thatched roof houses and newly built solar panel clad homes. I didn’t have anyone to meet here, but Tjerk Reijenga, of Bear Architecture said the houses were standard on the inside. So I took pictures of the buildings from the outside. These are zero energy buildings built in the passive house design. They have a high level of insulation, are oriented for optimal sunlight and radiant heat gain, and have solar panels that provide all the energy needed in the houses. The goal of these houses, when designed in 1999, was to demonstrate the possibility of building net zero energy homes. The electrical grid is still used to transfer energy. Solar energy produced during sunny days goes into the grid and energy used at night comes from the grid. This eliminates the need for batteries. The building achieves zero emissions by having an energy requirement 50% lower than Dutch building codes prescribe. The rest of the energy is made up by the solar roof which provides 5400 kWh/yr. for each dwelling. Heat is provided by ground source heat pumps and heat recovery is used for retaining heat from outgoing air. No carbon based energy is required in the houses. Rotterdam Rotterdam was an interesting city to visit after Amsterdam. There is somewhat of a rivalry between the residents of the two cities. Rotterdam is a much more modern looking city. Similar to Phoenix, Rotterdam sprawls out in all directions. I walked for about an hour one night and couldn’t find anything interesting around. To be fair, the city is decently connected by bus and tram. This is nothing special in Northern Europe, however, where public transportation is well developed in all big cities. This was the first city in which I actually would have liked to have a car. I visited the archive building in Rotterdam that was a sustainable renovation of an old building. This included an extensive solar roof that was placed directly on the flat roof. The energy produced by this roof provides 10-16% of building energy usage, depending on the time of the year. The building also uses underground hot and cold water storage tanks that provide the heating and cooling for the building via in floor pipes that circulate the water throughout the building, then return it to the tanks. The insulation provided by the underground location keeps the hot water hot and cold water cold. The last feature of the building is a rain water collection system that filters rainwater and uses it in toilets as flush water. This is a very popular solution in toilet plumbing in sustainable buildings in Holland. Mr. R.W. Spork, whom I spoke with about the building and who gave me a quick tour, commented that the costs for the building were very high as it was a sustainable construction pilot project. When the solar roof was constructed, the old roof wasn’t rebuilt, it was just overlaid with a new layer of EPDM and the solar panels were laid on top. Now they are finding leaks and will need to pull up all the solar panels and rebuild the roof. He said the rainwater system and heating/cooling system both work great. |
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Photovoltaic Roof, Orangerie |
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Pre-schoolers who baked everyone cookies, Orangerie |
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Thatched Roof House, Etten-Leur |
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Net Zero-Energy Homes, Etten-Leur |
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Downtown Rotterdam Skyline |
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The Tilted Dice, Rotterdam |
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Gemeentearchief Rotterdam |
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Solar Photovoltaic Roof, Gemeentearchief |
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The One that Got Away |
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Duisburg This is a very industrial city and the base for Thyssen Krupp Steel. Duisburg has an large urban renovation project happening on the waterfront of one of the largest interior harbors. The area is called Innenhafen or Inner Harbor. Angel Alava-Pons, of the City of Duisburg, spent the entire morning showing me around the Inner Harbor and talking about the different projects that are being built. Although none are standout projects for sustainability, the neighborhoods are very pedestrian oriented, allow a lot of sunlight into the buildings and walkways, and have plenty of green space. The fact that they meet German building codes for energy makes them energy efficient compared with modern buildings in most other countries, as well. At the end of the Inner Harbor, Norman Foster & Associates is designing a large mixed use complex that is planned to be a zero-emissions building. Budget may be the biggest threat to that plan. Angel showed me a few other buildings by Foster that had originally been designed to have the latest in sustainable technology applied to them but in the end many of the innovative ideas were scrapped because of their high initial costs. The buildings still retained passive ventilation means through operable windows on the facade and natural light entrance. Angel then took me to the Fraunhofer school of Engineering where research is being done on sustainable fuel sources. We visited a hydrogen fuel cell development laboratory. Here I received information on the latest developments in fuel cells and why hydrogen still isn’t a very efficient fuel to use because it is so expansive. So you either need a lot of space or a lot of energy to keep it super-cooled/hyper pressurized in a liquid form. They are exploring the use of natural gases and scrubbers to keep the energy produced emission free. |
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A New Office Complex, Innenhafen |
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New Housing Development, Innenhafen |