Australia sees its first zero emissions house opened

Working with industry partners Delfin-Lend Lease and the Henley Property Group and supported by the AusZEH consortium, CSIRO designed and built the demonstration house 30 kilometres north of Melbourne’s CBD in the community of Laurimar in Doreen, Victoria.

The 8 star energy-efficiency rated AusZEH showcases off-the-shelf building and renewable energy-generation technologies and new future-ready energy management systems.

The AusZEH is designed to produce enough ‘zero-emission’ electricity from 6 kW solar panels to supply all the operating energy needs of the household so that its net total CO2 or other greenhouse gas emissions is zero.

The director of CSIRO’s Energy Transformed Flagship, Dr Alex Wonhas, says the uptake of zero-emission housing in Australia could have a significant impact on reducing emissions nationwide.

"CSIRO scientists estimate that if all the new housing built in Australia between 2011 and 2020 were zero-emission houses, 63 million tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions would be saved," he says.

"This would be equivalent to taking all of Australia’s private cars off the road for two years and 237 days, or closing all Australia’s power stations for up to 100 days."

CSIRO’s Energy Transformed Flagship initiated the AusZEH project to demonstrate and evaluate how low-carbon housing can be achieved in Australia to reduce GHG emissions and create a more sustainable future for the nation.

For 12 months, the AusZEH demonstration house will become a home for an Australian family and a laboratory for CSIRO.

The house has been fitted with a unique energy management system developed by La Trobe University in partnership with CSIRO, which tracks energy use in the house and provides feedback via customised reports to household members.

This information on the performance of the ‘living’ house will be used to identify ways to improve the design of future zero and low-emission houses.

CSIRO initiated the National Research Flagships to provide science-based solutions in response to Australia’s major research challenges and opportunities.

Green Architect Projects Gaining Ground

Have you heard of green architecture, but are unsure exactly what it is? Green architecture concentrates on lowering the environmental damage done to the earth by putting up new buildings. This approach to putting up buildings while making it environmentally safe has been around for almost 30 years.

While green architecture was once viewed as highly unconventional, it's getting a lot more acceptable and popular. Many of the regulatory agencies are learning to recognize the advantages of the methods of green construction.

Today's green revolution can probably be tracked back to 1960s social awareness and the adoption of different methods of design. Green construction has made great strides since then. New techniques have been developed, new, innovative concepts and materials invented, and buildings have gotten greener.

A successful green project will reduce waste, use non-toxic materials, and pay close attention to the location and function of the building, as well as the climate that surrounds it. That's a far cry from "one size fits all" building methods of the past.

What makes a building green? There are a number of concepts that make up a green building. The main ones are energy efficiency, use of land, reduction of waste, materials used and the sustainability of the project. Green projects should use energy efficient electrical systems whenever possible, especially in the areas of heating and cooling. Gray water recycling, passive solar design, and the use of renewable power are all elements of this.

Building should be constructed to match the environment, rather than forcing changes to the site. Buildings should be located and oriented to take maximum advantages of their surroundings. Improved energy efficiency is the desired outcome and it makes for a building more pleasant to use. Use of land planning in the form of parking and transportation concerns become viable, too.

In a perfect setting the materials used should allow the building to be reused for other construction possibilities in the future producing minimal waste. Green architecture should reduce the dependence on wasteful and toxic materials and products, which is becoming much easier as the industry grows. Some buildings even reuse parts of other buildings, or waste materials such as old shipping containers.

Of course, not all projects labeled green are really green. Some are "greenwashed" - ordinary projects given a green veneer for respectability purposes. Others are built with good intentions but poor planning. That's why it's highly important and effective to know that all green projects be inspected carefully to ensure they are as safe for the environment as claimed. Helping the environment is complex, but it's worth it in the long run, with buildings being more usable and more sustainable years down the line.

Futuristic architecture goes beyond green building

Architect David Fisher has taken the charming notion of revolving floor penthouse restaurants and turned it into something much, much bigger: a skyscraper in which every floor revolves, resulting in the first building which constantly changes its architectural shape.

The first two such skyscrapers are planned for Dubai and Moscow. The Dubai building already has 1000 reservation requests.

The building isn't just compelling because it looks really cool, either: it is an environmentally revolutionary concept.

The Dynamic Tower, the world’s first building in motion, takes the concept of green buildings to the next level: the Dynamic Tower will generate electricity for itself as well as other buildings nearby, making it the first skyscraper designed to be self-powered.

The building generates electricity from wind turbines mounted horizontally between each floor. For example, an 80-story building will have up to 79 wind turbines, making it a true green power plant. While traditional vertical wind turbines have some environmental negative impact, including obstruction of views and the need for roads to build and maintain them, The Dynamic Tower’s wind turbines are practically invisible. The Dynamic Tower turbines are also extremely quiet due to their special shape and the carbon fiber material they are constructed from.

Another environmentally green element of the Dynamic Tower is the photovoltaic cells that will be placed on the roof of each rotating floor to produce solar energy. At any time of the day, approximately 20 percent of each roof will be exposed to the sun, so a building that has 80 floors will equal the roofing area of 10 similar sized buildings.

In addition, natural, recyclable materials including stone, marble, glass and wood will be used for the interior finishing. To further improve the energy efficiency of the Dynamic Tower, insulated glass and structural insulating panels will be employed.

Article courtesy : Michele Lerner

Green Design and Earth-Friendly Architecture

Green Design is a term used to describe economical, energy-saving, environmental friendly, sustainable development. These resources explore the relationship between architecture and ecology, and show how you can use concepts of green design in your own home.

Green building-
Green building is the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings use resources — energy, water, and materials — while reducing building impacts on human health and the environment, through better sitting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and removal — the complete building life cycle.

A similar concept is natural building, which is usually on a smaller scale and tends to focus on the use of natural materials that are available locally. Other commonly used terms include sustainable design and green architecture.

Green building materials-
Building materials typically considered to be 'green' include rapidly renewable plant materials like bamboo and straw, lumber from forests certified to be sustainably managed, dimension stone, recycled stone, recycled metal, and other products that are non-toxic, reusable, renewable, and/or recyclable (e.g. Trass, Linoleum, sheep wool, panels made from paper flakes, baked earth, rammed earth, clay, vermiculite, flax linen, sisal, seagrass, cork, expanded clay grains, coconut, wood fiber plates, calcium sand stone. Building materials should be extracted and manufactured locally to the building site to minimize the energy embedded in their transportation.