All credit to the brave persons from Silent UK for sharing with us their spectacular photographs from the top of Europe’s tallest building, the Shard, in London.I’m especially grateful because their images provides me with a terrific opening slide for a workshop in Turkey at a conference called Ekodesign. (See the subsequent story, above). I’d been struggling with a challenge: how to explain, to a bunch of bright architects and city managers, that retrofitting solar panels and green roofs will not be an adequate response to the energy challenges that are upon us.
The Shard caper happened just as I discovered the work of a geologist called Earl Cook who, in 1971, devised a simple scale of social development measured in terms of kilocalories “captured from the environment”. Read More
Istanbul: City of Seeds
It was generous of the The Building Information Centre (YEM) and 34Solo to host an xskool event in their city last week. Our starting premise, after all, was that Turkey’s 30 year long construction boom is losing momentum. True, the sound of jackhammers was pervasive in Istanbul during our visit – but the cold winds of the global crisis are making themselves felt. An estimated 600,000 dwellings stand unsold in the city and, in January, a first attempt to raise private funding for a third bridge across the Bosphorous failed. Not a single company showed interest.
Back in 1995, Mayor Erdogan of Istanbul declared that a third bridge would be “murder” for forests and reservoirs around the city. Read More »