Interesting new apartment project in New York consisting of micro-apartments. The project has a range of shared amenities and was constructed using modular construction. The low cost, high density project is being analysed as a model for new housing in cities. For more detail review documentation here.
Light pollution levels, resulting in brighter night skies, have been plotted using data from the Suomi NPP satellite. This shows areas with no light pollution as black (such as over oceans) to areas where there are high levels of light pollution, which are reflected as yellow, pink and red. Access an interactive map showing levels of light pollution here.
Gauge courses are going online! Courses that Gauge have developed include Climate Change, Sustainable Development, Sustainability, Sustainable Built Environments, Urban Sustainable Environments, Sustainable Building Assessment Tool, Built Environment Sustainability Tool, Sustainable Building Materials Index, Sustainable Facilities Management, Sustainable Neighbourhoods, Sustainable Construction, Strategic Planning, Project Management, Sustainable PPPs, Maintenance Management, Inclusive Environments, Local Content, Water in Buildings, Energy in Buildings, Sustainable Waste Streams, Sustainable Food Environments and Labour Intensive Construction. Please contact us if you would like access to these courses or would like a course tailored to your needs and context.
The recently completed Integrating New Knowledge Areas study by Gauge explores new and emerging competencies required by built environment professionals. It analyses how changes such as technological advances, legislative changes and societal demands can be understood, and translated into up-to-date, responsive professional practice.
Areas identified to be addressed include:
Continuous Professional Development (CPD) programmes, tertiary education curriculum development, short courses and online portals are identified as suitable mechanisms to support this integration and the study develops a number of proposals that can be adopted by built environment professional councils, universities, and governments to ensure that built environment professional capacity is able to meet emerging demands within the built environment.
Habitats are defined as the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the physical environment that surrounds (influences and is utilized by) a species population.
This was the subject of an Institute of Landscape Architects of South Africa (ILASA) Seminar on 11 May 2016 and number of interesting presentations were made by John Masson, Siegwalt Kusel and Ben Breedlove.
My contribution was titled ‘Human Habitat Creation’ and addressed the following questions:
The presentations led to a very interesting discussion on how methodologies used by Landscape Architects and Habitat Designers to design habitats can be applied at a wider built environment scale.
Interesting article in the Daily Telegraph on ”What Africa will look like in 100 years”. It makes the following assertions:
Given the implications of this huge growth, it suggests that current development trajectories are not promising and may not be able to “deliver on the aspirations of broad-based human development and prosperity for all”.
Solutions recommended include;
Interesting presentation by Slum Dwellers International at a side event at the Habitat III Urban Dialogues conference on how communities are capturing data on their neighbourhoods and homes using a tool call ‘Know Your City. The tool can be used to capture a wide range of aspects of a neighbourhood including access to schools, clinics, the availability of electricity, sanitation and water, types of transport available and existing land tenure and organisational capacity.
The tool has been used for neighbourhoods in a number of African countries such as Kenya, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and South Africa and has provided a useful basis for planning and discussions with local municipalities.
SBAT Residential is being used to assess pilot housing in Zambia. The assessments indicate that significant sustainability performance improvements are being achieved by designers and developers in areas such as local content, daylighting and passive environmental control. These improvements are being achieved through a structured design and specification approach which includes the setting of sustainability performance targets and rigorous integration processes.