Why our buildings suck, and how to change them
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 มิ.ย. 2024
- Constructing buildings is awful for the environment. With 60% of the world population set to live in cities by 2030, how can we make buildings…not suck?
Reporter: Beina Xu
Video Editor: Beina Xu
Supervising Editor: Kiyo Dörrer
We're destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn't need to be this way. Our channel explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world - and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we'll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.
#PlanetA #SustainableArchitecture #GreenBuildings
Read More:
Urban Sustainability Transitions in the Global South: link.springer.com/article/10....
Global South Urbanisms and Urban Sustainability: www.frontiersin.org/articles/...
Understanding Sustainable Architecture: ia801907.us.archive.org/22/it...
Global greenhouse gas emissions from residential and commercial building materials: www.nature.com/articles/s4146...
Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction 2019: www.iea.org/reports/global-st...
Tracking Buildings 2021: www.iea.org/reports/tracking-...
Sustainable housing and the urban poor: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/...
Revisiting the built environment: 10 potential development changes and paradigm shifts due to COVID-19: www.sciencedirect.com/science...
2020 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction: globalabc.org/sites/default/f...
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:10 The building industry
02:12 The most energy-efficient house in Germany
05:55 Berlin’s circular house
09:36 What the future bodes
Would you want to live in buildings like these? And what does green architecture look like where you live?
I’m a numbers guy so I’m 100% down with being able to see what my utility usage looks like at any given time.
My wife will probably never actually look at the numbers but she’s always open to hearing about what they turned out like and what we need to change as a result.
from what i know theres isnt any in ireland.
🇨🇦 concrete is "king" here for new condo construction, they actually advertise it. As for monitoring consumption, it's a way to understand what you're doing over the long term. Where I am, Vancouver area, people are tearing down houses built to last 30 years, roughly 1000 SQ ft, and replacing with houses 3-4 times the area, installing natural gas heat. Plastic siding, 15 year warranty, and little if any insulation.
Talk about environment and greenhouse gases, you get scowls.
This is both embarrassing and infuriating.
make the number mandatory in each flat and accessible to All online.
I live in Milan, Italy. Here I got this 90m2 apartment A4 class made of wood and steel supports. During winter season It may happen that you use the oven for 30 mins and heat the house for the day. I also have that kind of ipad where it shows consumptions around electricity and solar generation (200€ every 2 months. considering heating is electric aswell), we still miss the sewage part though ahah. I used to live in a 30 year old house before, where in winter season the gas bill averaged around 900€ per 2 months period, which is insane.
Here in Italy there is an incentive system that allows you to renovate your house for energy purposes for free (If you meet requirements) and many friends of mine are renovating home with this method, 400 kWh/m2*year (as my old house heat dissipation rate) gets to 14 kWh/m2*year, while my house is already 0,12 kWh/m2*year as A4 energy class.
Everyone's house tracks their energy use. You get a bill for it at the end of the month. The difference is that it is easily available on an ipad rather scattered across several meters that you would have to read if you wanted an update before you get your bill.
It's a bigger novelty in Germany, where you usually get an estimated bill every month and the power company comes maybe once a year to check your meter and adapt your bill accordingly. At this point you either pay them an extra bill, or you get money back. In my old building i didn't have access to my meter anymore because the basement was locked.
In the US you can often just acces your hourly electricity consumption with an app on your smartphone, no need for an ipad on your wall.
Wow, here in Quebec, the the utility provider gives a nice online portal where you can track your consumption live, as well as providing live estimates of what your bill will be at the end of the month at your current consumption levels. No ipad necessary. I sorta assumed that was widespread by now.
And compared to the building's average... the and in time compared to your average, say in monthly bands
I don't even see my electricity and water consumption as it's paid by my landlord. They have to reimburse us every year if we paid more than actually used, so it really doesn't help tracking my actual consumption.
I'm glad we have our energy consumption (power and gas) visible in an app. And we use it a lot. We charge the car when the sun is shining (if possible) and use our household appliances during the day.
"40% will be devoted to social housing, and most of its residents will be queer women of color"
... what?
Does that mean that "queer women of color" are usually lower on socio-economic scale? Or does that mean that those aren't social housings since the requirement is personal identity, sex and skin color instead of economic ability?
I am confused and whichever it is, it bugs me because it's either prejudiced or discriminatory.
Found the cishetwhitemale. Five seconds searching Google would have given you the facts about the disproportionate rates of poverty experienced by queer women of color (no need for your scare quotes).
yes
They are usually lower on the socio-economic scale.
@@alenanela1743 Do you have any data to back this claim up?
Nop, men of color are usually on the low, men are the highest percentage of people who live in the streets
Perhaps you could also talk about the material and energy waste of detached single-family homes compared to wood-constructed four-plexes and six-plexes? Seems a scalable and cheap alternative for the suburbs that doesn't require all the risk analysis and engineering that makes these retrofits so expensive
Yes, multifamily houses are better for the environment. But they are not as big of a deal in Europe. It is an expensive choice that some families do.
For the US this is the first thing that came to mind. Green buildings are great but aren't going to matter if you also building spralling single family developments down the road.
I mean, they're certainly there in Europe, but the numbers are not comparable to the USA in the % of houses being detached.
Fe, in Germany, only 26% of households live in Detached houses, while 62% live in Flats
@@1crafter176 So walkable cities result and racist zoning doesn't happen, as in Canada and the US
@@timbushell8640 no, zoning in Europe works quite differently to how it does in the US. Fe, in Germany, the lowest residential density can still have small blocks of flats, and businesses, Fe. And there wasn't (IIRC) any form of redlining that encouraged segregation
In the management world we have a saying: “what gets looked at gets done.” There’s a very real human reaction to constantly seeing what your actual energy usage is vs your goal, and it leads to reduction in usage like what you saw.
The cool thing is that you don’t actually have to build a whole new building in order to incorporate this mentality! The ipad and sensors that you saw in the first building could just as easily be slapped onto any existing building, in fact, my utility company offers to do this for free for any home in the area!
And getting the constant reminder of how much energy we use has led to my wife and I using 29% less electricity! But obviously individual action can’t solve all these issues so it’s still important to revamp how we views housing and cities as a whole.
It's also a psychological phenomenon that if you make it competitive then it works better as a behaviour modifier. It gives context to your consumption. You feel rewarded by being told you're improving, so it's reinforcing. Our power bills like in many countries shows how your consumption compares to the norm for how ever many people live in your house. People like to know they're doing better than normal or feel bad if they're not meeting the standard everyone else is setting.
Exactly. Planting trees in cities is cool and all and gives a sense of satisfaction. But the change is minimal to just leaving forests alone and letting it do its thing or reforesting some land far away from habitation. But that's less visible to humans so it won't feel as satisfying.
Whats the name of the utility companie that build these electricity measuring sensors? Can you do it with a Raspberry pi, Arduino or some small electrical control measure compontent ?
@@bernhardtrian7471 no idea. Most of the utility companies in the LA area seem to do it. So LADWP, BWP, and GWP all are ones that I know for sure do it.
No it's just first world problem. Compare per capita it's always the Western countries who make the top 10 and always we the USA top the list with double than the second.
Turn off the lights and PC when you leave the officer. I never see anyone do this in my career. Lights on and PCs run 24/7
1. Please provide the cost of a green building compared to a concrete building.
2. Queer women of color? What about trans, one footed little people from Madagascar?
As a historian, I am very grateful that you mentioned the embodied energy in historic buildings. Amateur environmentalists often just see old structures as energy drains, failing to realize that many of them have great advantages for energy conservation once you upgrade their climate control systems.
I've never seen a building with less need of an AC than my parents 180+ year old farm house. Massive walls of sand and stone (no concrete), so superb insulation. They needed to get an EU energy Rating when they renewed their central heating, and of course the official energy rating is... F. Because modern ratings don't account for ancient building techniques and their advantages...
@@mlippert Very interesting standpoint, often overlooked. Also these houses accumulate heat, so when you heat them up (which does take quite a lot of energy), they do not need much to stay warm.
Modern system is brutal. And sustainability built upon modern system is a brutal scam.
@@mlippert That is physically nonsense. Massive walls have the worst insulation and have the biggest heat losses.
@@Stefan_Dahn So you're saying an 80 cm insulation of any given material is worse than a 10 cm insulation of the same material? I think it's your physics that's inverted...
I always laugh when architects just throw some plants on a concrete box and call it a ecological
Or greenwash it by presenting the marketing materials on a faux unbleached paper which is a bleached paper with an unbleached paper texture offset printed on it, and saying 0.1% of the price will go to salaries and airplane tickets for top managers of some NGO in Amazon.
Good video. I hope you zoom out in "part two", and explore in what degree the location of a building is more important than it's energy efficiency. I.e. how zoning, density and transport matters to overall long term human emissions.
Noted as a possible future topic :)
I would love to see DW do this
While DW does produce high quality videos I think you can also have a look at other channels that might provide equal quality, like Not Just Bikes, Climate Town, Alan Fisher or Adam Something, channels that nearly exclusively focus on urban planning ;)
@@fireskorpion396 Thanks, that is exactly my point! Planet A and all their other stuff is great. I already watch those guys you mention, and eco gecko, citynerd, active towns, urbaburble and more. But having DW have a go at this subject matter (which is very much related to this video) through the prowess of a proper journalistic lens, - that could make a great follow up video, and it would make the wider implications of the subject at hand more approachable to a wider audience.
@@truls4643 fair, more people might get into the topic, and I'll definitely have a look at the channels you mentioned! :D
I don't get how giving living room inproportionally to colored women helps to reduce hatred and boost equality. It does exactly the opposite.. sad that nobody seems to think these decisions through
same, it made no sense to me
I guess it would have been better to simply give to the poor as wealth is the greatest determinant of privilege.
Just think of it as a shelter for people with very special needs. I wouldn't want to live in a Soviet style apartment building where several families share the same kitchen.
The real truth is that urban living is by far and away the least environmentally impactful way of life, and it is extremely disingenuous to present these facts and figures without comparing and contrasting them with what the alternatives would be, if they were replaced with lower density structures. There is no human way of living that does not cause some environmental change, but we have a moral duty to cause as little damage as possible. Highly dense urban architecture is far more efficient throughout its entire lifecycle than any other type of architecture.
Many climate change activists complain about construction method with concrete and steel but they don't calculate that those are the most reliable material for longer sustainability. The only thing that would be accomplished is the green energy usage of every resident in that particular residential building. Also building on flat surfaces, not high building is waste of land and requires more energy usage because of material transport. Urban citys are the best thing for the enviourment.
Wooden buildings are a privilege in this day and age, whereas sand for concrete is everywhere. Yeah one can say that every tree that was cut down had a replacement planted and thus is renewable, but that can only work for designer houses. Especially when you even see railroads everywhere replacing their wooden ties with concrete or synthetic ties. Railroads! The most environmental form of transport. Just goes to show that wood will always be precious.
@@bernhardtrian7471 Activists cant calculate or think logically! Hence they are activists. They think we with emotion and yell and scream like a petulant child!
They don't argue against density. They argue against tearing down fine buildings to replace them with better ones instead of upgrading them.
You stated the real problem in a profound manner without realizing it. "living green is an expensive privilege"
The problem is that so many buildings are built for like Chinese or whatever investors and these are just bought and then stay empty. This should be forbidden.
And how would you do that?
@@slavenrasic2173 In Germany there is a law that if you own a house or a flat you have to use it in some way. Is it empty for too long the state can fine you for it. It's not perfect but a step in the right direction
Here in the UK, many are local investors who buy lots and offers high rental price. Forcing people to pay really high rent because many can't afford to buy a house or flat. If no-one rent them, they rather leave them empty until someone who can afford to pay the rent. There are lots of empty flats in London.
@@slavenrasic2173 Land Value Tax
Easy to say than done. As a civil engineer, budget is the most important thing. If it is for residential buildings and looking for greener solutions, so little companies are willing to pay for the high initial costs unless that's one of their selling points and consumers are expecting to pay a lot more. Also, we often see well graded and certified green buildings literally fall into much lower grade in a year or two, not sure why but it is what it is. Another issue is most carbon emission during construction is produced by transportation, not the construction itself.
Can you please link a source for "green buildings literally....". I don't belive that.
The transport energy (co2) is quite low compared to the embedded energy => co2 footprint in concrete and stones etc...
concept of single family housing in USA are the worst environmental culprits residential apartments & mixed use of shops , office & residential multistory buildings with walkable distances are best which makes a spread-out city a small city
- every single home roof is exposed to sun & external atmosphere consumes energy for both cooling & heating
- many miles of roads , power , water , sewage , broadband etc have to be constructed & maintained each year
- no grocery store near the homes they have travel many miles to make a purchase every day carbon emissions & even online deliveries should travel more miles
- large areas of farmlands forests have to be cleared for every single house
- on same building foundation 4 storey buildings can be built but laws do not allow embodied energy value is high
In a very individualistic culture it is extremely difficult to sell the idea of sharing space with other people as the ultimate success.
I just bought a house, and everything I do to it and change creates so much waste that goes only to a landfill. I keep thinking to myself, how can I do this sustainably? Our solutions need to be available at our local hardware store, and every contractor needs to be well versed in those materials and methods, otherwise these changes will never come.
Every one lives in a house where energy use is tracked.... That's how we pay electricity bill
That is right, my electric company sends me an email each month about my E-consumption.
Energy should be free and carbon free
Lol
@@Jake-iw3tl Nothing is free, there's always someone paying. And western governments don't like carbon free energy sources, or else they wouldn't have been busy shutting down nuclear power plants.
Just for the records , our cities urban planning sucks too.
'Like proper reporters we just barged into someone's house.'
I laughed louder than I should have, thank you!
I also laughed pretty hard when they said the guys lives in the basement haha
As someone who lived in an American wood house I prefer the German brick homes. They have better insulation especially against noise.
I would love to live in a house with real time energy tracking. Vampire energy usage and unnecessary wasteful behavior could be visualized and therefore prevented.
You clearly stayed in the northern states because in the south brick homes are just ovens in this heat and I hate it. Would prefer a wood house because they cool down fast at night.
The recycling and reuse issues are also cultural. In Japan, trades are often deconstructing and sorting out building materials into up to 20 different bins. In western countries it is very hard to get people to sort out materials.
Unfortunately, many postwar & modern buildings in Japan are built with only an expected lifespan of several decades, before they are to be torn down & replaced with a newer structure.
@@jonathantan2469 I was not aware of that. Why are buildings built to last for only several decades?
@@mk-oc7mt I don't the major reasons but some are frequent earthquake, typhoon and tsunamis . And also society nowdays advances too quickly so buildings quickly becomes redundant.
@@mk-oc7mt also the in many countries like China and UAE you can't own a land it could be leased from government for 70 year or so House are not made to last longer than that. I live in developing country and here houses are made to cheaper so there's alot of cost cutting ✂️ and most of these houses will last more than thier intended lifespan.
Green politics in most country will not work as it's too expensive and if implemented will bar alot of people from entering middle class.
@@g1y3 that’s interesting, thanks for the info. Here in the US, most single family homes and often multifamily are made of cheap and engineered lumber, essentially cardboard. Homes don’t last long here either.
When did people start calling pollution "carbon"? Really narrows the perception of actual harm being done by various pollutants/emissions mixed together
it's just that companies can sell solutions that lessen the carbon footprint while ignoring everything else
It's both. For climate change, carbon is more relevant than general pollution. But of course we should reduce all kinds of pollution.
"Look!!! we emit 0 carbon"
Emitting sulphur and fluorine to the air on the background
People did start that in the year 2525.
@@Stefan_Dahn my mans came back from future to comment here.
sounds like 1st world problem to me, mostly self gratification.
companies are the real problem
And the governments that are scared to take actual measures because they don't want to piss the owners of the companies and investors off. None, and I really mean NONE of them takes this issue seriously.
a house that tracks energy use.. isnt that just the power company with their monthly electric bill?
In the UK you have to pay vat to refurbish or repair an old building while a new build is vat free, this is the wrong way round in my opinion.
Also you have to let the council and neighbors know before doing it....it is a complicated process.
Let's also not forget about zoning laws forcing long commute ways (mostly by car) espacially for lower income households
Exactly, I moved to the city where I work. 95 % of the time I go to work on my bike. My shopping center is only 500 meters away. I have a bike trailer for the heavy loads. I use my car for the long distance, but that is rare.
Would I live in a house that tracks my energy use ? No I wouldn't want to judge 👨⚖️ and compare myself with my neighbours. I have Social media to do that.
knowing how much environmental impact your having is important. and the raw numbers don’t mean much to people when they have nothing to compare it to. if you’re ranked last you KNOW you can change your lifestyle for the better.
@@LaurensHouweling knowing how much environmental impact you or any other individual has is worthless because it doesn't make a difference, large corporations are ruining this world, not us as individuals.
imagine being in the elevator and your neighbour stares at you like *oh its you the energy waster, you've had too many parties over. Or you've got 3 kids and i've got one*. people would try to ;punish you.
I am not on social media. thank god. i mean youtube is enough and i get roasted here already
Wish they added subs or dubbed the section with Frank Junker discussing how the basement facility works for non German speakers it seemed like a lot of information was kept away then suddenly "was it his idea?" yes but neglect everything he said prior
Turn CC subs on
There is only one way of sustainability which is to become minimalist. Reduce consumption and take care of your surroundings.
I live in a house where i can track my energy usage by the electricity bill which i get..:p
so much wood & plastic alongside it seems like a fire hazard...? Or is it how wooden houses are built?
Could you explain what is the problem with concrete? Why is it worse than a tree? Concrete is better than wood in terms of sound insulation, service life, strength, water resistance, insect protection. OSB uses a lot of glue (contains formaldehyde). Wood requires deforestation, sawmilling, chemical processing. I think that in the long-term wooden buildings have a higher carbon footprint than concrete buildings.
We made a whole report on concrete, you can find it here: th-cam.com/video/dgVWz77lGCo/w-d-xo.html
Firstly I don't have a permanent apartment in Berlin. In Berlin they don't pay enough salary to be eco friendly. I can't afford it.
I'm in low-income and have deeply affordable social housing originally built for seniors in the early 70's. 2/3 of the residents (About 240 apartments) are seniors the rest are people on ODSP and welfare. Rent is RGI and for most people, it's about 149 a month. There are a few market rent tenants paying $850 which is about 1/2 of normal rent here in Toronto. They replaced the bathrooms and showerheads for energy savings. The Windows are from the 1970s and the steam heating is also from the 70s. There is no individual control overheat per unit. There is no motivation to improve the efficiency of the building and most tenants are too poor to care. We get what we are given. The best we can do is use LED bulbs in our sockets and lights. The rest is market-driven. If computer monitors and TVs switched to micro LED to save money it would take a decade before it was common in this low-income environment. The technology would have to be ubiquitous in the rest of the market and fully discounted before it would be affordable to most people here. The average income for people on disability support and seniors is about CAD$11,560 and on welfare it's about $4,500 including RGI rent. It's hard to worry about the environment when you can't eat anything but items from the foodbank. Most people don't have any interest in separating their garbage, recycling and organics since each floor has a garbage Shoot. The average age in this building is increasing and is about 40 or so. But like the rest of society, the population is aging. A bottom-up approach might be the only solution.
This is the very challenge in my town - Boulder, Colorado USA. The University of Colorado at Boulder, has negotiated the annexation of land they own into city zoning, in order to move forward with a complicated project including municipal flood protection, affordable housing, and educational facilities. The challenge now presents itself: this new development is proposed on a site that is originally in a floodplain - a natural riparian, wetland habitat, rare in this arid climate, and no less during a historic drought.
If affordable housing where the issue, why isn't the university looking at housing that is closer than 5km from their main campus, in buildings already constructed?
It's sickening to see an institution push their world class environmental studies department, while blatantly chosing profit over people, and insisting on using their leverage in the city to highjack a flood project, use it to negotiate annexation T&C, and ultimately dictate water rights. Isn't this gaslighting, greenwashing, and a ruse?
How do we change the system indeed....repeal the annexation by referendum in our upcoming election. Vote YES.
That’s a huge shame. The UC capital planning division is likely siloed from the sustainability department. The UC system sees the high cost of building and high land values in Boulder, and does not account for the environmental services of the flood zone to the residents of the city. The risks and externalities of development are then outsourced as costs to the public, while UC profits from development is privatized.
@@mk-oc7mt I would bet you are right! And you know who is not at the table when discussing how to "use land?" ANY of the dozens of indigenous communities in the "state" of "Colorado" - I wonder how much less climate crisis we would be in, IF the settler colonialism mindset took a backseat to Aboriginal knowledge systems....
The coolest thing I saw was this guy built a house on his property by the Columbia River Gorge on the Washington side, I live in Oregon. But his experiment home turned out to be the best thing. He used the natural landscape and built a house into this rocky cliff side area that had, at first a little area his kids would play in. He eventually committed to his dream and made it work so efficiently and naturally balancing. It's s dream place. Near a river system. Uses basic laws of nature to regulate certain things. (I don't know the name of the video and channel I saw it on but it's a channel that covers unique living areas and I'll either comment on this or edit it in so it's findable to see this rocky place, it's like living out your ultimate kid dream of a mega fort but add great knowledge, construction, )
Wonderful start, thanks for the whole team for amplifying these thoughts, hope to see pt2 pt3 pt4 etc, a whole series on the subject, as others suggested in the comments.
Density in itself is a most complex issue, with regards to its effects on the psychology of individuals, the political power of a community, the geography, historical change and the "laziness" infrastructure of production and living (i.e. what we people #do and how we spend the rest of our days), and so on.
The huge question of "building for who" is definitely a vast & suspenseful topic with lots of ghost-projects and investigative journalism.
A very romantic one would be: why is it or is it really a quite selfish addressing of the problems to secess, to move out of this network of power we call cities to find village life (again?) for the masses, with the cave communas in Spain to the rootlessness of "digital nomads" (man i hate that expression, we re just kids forever, afraid of speaking up for real change), or the guy living in a bike with his goat, and so many other strings in the fabric of sustainable(?) living with real impact outside of cities.
wishing the best to the whole crew!
I’d absolutely love an energy tracker. Especially if it came with tips and features such as weather ai acknowledgement or something like that.
One of the best things about my city (in my opinion) is that the climate means no need for heating or cooling. People still do though.....
In Israel it's standard to use a solar water heater since it's super cheap, basically just a large glass panel with black piping in it . While most houses still have an electric one just as a backup, we won't use it most days of the year unless it's a cloudy winter day
Lucky you for having so much sunshine. In the Netherlands is mostly cloudy.
Beina Xu is a really charming reporter, honestly, I think the most charming reporter I've yet seen on DW Planet A
Following are the key aspects of a sustainable/green building
1) Durable and high quality-This increases the lifetime of the building and thus reduce the need to rebuild
2) Energy efficient building envelope- Glass buildings are the least efficient kind of building, in any climate.
3) Energy efficient service equipment, such as cooling, heating, and ventilation systems
4) Located in a right place- building's location and how it connects to the rest of the built environment determines how people access the building, such as, whether they walk, bike, take public transit, or whether they have to drive.
5) Comfortable for occupants- Thermal comfort, good air quality, etc.
6) Well integrated to the surroundings- This determines how a building contributes to it surrounding, which affects the quality of the public realm.
Buildings covered with Solar PV or built with recycled material, are not necessarily green, if they are not complied with at least these criteria. Most of the old and refurbished buildings in Germany are greener than to most of the 'green washed' buildings we see in media.
We already track our energy use through our bills, that's enough. I prefer the repurpose approach.
Good content approach, but while you are here why don't go deeper on this subject?
What about fire risk in 100% wooden buildings?
You can have a fire resistance coating. If it is using timber, it literally fire resist for a long period of time, I mean hours, way more than enough for fireman to come.
Urban planning is a huge component of the conversation around building sustainably. We cannot rely on atomizing buildings into separate sustainable units to achieve a systemic outcome like reducing emissions. At least for audiences in the US, there needs to be a greater education around better planning. I think this video simplifies the issue. Other commenters are making good points about building types and configurations.
10:25 of course i would, that would be great information to know
In my car I can see how much energy I'm consuming. That was for me the biggest trigger to change driving behavior!
I would absolutely like to live in a house that tracks my energy use. But ofcourse that's not for everyone the best to change or be able to relax in your own home.
Old leaky single detached houses that force you to drive are a massive waste of energy especially in North America- that needs to be fixed ASAP
Didn’t understand what he was talking about in the basement of the building. I assume they use water to water heat pumps.
Have you ever wondered why a building is called "building" if it's already been built, idk it's been bugging me for a while
....You just made me think that . And now its bugging me too . How about we call it "builded"(cool right?😂)
I would be interested to see more on this topic. I think that in the long run, we need to brace retrofitting buildings with green technology. If nothing else, people need to deal with the fact that the technology will change faster than we can build! I would be curious to know about some more tailored solutions to energy efficiency. We have gotten used to building the same way regardless of local climate and that doesn't make sense.
Your local power company may have suggestions on their website. I know mine is willing to come in and assess my insulation and appliances for free.
the challenge there is that there is a threshold below which retro fitting is not feasible. Consider places with a proliferation of single family homes. By simply having more walls exposed to the outside, the need for insulation is drastically higher, on a per individual or family basis, compared to say apartments. If we can build with mostly wood, the choice between retro fitting or simply building denser becomes closer.
We need to change fast, a neighborhood getting developed near where I live have fake triangles adding to the attic to make a house look bigger
It would be cool to track your energy use in live time! Instead of just a bill you get once a month, one would be able to tweak their energy use if they're going over-budget :)
Every flat comes with this iPad that shows you how much energy
Lmao...
Green building should definitely take over the world because the way we are building new buildings is bad for the environment (well for the atmosphere).
Spoken about weird ... it is, 0:43, an utter city's environment, with just a very little green; some tree's and well, some grass around the tram-rails. Let me suggest: the kids will play 95% of their time at home. But, 3:45, surprisingly, with a lawn-mower ...
And then, 10:20 - even more surprisingly: the geese (Alopochen aegyptiaca) already took that job!
An important subject and a great fun presenter, well done 🙂
Why does the voiceover sound more like ASMR than journalism?
I loved.... the humor in this such serious... professional documentary..
Great video, thanks for sharing, cheers
Aspern, Vienna must be quite eco-friendly with it's HoHo
IMPORTANT. Your video article discusses the WALL SECTION !!!
This is FUNDAMENTAL for every discussion on energy reduction and building physics architecture.
THIS IS a great documentary. 10/10.
"The construction industry accounts for nearly 40% of global CO2 emissions"
Highly misleading.
In the UK they are trying to roll out "smart meters" for the utilities, so that house occupants get minute by minute data on their energy and water use.
When I first got one i used it and checked things, but after a while I found it was just an annoying gimmick.
What's with the high rise building in the thumbnail? The housing responsible the most for climate change are single family homes, which use a lot of land to house a small density of people and also lead to higher private car ownership and lower public transport use, besides being energy inefficient and costly when it comes to infrastructure. High rises are the exact opposite, and it would be better if more were built in the west.
The "circular economy" based on cradle to cradle certification is a great strategy. Thank you William McDonough and Michael Braungart! I totally gutted my 100+ year old house heated by natural gas. I installed new exterior doors, triple pane windows, R27 high insulation in all the exterior walls, basement and ceiling into the attic. I now heat my house with renewably powered electricity and only use the natural gas heater when super cold. Next week I will finish my solar air heater. Our future is renewably powered.
Natural gas is not renewable lol
@@halcyonrain2209 While that is true, did you expect my house not to burn a little natural gas when it is -40 C outside? Biogas for dispatchable heat and electricity in each city would definitely help...toilet nutrients, kitchen nutrients and yard nutrients are all biological nutrients.
I think the best way to approach the upcycling and repurposing of construction materials has three parts.
1. Find an existing building that just needs a bit of love. Recognize what parts of the existing structure can remain intact and keep them.
2. Figure out what absolutely needs to be replaced or created to make the space usable versus what is mostly aesthetic.
3. Find the repurposable materials available nearby and make sure that they will last. It doesn't make sense to find some eco-friendly building materials if they come from far-away places and then break in fifteen years.
4. Keep in mind already proven concepts like green roofs and passive heating/cooling. There is no need to try reinventing the wheel just to find that the new thing isn't as good.
The 5. step would be to find an investor who would pay higher-than-normal sum of money for such project, even though the first three steps each include considerable amount of risk.
Going green is expensive and risky. We all know it needs to be done but no-one wants to take up the burden with their investment money. I'm trying to be realistic here.
@@alexanderfilip2679 People renovate and repurpose existing buildings and materials all of the time.
A simple example is the patio my dad made out of bricks my church would have thrown away otherwise. Another example I have seen the US is people deconstructing old barns and salvaging the good parts for building houses. There are whole companies focuses on that one. Landscaping companies have to pay to dump their debris. They would definitely be okay with giving you their cut-down trees so that they don't have to pay to dump it somewhere (I have worked in landscape).
Things like passive heating literally consist of having extended rooflines to shade the house in the summer and larger windows to heat in the winter. Those aren't extra costs, those are just design choices.
It doesn't have to be ridiculously expensive, you just need to be willing to do your research.
It's really cool to learn about the "unique projects", but in reality they are not even a blip on the radar of conventional buildings & conventional construction. If we want to put a building sector emissions we need to be talking about projects at scale (district energy) or projects that are easily repeatable (air & geo source heat pumps; energy recovery; HVAC optimization) not Yoko Ono repurposed wood.
P.S. I do these projects for a living in Canada. I would be glad to share some ideas if you're interested Planet A.
Most people live in houses that track their energy use, that's how power companies know how much to charge you
In The Netherlands most construction has been on hold for about 2 years because of a court ruling. There's too much nitrogen in the ground. Major construction companies are now slowly turning their heads towards wood construction. Things can change rather rapidly. You just need the proper legislation in place, and institutions to enforce it.
Wow, thanks for the info, didn't know that. But how did so much nitrogen get into the ground in the first place? As far as I know its only by humans with fertilizer. The rest is by Biomass or rain that carries nitrogen excess from phonotsynthesis. But by that there was never an issue with overwelming amount of nitrogen deposition in the underground. Especially near urban places, where everything is already concrete for cars buildings and infrastructure
Apartments are too expensive to buy in the first place, unless any of this can change that, it's irrelevent to the average people who are forced into renting.
9:00 I understand why 1% of people living in ecological buildings is bad thing, but I am interested how big % of German society is composed of queer women of colour that need social housing. There are probably many other women that need it, work immigrants are mostly men and many many more people need that housing not because of their skin colour or sexualities and gender, but because of their financial state. Btw good video 👍
...how do you live in a house that doesn't track your energy use? I mean, I suppose it's the energy company doing the tracking, not the house, but that doesn't really seem meaningfully different?
I would live in a green building like those towers in Mailand, shown in the video @ 8:59 because it is beautiful as well
Milan is Meiland in English. Keine Problem, ich helf Dich weiter.
i love ur channel. makes me want to work in your organization.
I like the narrator's sense of humor and lovely voice. She should narrate all the stuff I watch on TH-cam. I would watch even more videos.
Use: Induction Cooker(instead of Gas), Induction Water Heater(Instead of Boilers), LED Ligths, Use Smart Sensors(Temp, etc.), Use Inverter Heat pump(instead of Furnace) and Good Home Insulation
And how is that electricity for you induction cooker generated? Wind and solar? No, the wind does not blow all time and the sun does not shine at night. So there is always a powerplant on the backround: coal, gas, biomass = wood and nuclear energy.
Heat pumps are a supplement, but never a replacement. There colder it gets outside the less a heatpump gives heat. So a heating backup is necessary.
The technical solutions to CO2 have existed for a long time. As with the famine problem, the problem is economic not technical. We need long term, patient investment in the long term interests of all residents of this planet, stable incentives and a robust way of dealing with bad actors. Unfortunately, most governments are ideologically committed to the principle of absolute freedom for investors, at the expense of de facto freedom for the rest of us.
So Germans banned their own nuclear power plants and set themselves on russian oil anc gas needle, now you ditching building construction? We will overwatch you with a pleasure.
Green concrete and local management of waste can be 2 major starting points for sustainable construction.
What about:
1. Chemical leakage from repurposed materials?
2. Cancer risks from living in a building that decomposes?
3. You do not know what exposure even the cleaner materials you are using had before?
4. Is there exposure to non-ionizing radio frequencies?
you already live in a home that tracks your energy use? host saying shes not sure she would is odd, dont you get billed for it every month? Having a real time display of course makes this better. Germany is doing a lot of great things when it comes to sustainable building, livability. Their general approach architecture rules. 40% social housing is great. More of this
i dont know how every country does it but most of the time the electic company isnt going to every house to read every meter the bill they send you is just an estimation where im from they only come to read your meter maybe once every 6months or if your disputing your bill.
When you sign up for energy in Germany you tell them how much you are going to consume - e.g. 2000 kwh for 2 persons. And then you update them with your current numbers annually, or every 6 months (which is just an update). So at the end of a year, every German either gets money back, or has to pay some to the provider. So yeah, you do have some insights into your energy use. I guess if you want to track your consumption more closely you can just get smart meters. It's pretty convenient though if it comes with the flat.
Architects need to stop designing boxes. Construction companies need to stop making boxes. We literally live and work in boxes and yet, we cannot seem to think outside the box.
I would totally live there! I think its a great motivator
Would love to live in a "net 0" house TBH. would love to see how much energy I produce from regenerable sources and try to keep my consumption under what I can physically produce through solar or perhaps wind. Like it was said in the video, this would be a challenge and challenge makes us get better.
Sadly, in Eastern Europe, we are very far from going towards small scale/HH level renewable energy sources. It's more common seen at the 1%ers TBH and it's not OK. The only way you can afford solar panels is through a multi-decade loan... most of the people will not take this route even if it has a positive value in a relatively short time.
I would live there immediately. Because you save a lot of cost if heating is efficient and you don't lose all of it because walls aren't well insulated
If the average inner-city apartment is bad for the environment,
then the Single Family Zoning complex is nuclear!
You gotta slap an ipad on everything, to make it look "smarter" 😂
Yes! Buildings should tell us how much we're using in resources --energy, water, waste production. Along with realistic things to consider for reduction. Getting people to change takes time.
Before a focus on recycling, we must have a focus on reduction. Reduce, re-use, recycle. In that order.
One of the greatest challenges now is electrifying existing building stock that relies on technologies like natural gas.
The majority of electricity is still generated by burning gas, wood or coal. Wind and solar make only 3-4 % of the spectrum. Gas has the least CO2 emission, so keep gas in your homes. Unless you want to use nuclear energy, which has the lowest CO2.
@@mardiffv.8775 gas leaks in infrastructure are underrepresented in the emissions analysis.
I agree that in many places electricity is produced with carbon intensive processes.
I suppose my perspective on electrifying existing building stock comes from living in a state that mostly excludes coal from our electricity grid
The last bit: investors want fast and often outsize return on capital is why the world is facing a crisis.
Earlier, houses were built of wood and stone, which are natural materials and therefore sustainable by definition. Also, they employed local craftsmen and tradespeople, thereby generating local employment.
These are simple concepts, which need to be revived
Pretty sure most of us are being tracked on energy use.
You know... because the Providers want to get paid.
"most of its residents would be Queer women of color." is an oddly specific demography.
I'm so happy i live in small town with 12.000 people..
All those compress wood not suitable for all. Some places particular in tropical climate, those wood will be a major termite nest, bugs and if not regularly maintain might rot away pretty soon. Maintenance add cost
My utility uses OPOWER's interface to report on our household's energy use on a next-day basis. I use the collected data as a general indicator rather than an inflexible report towards hard targets, competing against either our neighbors or our own past performance. I might note, "hey, we're using a lot of power this week" and share that with my family, noting our weather or air quality needs, and talk about maybe tightening our use within the month when conditions abate. We also participate in voluntary electricity conservation calls when there's peak demand on our grid - when we're able to, it's a good opportunity to switch off everything in the house and take the dog for a walk, catching up with neighbors in the park.
In comparison with our peers were among the top 20% of energy performers for a house our size in the neighborhood we live in. Frankly, that's good enough, and I have other energy demands to work on, and neighbors to help.
Thank you for another great piece, DW! Would you research if anyone is building steel dome structures, with more flexible material than concrete and glass, such as hemp and acrylic plates/plexiglass, to disaster proof it? If so, would you research if anyone is using water culture food production in the center and green plants/trees on the surface, changing the city-skape back into a nature look of hills of different sizes?
That's a very creative idea!
Have you ever heard of hempcrete? It's an organic, compostable, carbon negative building material. We have more information on the industry in this video: Why outlawing cannabis was a HUGE mistake ☞ th-cam.com/video/0O-IodgG8a4/w-d-xo.html - have a watch and let us know what you think in the comments!
Don’t worry about co2 from building.
Worry about the daily co2 from planes, especially rockets and military aircraft. the country with the largest military and rocket makes the most co2 in the world.
Yes, planes are very energy consuming. We should subsidize train travel. The jet fuel of flying is enough to heat your house for a year.
Designer: OK, here are the basic plans for your new house. This is just the standard design. It's going to be about $150k. But let me ask you, what are your thoughts on the environment?
Buyer: Oh yeah, we care about the environment! Definitely want to do what we can to help make this better!
Designer: Great. In that case, here are the designs for the EcoFriendly house.
Buyer: Wow, those are incredible ideas! And it looks beautiful and creative!!! We love that!
Designer: I thought you might. We're very proud of it. So, it's going to be about $250k...
Buyer: $250k? Um... Uh... Er... So, if we go with the original design, can we get some recycling containers with that?
Sadly in Chicago huge old factories and warehouses are instead demolished wholesale just for another concrete based structure to be built on top instead of renovating and reusing the same building which would be far less wasteful and more ecologically sustainable. Older buildings that are still standing today do so BECAUSE they are solid - sure they may need a lot of work, but they truly don't build em like they used to. We need to make buildings that last, enough with this wasteful consumerist mindset in architecture that designs buildings with human lifespans. Build right, build strong, build to last, not to demolish and replace every 50 years. I hate that mindset of many architects that think buildings should have short lifespans - it's unsustainable.