From the Blog

A Nantes, des logements sociaux à énergie positive font rimer durable et désirable

par JEAN-PHILIPPE DEFAWE, lemoniteur.fr, 3 mars 2013

Récompensé par le prix d’architecture Bas Carbone d’EDF, Le Grand Carcouët est l’un des premiers programmes de logements sociaux à énergie positive de l’Ouest. Le chantier, qui se termine en septembre, est une des étapes phare de «Nantes, capitale verte de l’Europe».

Cette opération de 30 logements pour l’office HLM Nantes Habitat est remarquable à plus d’un titre. D’abord l’emplacement : en bordure du Val de la Chézine, une des coulées verte de la ville, dans un tissu pavillonnaire entre deux quartiers d’habitat social en pleine requalification. Les architectes du cabinet In Situ Architecture et Environnement ont d’ailleurs su jouer habilement avec le paysage. « Les itinéraires vers les logements créent un rapport quotidien et varié au paysage. Il peut s’agir de cadrages, de suspensions, de vues : on passe sous les arbres, on les longe… » explique François Lannou, architecte associé. De fait, le programme est composé de deux bâtiments reliés entre eux par un système de galeries emballées et de coursives qui offre des modes d’accès variés… et limite le volume chauffé aux seules surfaces habitées.

Car si les architectes ont particulièrement travaillé le confort d’usage (logements traversants, volumes, surface optimisés…), ce programme est remarquable d’un point de vue énergétique. Des résultats dus à sa structure béton, pour l’inertie, habillée de murs à ossature bois isolés. A cette enveloppe étanche s’ajoutent une moquette solaire Héliopac couplée à un système de récupération de chaleur sur eaux grises (Powerpipe) qui permettra aux deux bâtiments de dépasser de 20% les exigences du niveau BBC Effinergie. Enfin, l’ajout de panneaux photovoltaïques en toiture fera passer ce programme à énergie positive.

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Bordeaux 2046 une journée de Marie

BORDEAUX 2046

Un film de Nicolas Michelin

Avec Eléonore Michelin et Pablo Nicomedes

Production: Agence ANMA / Agora 2010, Biennale d’architecture d’urbanisme et design de la Ville de Bordeaux / Ville de Bordeaux / Verticalight

Réalisation: Ugo Nicolas et Marie Alléaume

Image: Baltazar Lab

Agence Nicolas Michelin & Associés

Pop-up hotels: Rooms with a fleeting view

by STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM, The New York Times, March 19, 2013

A room for London Photo: Charles Hosea Source: www.aroomforlondon.co.uk

A room for London
Photo: Charles Hosea
Source: www.aroomforlondon.co.uk

POP-UP STORES. Pop-up restaurants. Pop-up lounges. Shouldn’t this fascination with pop-ups — which are by definition ephemeral — have disappeared already?

Hotels offer compelling reasons for the trend to endure. Unlike temporary stores and lounges designed to hawk clothes and cocktails, temporary hotels allow travelers to sleep in unique spaces (boats, tricked-out shipping containers) and forbidden places (public parks, racetracks). The hotels also enable festivalgoers around the world to upgrade from sleeping bags and tents to rooms with beds, rain showers and iPod docking stations. (…)

A Room for London

This one-bedroom hotel (talk about exclusive) is actually a boat balanced atop the roof of Southbank Center, the London art complex onthe bank of the Thames. Inspired by the boat that the author Joseph Conrad navigated up the River Congo in the 19th century before writing “Heart of Darkness,” it has decks that offer views of London icons like Big Ben and St. Paul’s Cathedral.

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A room for London website

Living Architecture webiste

Living small Is the best revenge

by ROBIN FINN, The New York Times, February 28, 2013

Looking West Source: nArchitecte.com

Looking West
Source: nArchitecte.com

Despite less-than-rhapsodic memories of miniaturized apartment living, the married architects Mimi Hoang and Eric Bunge designed the winner of the adAPT micro-unit competition sponsored by the New York City Housing and Preservation Department and endorsed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Their entry, “My Micro NY,” features 55 prefabricated apartments, of 360 square feet or less, stacked in a 10-story building on East 27th Street in Kips Bay. The building does not stint on amenities, providing a common terrace, a laundry room and a bike room.

The couple’s firm, nArchitects, is based in a Dumbo loft, and they live in a Carroll Gardens town house, but for the competition they drew on their cohabitation in a tenement in Lower Manhattan.

The mission was to seize an opportunity to render a tight space habitable and, if possible, aesthetically pleasing.

“At first blush we weren’t so sure about entering,” Mr. Bunge said, “because we felt people should have more space than this. But that was before we understood that the alternatives out there are far worse. There are people living together in substandard apartments all over the city who would prefer to live alone but can’t afford to. So we said, ‘Wait a minute, let’s make a humane small space where people would want to live.’”

“This is a pilot program, and it doesn’t mean micro-units are going to be sprouting everywhere,” Ms. Hoang said. “But it’s incredibly exciting to be part of a progressive new residential prototype for New York that has social implications and is intended to help solve a social problem.

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adAPT NYC Competition, winner announcement

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Solar panels rare amid the steeples

by KATE GALBRAITH, The International Herald Tribune (The New York Times), March 7, 2013

AUSTIN, TEXAS — More than three decades ago, after an energy crisis that gripped the world, a Catholic priest in the Texas city of Lubbock took a stand for the environment. His congregation needed a new church. So the priest, the Rev. Joe James, anchored the building deep in the earth to optimize insulation. He also ordered five wind turbines for the church grounds. The largest was called Big Bird, because it stood 80 feet tall.

“I don’t feel as though we are free to waste,” Father James told a videographer at the time. Staring earnestly into the camera, he argued that saving money was not the only reason for energy conservation.

Father James, who still lives near Lubbock, was an outlier. In the intervening years, few churches have made energy saving a priority. Experts say that churches, like other houses of worship, face particular challenges in going green because of unusual architecture and an often slow decision-making culture. Even Father James’s wind turbines got dismantled in the 1990s, after he had moved on.

Still, as the likely effects of climate change on people and nature become clearer, some religious leaders are increasing their engagement. Pope Benedict XVI, who stepped down last week, has been hailed as the “green pope.” He put solar panels on the roof of a Vatican auditorium, though they are out of sight of the general public. Last year, he also acquired an electric car to get around the grounds of his summer residence. Environmentalists will be eager to see whether the next pope makes green issues a priority.

The Church of England has a goal of reducing its carbon footprint 42 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050.

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TEDx Adelaide: Steffen Lehmann – Cities of the future

by TEDxTalks, November 22, 2011

“Today’s problems cannot be solved if we still think the way we thought when we created them.” — Albert Einstein.

Steffen Lehmann presented innovative and bold ideas that could transform our energy-hungry cities to greener urban centres. He argues that we need better models for rapid urbanisation, which include innovative housing typologies for inner-city living and re-engineering of outdated construction methods, including adaptive re-use of existing buildings, by using lightweight low carbon construction systems.

For over 20 years, Steffen Lehmann has been at the forefront of innovative sustainable architecture and urbanism. He is director of the Research Centre for Sustainable Design & Behaviour (sd+b) at the University of South Australia; and he holds the UNESCO Chair for Sustainable Urban Development for Asia and the Pacific (since 2008).

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations).