Footprint

‘Green is beautiful: towards a new aesthetic’  provided one of the show’s more entertaining moments as Bartlett professor CJ Lim hurled packs of vegetables from Egypt, Guatemala and Thailand into the audience to prove a point about food miles. But the seminar veered off topic and never came back. Lim was plugging his book Smart Cities + Eco-warriors which rethinks how urban outdoor space could be used more productively and looks intriguing:

Terry Farrell was all about low carbon as an urban design and infrastructure issue, not a building issue; and then Will Alsop: ‘There are lots of gizmos out there [at Ecobuild] which I find completely horrible and uninteresting. It’s just the same as plumbing.’

White Design picked up the BREEAM 2010 School award for Rogiet Primary School in Monmouthshire which achieved the highest BREEAM rating (78.18%) for a school when completed last year.

Bill Dunster’s design surgery stand was packed when I wandered by. RuralZed houses are now available flatpack through Jewson’s.

The St Gobain Solar Decathalon house built by Nottingham students was notable for the buzz of students touring visitors through the place and the depth of the knowledge they had acquired in the process. Fortunately when they assemble the house in Madrid next summer they will have a bit more time; the first floor was only partially complete. It’s a Code 6 PassivHaus standard house designed with party walls suitable for terrace housing. Unfortunately the raw brown colour of the Thermowood cladding - which I was told will weather to gray - doesn’t due the simple design justice, nor did the last minute planting of annuals which filled the planter boxes intended for fruits and veggies. As a teaching tool, it’s absolutely fantastic.

You’ve had loads on products from my excellent guest bloggers - thanks to you all, but I did come across two products I must share.  GlassEco - I’ve always had a soft spot for recycled glass worktops and these are more affordable than some other products on the market: Croydon-based, GlassEco uses recycled bottles from south London pubs. On the same stand was SouthEast Coatings’ Second Nature line which includes beautiful bespoke floors from olive pits, cockles and coconut shells (beautiful, but not local!).

Last but not least was Richard Pain’s inventive house design for Kingspan Potton who are planning to build a prototype later in the year. Good to see manufacturer’s commissioning quality design.

Finally I might just have to order one of these from the Laundry Company to keep all that recycling straight; it even has a place to store batteries (the little red bins).

That’s it on Ecobuild for this year…

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Filed under: Green practice