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anokheeshah 3:22 pm on November 3, 2009 Permalink | Reply

Working with communities – training course

working_with_communities

Working with Communities- ‘ If you’re not having fun you’re not doing it right!’

This one day workshop is for all built environment professionals or students to develop their skills working with communities.

What do communities want? How do you assess their needs and priorities? How do you use that information in your design?

When? Saturday 21st November, 10-5pm

Where? Central London Location (closest tube stop Euston)

How much? £19.50 (students, asf members) £29.50 (employed)

How do I pay? contact: asf.associates@gmail.com to book your place, payment by cheque or BACS must be received before the workshop in order to confirm your place. Details of payment methods will be emailed to you.

Book early to avoid disappointment! (no bookings taken after 16th November)

Contact: asf.associates@gmail.com for more information, or look on the ASF-UK website: http://www.asf-uk.org/workshops

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paul 6:27 pm on August 15, 2009 Permalink | Reply
Tags: hydroponics
Hydroponics & growing food in cities

Car park installation, London Architecture Festival 2008

(Originally published on Footprint, at http://blog.emap.com/footprint/2009/08/03/guest-blogger-paul-smyth-a-consultant-at-inbuilt-discusses-hydroponics-and-food-production-in-inner-cities/)

Growing food without a garden isn’t easy. Hours wasted trawling ebay for a solution and nothing but a purple haze of £1000 grow tents. Then I find something called the HydroPod. Luckily thanks to these (http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to/video/how-to-grow-plants-with-a-homemade-hydroponics-system-276379/ ) wonderful people and some LED lights I will soon be drilling, pumping and lighting my way to a high tech mini bedroom-farm. And yes, before you ask, this is all entirely legal, proper and legitimate.

I’m not alone. Designers short on soil and space are dreaming up novel ways to grow food in the city. Plants don’t need soil to grow – only water, aerated roots, light and nutrients, so by combining artificial lighting, water pumps, ventilation and nutrient solutions it’s possible to grow food nearly anywhere. Indoors, up walls, on roof tops, even upside down.

In New York, start-up Gotham Greens (http://gothamgreens.com/) are busy investing $1.4 milllion to grow 30 tonnes of fruit and veg on a city rooftop with produce sold to city residents. The founders honed their skills growing food on a floating Science Barge http://nysunworks.org/?page_id=9 in the Hudson River. Then there’s the brilliant Vertically Integrated Greenhouse, a hydroponic building facade which shades a building and crops year round salad for office worker.

On a smaller scale, the no less impressive Duende Studios designed ‘Floating Garden’ http://duendepressrelations.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/%E2%80%98floating-garden%E2%80%99-by-benjamin-graindorge-at-forum-diffusion/#more-850 needs no nutrients – waste water from an aquarium feeds the plants. Tela Aviv based Knafo Klimor Architects are getting in on the act with their agro-housing concept. http://www.metaefficient.com/architecture-and-building/chinese-design-winner-high-rise-with-vertical-hydroponics.html .

Endless fun, but there is a serious side to all this. Our food system is flimsy, high in carbon and food travels huge distances before reaching our plates. Growing food locally makes sense but in our cities where space is scarce its diffuclt. With hydroponics food can be grown vertically or in stacks so a small area of land goes a long way making volume food production. The edible city is in sight.
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gwilym 10:09 am on August 11, 2009 Permalink | Reply
Book: Sustainable Energy – without the hot air

Book cover

Written by David MacKay, a physicist at Cambridge University, this looks like an interesting review of how much energy we use, how much we “need” to use, and ways of generating it. I’m only part-way through, but so far it’s well presented, and presents the physics in an understandable format.

There’s a paper version available to buy, or you can download the pdf for free.
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gwilym 6:39 pm on July 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
Small is… Festival!

Solar stove

A celebration and evolution of the ideas of Small is Beautiful in a weekend summer festival in the grounds of Practical Action.

Looks like an interesting event – 2 days of talks, workshops and stalls in Rugby, run by Practical Action and Engineers Without Borders – more details at http://www.ewb-uk.org/smallisfestival.
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gwilym 9:32 pm on July 15, 2009 Permalink | Reply
Tags: straw bale
Straw bale insulation and the S-house

S-house

Having just been to a few talks at the University of Cambridge Centre for Sustainable Development (in the Engineering Department), one of the talks was about retro-fitting straw bale insulation externally to buildings, which seems an interesting idea. 35cm of straw bale plus 3cm of render gives a U-value of 0.12W/m²/K.

The guy presenting also mentioned the S-house, an Austrian straw-bale based building with a timber frame and straw bale insulation that achieves better than Passivhaus standards (from memory), 6kWh/m2/year.

The website’s at http://www.s-house.at, with a brochure at http://www.s-house.at/BSfofoheft.htm, and a pdf “Layman’s guide” at http://www.s-house.at/Layman%20Report%20english.pdf.
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gwilym 10:52 pm on June 25, 2009 Permalink | Reply
Mifos – open source micro-finance software

Supported by the Grameen Foundation (yes, of Grameen bank fame), mifos is designed to allow microfinance institutions to manage their books. It’s open-source, available for free to anyone, and can be customised to suit.
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celia 10:50 pm on June 25, 2009 Permalink | Reply
EDAT field trip lives again in EWB training courses

Celia Way and Hannah Jones, EDAT grads from 2006, along with another ex-Warwick engineering student Lara Brook, have re-instated the ethos of the much loved and missed EDAT field course by helping organise training courses with Engineers Without Borders for the past two years. Celia and Lara currently work with Buro Happold, and Hannah is with Halcrow, and are involved with EWB as part of the ‘professional network’. This lets them keep their toe in the water whilst having ‘proper’ jobs.

The first course took place in April 2007, and thirty students from Bath, Bristol and Cardiff Universities attended the course, with expertise drawn from the University of Warwick EDAT crew, Halcrow, Water Aid and Arup. The attendees constructed tanks and different types of pumps and manual water lifting devices as well as a fast sand filtration system. They also had the opportunity to try a range of other devices such as a treadle pump and a small hydro power turbine. The practical sessions were run by Colin Oram and Terry Thomas, with help from Huw Edwards. Jonathon Hinks from Halcrow gave a talk about dams, their uses and the issues surrounding them, initiating a lively discussion on the subject. Victoria Ashton of Water Aid spoke about her experiences on water projects in the developing world and a group of engineers from Arup provided a role play based around the political aspects of sanitation within small communities.

Overall the course was a great success and it was repeated in April 2008, along similar lines. The second time round, it was held at Coed Hills in Wales, and saw Brett Martinson re-join the Warwick gang, along with Tony Walker and the ever faithful Huw Edwards. Again it was based around practical activities during the day, with talks and discussions in the evenings.

Following both weekend-long courses, the feedback from the students was always very positive about the ‘beardy ones’ and the request was always to keep them as part of the course.

Many of the students who attended will go on to carry out EWB-UK placements in the developing world and it is hoped that the skills and knowledge they gained during the weekend can then be put into practice.
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