photo: www.flicker.com (c) Grainger Laffan (globalpressgang.com).
For The Social Enterprise Coalition

The model of “world with less wasteful packaging” was created in 2006 by Catherine Conwayin, and company is achieving it one customer at a time. Unpackaged was set because Catherine wanted to refill her groceries using her own containers. She set up shop that made it really easy for customers to come and refill all their daily essentials. The products they sell are usually seasonal and from local production, with minimal transportation, mostly certified organic, and fair trade. In Unpackaged shop in London you can buy the exact amount you need or want so you don’t waste anything and also save money. And in the end going packaging-free means also that less waste will end in landfills.

How It Works? They are giving us some instructions:

- Remember to bring your containers* from home (if you forget, you can buy reusable containers here)
- Come to Unpackaged & say hello
– Weigh your containers at the counter then choose the product & amount you want
– Take your goods home & enjoy
– When you’ve run out, come back for a refill, simple as that!

*Containers: bring anything you like, there’s nothing to date that we haven’t been able to refill (even our lovely friend who likes putting lentils in old water bottles!) Bring glass jars, tupperware, old takeaway cartons, brown paper bags, plastic bags, old packaging.. if it’s heavy, we’ll weigh it first, if it’s light then just refill and we’ll weigh at the end.

photo: www.flicker.com (c) Grainger Laffan (globalpressgang.com).
For The Social Enterprise Coalition

As I am a student myself I thought it is important to not just talk about architecture and sustainability but also students, society in general and how we can make our world a better place and help others. See how small actions can do big difference to the world.

I will be going back to Denmark in august and it happens that I am in the situation of needing a bike. My old bike did not survive the last Danish winter and believe me when I tell you, that a student living in Copenhagen needs a bike to get around the city, to go the fast and easy way from home to the university and in my case it only takes 30 minutes by bike and not the 60 minutes by bus to get through the city…

Coincidentally I found this new social economic promoter company Studiecykel.dk that aims to help students in both Denmark and Africa. So I hurried to apply for a free sponsored bike that they offer students in Denmark to get around in a healthy and sustainable way. They offer us students to get this new bike for a whole year and afterwards the bikes will be given to young people in Africa.

Studiecykel.dk aims to help poor young Africans to get an education and thus a better and brighter future. The focus of Studiecykel.dk is building a green and sustainable business concept to show responsibility for the planet and its inhabitants. As I also see it, they show a new and very easy way to help us inhabitants of the developed countries to understand the needs and problems in troubled countries like Africa in a new and different way. The bikes will help to make the Africans´ everyday-life easier as they will get easier access to schools and water. This way they will survive the hard living conditions and will be able to educate themselves, understand what they need to do to help themselves and their country.

Image above by Studiecykel.dk(see more on their facebook page)

With the big aim of helping Africans, Studiecykel.dk is collecting a huge range of sponsors to first of all help giving away the free bikes to students in Denmark for a year. The undertaker company is founded in 2010 but already had the opportunity to get started fast through good sponsorships. This way the first Studiecykel.dk-bikes found their way to the streets and new owners in Aalborg in May 2011. Only a month later they were able to give away over 50 Studiecykel-bikes sponsored from several different associations, universities, institutions etc to students in Aarhus.

As a student myself I am looking forward to hopefully be one of the chosen students in Copenhagen as Copenhagen and also Odense, two also very big university cities in Denmark, will be the next cities to be lucky. In the beginning of September 2011 Studiecykel.dk will hand out bikes to students living here just when the new academic year begins. I will be looking forward to follow Studiecykel.dk through facebook and their newsletter and am looking forward to follow the journey of the bikes that in the near future will be sent to the youth of Africa.

Join this new social sustainable and healthy movement to help society worldwide and follow it and others futuristic entrepreneurships yourselves.

Image above by Studiecykel.dk
—

Studiecykel.dk | Gertrud Rasksvej 104_DK-9210 Aalborg, Denmark  |

Next Thursday May the 12th Gunter Pauli will be lecturing at IAAC from 12.00- 13.00

Dr. Gunter Pauli graduated with a degree in economics from Loyola’s University in Belgium and obtained his masters in business administration from INSEAD in France. He is an entrepreneur and founder of ZERI Foundation (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives). The Blue Economy is an international community of companies, innovators and scientists, providing open source access to develop, implement and share prosperous business models that strive to improve natural ecosystems and the quality of life for all.

Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia
Carrer de Pujades, 102, Barcelona,
IAAC Auditorium, Free Admission

Next monday (April 18) Saskia Sassen will be in Lisbon for an evening conference on ‘city civic movements in a global world’ at the presentation of the ‘GLOBAL CITY 2.0′ NETWORK (see document below ).

The Portuguese CIDADES PELA RETOMA movement is now challenging partnersworldwide to create a global network called GLOBAL CITY 2.0, an open invitation toindividuals, groups and institutions who wish to think about the role of URBAN CIVICMOVEMENTS and its potential to transform cities and beyond, specially in this hardeconomic times (http://globalcity.blogs.sapo.pt/).

GLOBAL CITY 2.0 is currently developing a map of urban-based blogs and sites- from thescale of streets to neighbourhoods and cities- promoted by citizens or groups that thinkcollaboratively about the future of the places where they live and work. The initiative isdeveloped under the spirit of the ’2011 European Year of Volunteering to promote moreactive citizenship’(http://europa.eu/volunteering/). Following the first gathering ofinformation we have managed to map more than 250 blogs in 15 countries.

‘No economic recovery without cities & citizens’ Civic Movement:
blog: http://noeconomicrecoverywithoutcities.blogs.sapo.pt/
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CidadespelaRetoma

Global City 2.0

The fourth of EKODesign Conferences organized by Yapı-Endüstri Merkezi, the information centre of the building sector on ecology, sustainability, environment-friendly buildings and practices at the architecture and building sectors shall be held on 14 April 2011, Thursday at YEM Events Hall, Istanbul Turkey.

ecosistema urbano will be lecturing, presenting thir most recent works under the title of URBAN SOCIAL DESIGN as keynote speech.

Turkish and international spokespersons specialized on green buildings and cities shall bring up the award-winning studies on green buildings, the legislation in force and current and striking topics to the agenda of fourth EKODesign Conference organized by Yapı-Endüstri Merkezi – YEM (The Building Information Centre).
The Conference shall, as every year, contribute in creation of a lasting source namely the annex “Yapıda Ekoloji” (Ecology in Building) prepared by the editors of the journal YAPI.
A special workshop named “A Road Map to Design Green Buildings” shall be held for the first time this year on 15 April 2011, Friday for a limited number of professionals of the sector interested in sustainable design and desirous to have their own road maps.

Other speakers include:

Haluk Sur, Chairman | Urban Land Institute Turkey (ULI Turkey)

Patrick Bellew – Chartered Building Services Engineer, Founding Partner | Atelier Ten, UK

Prof. Susan Roaf – Architect | Edinburgh Heriot Watt University, UK

Dr. Hartmut Walther – Board Member I IBU (Institut Bauen und Umwelt – German Institute for Building and Environment)

Yenal Güller – Projects Coordinator, Breeam Assessor l Turkish Green   Building Association

For more info

EKODesign Conference 2011 Programme

Olympic game development is  rushed,  expensive and large-scaled.  Now, more than ever, winning the right to host Olympic games also comes with large-scale responsibility. Olympic game hosts are given the opportunity to present their country as leader of the current  times -  and in our time, its becoming more and more obvious that such large-scale development must be carefully pursued by the sustainability conscious.

London took this challenge and ran with it. The new East-London Olympic park that will soon boast world-class sporting facilities for the 2012 summer Olympics was once, not too long ago, just an unvisited, industrial wasteland.

Over the last couple of years (work began in spring of 2008), Landscape architects have worked the brownfield site into a transformational park for London. Before construction, the East-London polluted area was secluded and fragmented by pylons and railways. An eyesore for those who passed by, the area was largely abandoned and unlivable. This is why the neighborhoods that surround the future Olympic park will be so dramatically revitalized with this 500 acre transformation. Planners expect the park to serve as a hub for East London, creating opportunities for education, cultural development and training, and jobs.

They are calling it the city´s new ¨sustainable quarter¨ for the community to enjoy after the games. A closer look at the reasons behind this sustainability claim has uncovered impressive efforts:

although more than 200 buildings were demolished before construction, 97% of this material was reclaimed for reuse in the creation of the park. For example, the green-way, which will be the key walking and bicycling route has been created with recycled materials like bricks, man-hole covers, paving stones, and tiles that were salvaged from previous site demolition. Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of soil upturned during demolition is being cleaned and reused for the park instead of being transported off site, and more than 20 million gallons of contaminated groundwater was treated as well. To reduce the amount of carbon-emissions released in the construction process, rail and water routes surrounding the site were utilized for transportation of materials to and from the park. These waterways were cleaned and improved for future use during the construction process too.

Before development, river walls were failing, invasive species were taking over the river banks, and water quality was poor due to years of neglect. A multi- million pound dredging program removed tons of silt and rusting artifacts, including a car or two. Now the waters will be a more accessible habitat, both for the wildlife that has been protected during demolition and construction phases, but also for the newly translocated newts,toads,lizards, and fish. Bird´s nests have also been created on and around site. 45 hectares of diverse wildlife habitat will also host more than 4,000 trees, 74,000 plants, 60,000 bulbs and 300,000 wetland plants.  Also, the invasive Japanese knotweed plant was largely cleared from the area. A staff of ecologists is keeping a close eye on the new wildlife habitat

Regarding the sport-related construction:

Olympic park venues have been designed to be energy and resource efficient.

The Velodrome is nearly 100% naturally ventilated and it´s design maximises the use of natural light to reduce energy consumption. Rain water will also be collected from the rooftop, which is made of unwanted gas pipelines, for flushing toilets and park irrigation. The stadium´s river banks will be lin ed with granite from King George V docks.

Within the building, water used to clean the Olympic swimming pool will be recycled for toilet flushing as well and the energy used to power Olympic venues will be provided by a new energy center network, providing low-carbon power and heat using biomass boilers and other new technologies. Although not nearly carbon neutral, a combined Cooling Heat and Power plant will capture the heat generated by electricity production, making it 30% more efficient than traditional generation. Many of the Olympic venues and bridges will also have living habitat spaces incorporated into walls and roofs.Materials for venue construction must be approved socially and environmentally responsible before contractors build, and a concrete batching plant that recycles materials in place of raw-materials, has been set up on site to reduce the carbon expenditure of transporting the heavy material.

London has turned this potentially carbon-draining large-scale development into, probably, one of the most beneficial developments- both socially and environmentally – that the city has seen. By focusing development to one of the most disadvantaged areas of the English capital, the Olympic site will sustain its social value through its ability to support the environmental systems of the area.

However, Chicago deserves more recognition for its architecture, which has, in recent years, boasted some of the greenest (and I mean this quite literally) initiatives in the country. Like many U.S. city Mayors, Richard M. Daley announced his intention to make Chicago the greenest city in America. He began this transformation by transforming the Chicago City Hall rooftop into a green garden. Other Chicago dwellers followed suit, greening up businesses and homes with vertical and rooftop gardens.By 2009, Chicago was the city with the most LEED certified buildings in the country.

This week though,  we’ve learned that Chicago is taking its environmentally friendly architectural history one step further. The Willis Tower, formally known as the sears center, will be adding a vertical solar farm on the 56th floor.

The Willis tower is tall – really tall. In fact this ¨planting¨ means there will soon be a vertical solar farm on the tallest building in America!

While Chicago is definitely not the most environmentally conscious city in America, as it lacks the extent of aggressive sustainable development policies and pro-active citizen initiatives that Portland owns, Chicago’s leadership in promoting ¨green¨ architecture is really something special.

Chicago is the city of the arts – it’s a visual city. Adorning the tallest building in the country with solar panels represents and promotes sustainable development  as a partner of the American city.

The 1.3 million tourists who come to gape at the willis building each year will now have a bit greener of an image of what 21^st century urbanism can be. I propose the addition of a vertical  garden next…

(Vertical garden at Caixa Forum, Madrid)

Next friday Ecosistema Urbano will take part in the Symposia Series at the münster school of architecture (Muester, Germany).
The symposia will be held in the lecture building in room Leo5.

The title of our presentation is: Urban Social Design.

more info here: https://www.fh-muenster.de/

msa | münster school of architecture | Leonardo Campus 5 | 48149 Münster

Today Ecosistema Urbano has been announced as one of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge´s 21 semifinalists. Named “Socially-Responsible Design’s Highest Award” by Metropolis Magazine, this prestigious prize will award 100,000 dollars to one project strategy with potential to solve world problems through humanitarian action and environmental responsibility.

Ecosistema Urbano´s submission is What if Water… Community Macrophyte Lagoons, a water purification initiative that doubles to engage communities in water conservation activities.  The purification system that has been engineered to assist the natural macrophite purifying processes in plants. After purifying the water, the natural system stores water for reuse on the project site or within the surrounding community. To support community macrophyte lagoons, which initiate physical networking at project sites, the creation of an online social network will allow community members to share their What if Water, Community Macrophyte Lagoons experiences with each other locally and globally.

This system has been designed to provide an architectural method for lowering the startling 40% of the world’s water consumption at building facility sites. Because of the projects ecological nature,  the adaptation of similar systems for residual or spare city spaces would help to meet water shortage concerns that will come hand-in-hand with future desertification effects of climate change all over the globe.

As the world’s population grows, so does the over-development of agriculture, housing and industry, which increases the demands for fresh water well beyond the finite supply. Acknowledging this, Ecosistema Urbano’s What if Water.. Community Macrophyte Lagoons initiative aims to cope with water challenge today in order to prevent hunger issues, environmental degradation, and water wars that are expected to threaten humanity in the future.
With the spreading of this conservation strategy, Ecosistema Urbano will both help to mitigate the harmful effects of climate change and jointly promote environmental responsibility within receiving communities. Exemplifying the trimtab principle, installing just one of Ecosistema Urbano’s water purifying systems can transform a spare city space into a conservation opportunity for many members of the surrounding community, and ultimately, support a more respectful attitude towards water conservation to be spread throughout the world.

more info: http://challenge.bfi.org/2011Semi_Finalist_EcosistemaUrbano