Suffering high costs and deep frustration used to be a rite of passage when growing companies decided it was time to integrate data systems to improve enterprise operations. But things have changed. Nowadays, it neither costs as much nor hurts so badly to take advantage of enterprise tools that previously only the biggest companies could swing. Better hardware and software, higher Internet bandwidth and greater interoperability are helping, but the biggest contribution may be innovative thinking. Vendors are coming up with new ways to connect the islands of information typically scattered throughout firms and satellite offices. In the process, they
Podcasts: Drivers of Change: A discussion with Chris Luebkeman, Director for Global Foresight & Innovation, Arup Group, London. Listen >> Green Talk: Sustainable Building Center Co-Director Discusses LEED, Green Guide for Health Care Listen >> Having completed in 2002 a carbon-neutral mixed-use development at Wallington, near London, BioRegional Development Group is planning one 25 times bigger with 2,000 homes called Z-Squared. Hoping to find a site east of London this year, the firm has yet to appoint an architect for the zero-carbon development. Being site-dependent, energy systems have yet to be selected. But they will include cogeneration and use exclusively
Podcasts: Drivers of Change: A discussion with Chris Luebkeman, Director for Global Foresight & Innovation, Arup Group, London. Listen >> Green Talk: Sustainable Building Center Co-Director Discusses LEED, Green Guide for Health Care Listen >> A potential template for green cities, on part of the 1,230-sq-kilometer Chongming Island in the Yangtze River, north of Shanghai, could start construction later this year. The start-up phase for Dongtan, tentatively planned for completion by 2020, might extend to 630 hectares. The town’s population could reach 80,000. Dongtan’s planned “ecological footprint,” the amount of biologically productive land and water needed for human life, is
TDR TDR For counterculture architect Eugene Tsui, biomimicry in design, considered the vanguard by some and still unknown to many, is old hat. Tsui has been living, eating, wearing and pushing biomimicry, where human creations copy nature’s systems, for 30 years—long before the movement had a name. And he has been practicing what he preaches, with 20 projects built, for over 15 years. Biomimicry is “the only ultimate solution to many of the problems that have plagued humanity” since the beginning of civilization, says Tsui, who founded TDR Inc., Emeryville, Calif. “The implication—and this is the most radical aspect of
Podcasts: Drivers of Change: A discussion with Chris Luebkeman, Director for Global Foresight & Innovation, Arup Group, London. Listen >> Green Talk: Sustainable Building Center Co-Director Discusses LEED, Green Guide for Health Care Listen >> Industrial owners worldwide have led the fight against limits on carbon-dioxide emissions. Now, having been dragged to the table, many are finding that the green diet tastes more of filet than crow. Even U.S. companies, shielded from the Kyoto strictures by their government’s rejection of the treaty, are joining the party and reaping benefits of efficiency, cost reduction and image. Sweden-based Volvo renovated its Goteborg
Podcasts: Drivers of Change: A discussion with Chris Luebkeman, Director for Global Foresight & Innovation, Arup Group, London. Listen >> Green Talk: Sustainable Building Center Co-Director Discusses LEED, Green Guide for Health Care Listen >> When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Denise Rigney and Dominique Lueckenhoff convened a meeting in 2002 with officials from the Federal Highway Administration, state transportation departments, highway construction advocates and a few private firms, there was some wariness. “There were a few folks leery about whether this will [lead to] regulation,” says Rigney. Not so: “We are looking for solutions across the universe of transportation
Podcasts: Drivers of Change: A discussion with Chris Luebkeman, Director for Global Foresight & Innovation, Arup Group, London. Listen >> Green Talk: Sustainable Building Center Co-Director Discusses LEED, Green Guide for Health Care Listen >> Burr Stewart, the Port of Seattle’s strategic planning manager, says that Y2K and 9/11 served as “fire drills” for what transportation officials need to do regarding global warming. “We should be agitated,” he admonished the audience at a Transportation Research Board session last month. Stewart is a mover and shaker at an agency located in the eco-conscious Northwest. He believes that sustainable practices are no
Podcasts: Drivers of Change: A discussion with Chris Luebkeman, Director for Global Foresight & Innovation, Arup Group, London. Listen >> Green Talk: Sustainable Building Center Co-Director Discusses LEED, Green Guide for Health Care Listen >> “Sustainability” may be the latest buzzword at engineering, architecture and construction management schools across the country. But talk is cheap. Though the numbers are growing, not many universities offer degrees in sustainable design and construction. “There is a real need to get beyond institutional barriers to build interdisciplinary education into the engineering as well as architecture curriculum,” says Kira Gould, a senior associate at Boston-based
Podcasts: Drivers of Change: A discussion with Chris Luebkeman, Director for Global Foresight & Innovation, Arup Group, London. Listen >> Green Talk: Sustainable Building Center Co-Director Discusses LEED, Green Guide for Health Care Listen >> Green visionaries, absent a crystal globe to predict with certainty how much greening the construction industry should do to redress past crimes against the planet and to prevent more, are a bit blindfolded in their quest for practical, achievable and economical ways to stem pollution, resource depletion and climate change. That isn’t stopping them. While scientists ban together to convince die-hard skeptics that human use
Podcasts: Drivers of Change: A discussion with Chris Luebkeman, Director for Global Foresight & Innovation, Arup Group, London. Listen >> Green Talk: Sustainable Building Center Co-Director Discusses LEED, Green Guide for Health Care Listen >> Midcentury electricity generation will not look radically different from what we have today. Carbon-rich fossil fuels—coal, natural gas and oil—still will drive most powerplants in the U.S., but they will emit far less carbon dioxide than today’s plants, thanks to improvements in technology for capturing and storing, or sequestering, CO2. Nuclear energy, which now meets 20% of U.S. demand, will still be a major source
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