The Yudelson Associates Blog: What's New

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Sitting by the Dock of the Bay

The federal landlord, General Services Administration, has been a leader in sustainable design for the past ten years, through its design excellence program. As a newly appointed national Peer Professional, I was invited to San Francisco to learn about this amazing federal initiative. Every building has been a LEED building since 2000, according to GSA. The new 600,000 sq.ft. Federal building in San Francisco, designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis in Santa Monica, CA, will have unprecedented amounts of daylighting and natural ventilation and will be perhaps the largest building in the U.S. with operable windows. Under construction now, this building will soon be recognized as one of the most innovative in North America.

Posted by Jerry Yudelson on 10/31/2006 at 11:30 PM

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Friday, October 27, 2006

Greening the Mormon Empire

I taught two workshops for AIA and SMPS yesterday in Salt Lake City. Found out that the first LEED Gold building in Utah has just been completed. Talked with one leading architect about his experience with green building projects. The first three buildings, he said, cost 5% to 7% more. He expects the next three projects to have a 3% to 5% price premium. After that, costs of green buildings should fall back into the “noise” level. Part of this expected price drop is growth of a supply chain for green materials and technologies among established building materials suppliers and vendors, as well as the effect of competition for new business. This experience is typical for many architects and developers. There is a “learning curve,” after all, for most new technologies and new approaches. In manufacturing, this learning curve phenomenon is well known: the price per unit produced falls by a predictable amount, say 15%, for each doubling of cumulative production. A IPod that costs $60 to make (hypothetically) for the first five million units, will cost $51 for the next 5 million, about $44 for the next 10 million, etc.

Posted by Jerry Yudelson on 10/27/2006 at 07:31 AM

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Thursday, October 26, 2006

Is Global Warming Causing More Intense Hurricanes?

Does global warming cause more intense hurricanes, such as last year’s Katrina, Rita, etc.? One camp of climate scientists says yes, it’s obvious. The other, meteorologists who study hurricanes for a living are pretty sure it’s part of a long-term cyclical phenomenon, and that increased damages stem mainly from lots more human settlement along the southern and southeastern coasts of the U.S. Consider how green buildings, with much lower energy use can help ameliorate global warming over time. Read the entire article at: Slate Magazine

Posted by Jerry Yudelson on 10/26/2006 at 10:53 PM

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Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Epidemic of Obesity?

As a nation, America is threatened by an “epidemic of obesity,” in which people are 10 pounds heavier today than 10 years ago. What are the implications of this trend for green building design, wherein we’d like to expand the range of acceptable temperatures in an office space, to allow us to downsize HVAC equipment and use more approaches such as natural ventilation and operable windows. If people are uncomfortable in our buildings because they carry more “insulation” on their bodies, doesn’t this defeat our purposes in creating green buildings, namely, to increase productivity? In the next issue of www.igreenbuild.com IGreenBuild, due out October 30th, I discuss this trend and offer some practical solutions to get more energy efficient buildings AND more comfortable inhabitants. Sign up on the web site to receive the newsletter, and get my take on green building trends and issues twice a month.

Posted by Jerry Yudelson on 10/24/2006 at 07:13 PM

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