Archinect - News

Pioneering UC Berkeley professor Sim Van der Ryn dies aged 89

2024-11-18T16:06:00-05:00

Dutch architect Sim Van der Ryn, a pioneer of green architecture and a longtime professor at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design, has died at age 89 according to the San Francisco Chronicle. He will be remembered for his experimental teaching methods and approach to designing buildings as ecological systems, both of which later became widely accepted as either field looked to embrace sustainability as its new baseline standard.

Van der Ryn's memorial page on the CED's website also credits his work with Murray Silverstein as leading the way for post-occupancy user studies. Dean Renee Y. Chow added her own context to his legacy at the school, saying: "Sim was one of the people who laid the foundation for CED’s ongoing commitment to resilience and environmental equity. He was focused on how to build in environmentally friendly, energy-efficient, socially just ways long before 'sustainability' was even a term in the architectural lexicon. His influence, on Berkeley and beyo...

On the impact of newer buildings on urban air pollution

2024-10-25T17:47:00-04:00

In hermetically sealed buildings, less fresh air gets in. [...] Eventually, this polluted indoor air – which is making more than a third of the planet sick – is expelled into the surrounding environment. This raises the question of how buildings pollute the air around them, what pollutants they produce, and whether this expelled air is sufficiently diluted once outdoors.

As the article mentions, the World Health Organization had previously pointed to a "lack of monitoring of air pollution levels, sources and consequences on public health" as a present danger for cities.

To fix it, authors César Martín-Gómez and Arturo H. Ariño of the Universidad de Navarra say: "A detailed understanding of how buildings contribute to pollution in cities is essential. This will give public authorities, decision-makers and managers the tools to establish strategies to, for example, minimise pollution through devices similar to the catalytic converters required on all combustion-powered vehicles. Eventually, we may even be able to recover useful components of domestic air, such as waste methane, which could be redirected to energy generation."

You can read more about the compounding effects of poor indoor air quality via our 2021 feature on urban air pollution here.

Federal Green Proving Ground program secures $9.6 million to test emerging building technologies

2024-07-24T13:08:00-04:00

Last week marked the announcement of the U.S. General Services Administration’s collaborative Green Proving Ground program with the Department of Energy. The initiative is aimed at producing “real world” evaluations of 17 different emerging technologies that may have a considerable impact on the future of the building industry and architectural design. Funding for the GSA’s latest $9.6 million investment comes from the Inflation Reduction Act.

This year’s program focuses on the following areas: building envelopes and enclosures, healthy and resilient buildings, HVAC systems for commercial buildings, and on-site renewables. The group being evaluated includes everything from heat pumps to geothermal retrofitting solutions and energy-saving ceiling tiles. Select testing will occur at the GSA's Applied Innovation Learning Labs with the first evaluations becoming available in 2026.

The GSA hopes this will ensure a transition to a net-zero emissions federal building portfolio by 2045. On...

60 Minutes spotlights the importance of indoor air quality

2023-10-31T14:50:00-04:00

For the Harvard professor, founder of the university's Healthy Buildings Program, our building design and public health officials have ignored indoor air systems for too long – that is, until the COVID pandemic hit. [...] "If you look at the way we design and operate buildings –and I mean offices, schools, local coffee shop[s] – we haven't designed for health," Allen said. "We have bare minimum standards."

Professor Joe Allen, who also does consultation work for developers, recently advised on the Amazon ‘HQ2’ project in Virginia from NBBJ. He and his colleagues at Harvard’s Healthy Buildings Program center their work around six research areas (Homes, Schools, Business, Materials, Climate, and Infectious Diseases), noting that humans spend, on average, 90% of their lives indoors. The project leverages studies and empirical evidence that have roots in 19th-century public health design and is now being aided by research into the effects of ventilation on the spread of COVID-19.

"All else equal, which building are you gonna go to? You have your choice right now: This building that put in healthy building controls, or this building that's designed the way we've always designed buildings, and is prone to being a sick building?" Allen told 60 Minutes, speaking about post-pandemic market standards.

A list of tools and resources compiled for designers by the program can be found here.

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