Categorie: architecture
Inspired by that book from the 1860s, I was reminded of my own youth in the 1960s and of the bike I used to ride to the secondary school (HBS), which had been established 100 years earlier. Back then, I thought that bicycles must have always existed. I couldn’t imagine…
Cork. Lately I regularly come across publications and buildings with Cork. Ideal insulator, it seems, and weatherproof, And quite a decorative material, recently saw some nice applications in construction design. Well, that could be so, but is it a serious option? For that, we have to dive into some figures….
The discussion keeps coming back: high-rise buildings or not. Cities and towns can’t resist falling in love with high towers.that is, the project developers and politicians. Last year I had the opportunity to explain to a council committee in Utrecht and to a mixed political audience in Eindhoven what is…
How long do buildings last? There’s little scientifically sound to say on the matter, and there are hardly any studies that have fundamentally examined it. Like the question: when does a building lose its primary function as a dwelling when no maintenance is carried out? In other words, when is…
Last time I wrote about about project development, and how everything was optimized within project borders, but the effects outside the project boundaries were neglected. But between architect and client, it’s just the same, and even worse, as became evident once again when I attended a presentation about a new…
During my time as a professor I was regularly at odds with the Academy of Architecture’. I feel affiliated with ’the art of building’, but not with architecture or construction as art. That was more or less the reason for the quarrels. Not surprising, because in my guidance I start…
With vegetables, we’ve been doing it for years: most current vegetables never existed, in an autonomous evolutionary process. We as humans have slowly transformed them so that they grow the way we appreciate them, and want them on our plates. (Or the industry has adapted them the way we want…
In recent years I was a Fellow of the Technical University of Eindhoven, more precisely working with the Building Physics department, in particular with Prof. Wim Zeiler, Installation Technology. And we had interesting discussions, because we strive for the same thing, while we come from different backgrounds. Those discussions can…
We are bombarded with books that know how to deal with climate and the environment, and especially how we can improve the situation. And yes, I am also participating in that, since last week I published a new book that offers tools for improvement, or rather: suggestions for adaptations to…
As we want to get rid of fossil fuels, we will at least have to develop everything now without fossil fuels. And in any case the operational energy. In the case of new buildings this leads to “0-energy buildings”, which generate as much renewable energy as required, locally, and thus…
