Posts for Construction

A new NAS report said that formaldehyde, which can be present in common households items such as clothing, wooden furniture and beauty products, is conclusively a cause of rare forms of cancer of the bones, head & neck and nasal passages. via Despite Industry Opposition,…

NZ and in particular NPI has to offer more that matchstick buildings. However that requires a big deal of early cross-discipline coordination and communication as well as a digital workflow to optimize systems early.

Personally I never liked composite decking. I am not sure whether people understand the difference between recycling and downcycling. Recycling means (to me) that you can turn a product into the same product over and over again or into another product with equal value or…

I find is astonishing how little though we tend to put into design really. Particularly when it comes down to buildings that are supposed to last 50+ years.

As an architect I have seen never ending reiterations of the “affordable housing” subject. Right now, the NZIA CPD days are focussing again around the very same subject: “Little Boxes? The Shape of Affordability in the Modern City”. I am wondering that every time the…

Via Puget Sound Business Journal, May 10, 2013 When it rains hard, a stream of water gushes through a Seattle elementary classroom. Teachers don’t mind. Nor do the students, who had a hand in designing the classroom, which is in the West Coast’s first certified…

Why are we sinking so much money and time into reshaping the land? Why can’t we just do subdivisions the good old way? Remove some trees, put pegs in, highlight your building platform and leave it to the buyer to decide what to do instead…

You’d think that the world’s tallest building – a structure that requires amazingly complex engineering and technology to reach its heights – would have an equally impressive sewage system. Unfortunately, that’s not the case because it isn’t hooked up to a municipal wastewater treatment system…

I had pleasure attending the 2012 Sustainable Housing Summit yesterday. I must say that I went home with mixed emotions, some presentations were really good and some were rather inappropriate.

I am seriously starting to get sick of all those green buildings going up. They have the same design as all other buildings, they have the same materials than most other buildings and  many of them generate the same rubbish as other buildings. Being green…