Posts for News

The NZ Super Fund is using your retirement money to fuel climate change – let’s change that

Via 350 Aotearoa team Today WWF released a report exposing the fossil fuel investments of our two largest funds of public money, ACC and the NZ Super Fund. Coinciding with this report, we’ve launched a campaign calling on the NZ Super Fund to divest from…

More electric cars on market than you and I thought

Despite of having never seen any, there seem to be more electric cars on the market than I knew. And you probably did not know either. We can clearly see a transition happening here from good old petrol only via hybrids (the second generation Toyota…

Design and time frame boundaries

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.

Purpose and bigger picture

I must admit that I am having one of those moments again. I had WWF calling me to help protecting some cuddly animal. Last time it was a polar bear, then a panda and I have to admit I have forgotten what it was this…

The affordable housing quest

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…

The issues of cheap oil and what the solution may be

It really strikes me that the actions we are sometimes doing and the behaviour we are showing sometimes makes no sense whatsoever. I refer to the latest articles about oil spills, Siberia, Canadian tar sands, burst pipelines and similar articles throughout the press and various…

How a Seattle school became the region’s first ‘Living Building’

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…

Europe just banned bee-killing pesticides

I just had to publish that in order to be able to share it. (it came in via email) If you would like to change the world and make it a better place, join AVAAZ today. It’s free and simple. I have done it. They…

Sustainability and reduction

Sustainability in itself does not necessarily relate to any reduction. Please look up the definition of “to sustain” and I think you won’t find any mentioning of any “reduction”. The issue is what people attribute to the word when they talk about it.

Join Earth Hour 2013

Earth Hour has now become much more than a symbolic action. It has evolved into a continuous movement driving real actions, big and small, that are changing the world we live in.