The Sustainable Design Toolbox

Today is....

 
.....My 12th anniversary working at Autodesk.

I started in-between the releases of AutoCAD R14 and AutoCAD 2000. Things have certainly moved on when you look at how many products Autodesk now develop and what they are capable of. It will certainly be interesting to see where they get to 12 years from now.

Happy New Year - First Day Back

A few days late for New Year greetings but today is the first day back for UK based Autodesk employees. Of course virtually no one actually made it to the office due to the snow (this country tends to grind to a halt with the first sign of the white stuff!).....thankfully working remotely is easy.

  

Best wishes for the year ahead, roll on Summer :-)

Videos from Bright Green Expo Copenhagen

 

At the Bright Green Expo I attended in Copenhagen the weekend before last I helped with some videos on sustainable design and urbanisation that are now available on YouTube. You can watch them at the following links:

Autodesk at COP15 Part 1

Autodesk at COP15 Part 2

The Expo was really interesting and it was great to see some of the technologies on offer. You can read more here.

Just arrived in Copenhagen

Well it's all about Copenhagen at the moment, will there be important decisions made in the next week or not...only time will tell.

I have just arrived this evening to help represent Autodesk at this weekend's Bright Green Expo, a showcase event run in parallel with COP15. Should be a very interesting couple of days.

UKGBC - Making Sustainable Development Happen

 

Yesterday I attended the UK Green Building Council Annual Conference in London. There were some really interesting speakers, two I would particularly call out are Dame Ellen Macarthur, the solo Round the World Yachtswoman - now a sustainability campaigner, and Joe Van Bellegham, a Canadian Developer who presented his Dockside Green sustainable community. Both were really inspirational.

The main takeaway from the conference was there is still a long way to go to reduce the energy use and GHG emissions of the built environment in the UK - and there needs to be a greater urgency to address this. It was good to hear the emphasis on Retrofit to improve existing building stock.

At the conference the UK Government announced the formation of a Retrofit Consortium, further energy efficiency measures and consultation for zero carbon non-domestic buildings.

Finally congratulations to Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios for winning the Autodesk sponsored Sustainable Designer of the Year Award.

C-FACT - Reducing Corporate Green House Gas Emissions

Autodesk are committed to reducing green house gas emissions and today published a methodology for setting corporate targets, to assist other companies in determining their own reduction strategies.

The methodology known as C-FACT (Corporate Finance Approach to Climate-Stabilising Targets) can be read here:

C-FACT Whitepaper

The official Autodesk Press Release is available here:

C-FACT Press Release

Building4Change

I came across this (quite new) website recently from the UK's Building Research Establishment. It has been set up to provide news and opinion on aspects of sustainability in the Built Environment.

Well worth keeping an eye on:

Building4Change

World Green Building Day

As I was away on holiday I missed posting about World Green Building Day that took place on the 23rd September, an initiative by the World Green Building Council to raise awareness of the built environment's impact on climate change. To coincide with this, the UK Times Newspaper published a supplement on Green Building in conjunction with the UK GBC. You can read the online version here:

Times Green Building Supplement

Wonderful Wonderful Copenhagen

I am in Copenhagen this week meeting with some of our Danish partners and customers to discuss Sustainable Design, but were you aware that Copenhagen is host to the UN Climate Change COP15 Summit in December this year?

Will we be talking about the Copenhagen Protocol by the end of the year instead of Kyoto? Only time will tell.

You can read more at the COP15 website.

Sweden invests in Timber Construction Research

Thanks to my colleague Jerker Hägglund who let me know about the Swedish Government's intent to invest 5.5 Million Swedish Kroner in Trästad 2012, an initiative to research new techniques for using timber for sustainable prefabricated construction. The entire project is expected to cost 77 million Swedish Kroner and is seen as an important driver in creating new jobs in the country.