By On 6/25/2018, we held a design charrette to explore what are optimal designs for building cold-climate resilient sleeping pods with a central common building in a tiny house village?
Why Tiny House Villages, and Why Now?
The tiny house movement and tiny village model provide a new, modular option for people from a wide range of backgrounds to consider, and a new way to plan clustered development.
A novel product to protect water heaters and other equipment from flood damage
Little Falls, New Jersey resident Sean Mathews has developed a low-cost solution for protecting equipment from flood damage, and he wants to see more homeowners have access to it.
In an Age of Climate Change, Passive Cooling Won’t be Enough
We should continue to strive for buildings that don’t require mechanical cooling—which usually means starting with an exceptionally well-insulated building envelope—but we need to be realistic also by providing for mechanical cooling.
By Alex Wilson
Alex Wilson/Front page slider/Fundamentals of Resilient Design/News & Blogs/Uncategorized
Fundamentals of Resilient Design: Dry Floodproofing
While implementing various measures to keep floodwater out of a building may seem like a no-brainer, there are actually some very significant limitations and risks.
Teaching the Duck to Fly – Timing Electrical Demand to Renewable Supply
Orienting panels to the west to catch the setting sun—at the time usage peaks—might make solar power more valuable even if less total electricity would be generated.
Municipal Governments Working to Make Their Cities More Resilient
I came away optimistic that the attendees in the room weren’t going to simply sit by and wait for action; they were going to make it happen.
Fundamentals of Resilient Design: Wet Floodproofing
Letting floodwaters into a building is an important resilience measure, but it has to be done in a way that prevents damage.
California’s Continuing Water Woes Call for Creative Solutions
“Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing.” -Jay Famiglietti, Ph.D., NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Engineering Our Way Out of Global Warming: Is Climate Intervention a Global Warming Solution That Republicans Will Get Behind?
I am all for carbon-capture—both the research needed to better understand it and the implementation of strategies that employ it. But albedo modification (enhanced solar reflectivity) is a different story.
Views on resilient design by some leading architects
There’s a nice discussion about resilient design in Metal Architecture magazine that was just posted. It features Robin Guenther, FAIA of Perkins + Will; Greg Mella, FAIA of SmithGroup; Robin Minnery, the new staff leader on resilience issues at the American Institute of Architects; Jeffrey Dugan, AIA of Dattner Architects;
Adapting to Climate Change: Does Nature Need a Helping Hand?
On our farm I want to do the right thing for the land, and I think that includes not only working to get rid of invasive species but also introducing some more southern species that are not yet common in this area.
How to Make a Hospital Resilient: A Tour of Spaulding Rehab
Spaulding Rehab hospital in Charlestown, MA is designed and built to provide for sheltering in place. A key part of this strategy is the inclusion of screened, operable windows in patient rooms, lounges, offices, and other spaces.
The Most Resilient House in North America
When his house burned down in 2012, Alain Hamel he set out to build a home that would keep his family safe no matter what nature threw at it.
Searching for Optimism in an Age of Climate Change
What inspired me to launch an organization to promote these and other aspects of resilient design, was the recognition that the safety aspects of these strategies might be a stronger motivation to get mainstream America on-board in achieving more sustainable, lower-carbon buildings and communities than simply “doing the right thing.”
