Created by Yannick

Nowadays the focus in architecture lies on buildings that foresee in their own needs, such as electricity, water, ventilation, heating and cooling. Architects try their best to make passive buildings sustainable. For example using sunshades to keep the heat out in summer and let the sun in during summer. Integrated windmills and PV cells are used to generate the needed amount of electricity. Heat…

Making YUTPA analysis we considered the importance of all aspects for both tourists and texelaars in terms of our sub-system “Texel as host”.  We specified that the value of 6 will represent the average importance of each aspect and then divided all our assumptions according to that scale. Texelaar: Place: We consider the ‘Place’ quarter to be of an extremely importance to the islanders, because…

Not only technical development, we need improvement in appliance We have got all the technical solutions to live a self-sustaining life. We are able to generate energy and warmth out of wind, sun, waves, thermal mass and much more. Many of these technical solutions are relatively affordable too, think of solar panels and wind turbines.   So why are we still so depending on oil, gas and coil? Why…

Sustainability hypes and trends Sustainability is fashionable. Green and brown letters, leaves, globes, plants , checkmarks, quality stamps, you see those elements everywhere, in supermarkets, restaurants. Everyone tries to send the message to the consumer “we are sustainable/ ecological”, even Mc Donald’s is “green”. Besides the fact that you could ask yourself if these companies with leaves and…

  People don’t know enough about sustainability. They know it is right to save energy so they are willing to use energy saving lightbulbs and electrical cars. This is because those are actions are very obviously energy saving. The problem  is that people have no overview of what really matters and this causes that easy chances are being missed. An interesting example is fruit and vegetables. We…

Sustainability as domain in integrated desing In the Bachelor students learn about integrated design, shifting between different scales like urban and detail and shifting between different domains like construction, detailing and climate control. During design process an architect has to focus on all these domains and scales at the same time or shift between them very rapidly. In my opinion this…

The definitions of sustainability. Sustainability has become a word so widely used that most people, including me think right away of ecological, organic, fair and honest. The most common interpretation of these words is ‘not harmful for the environment’.  literally sustainable means maintainable, endurable and lasting. This insinuates that if something is sustainable, it will exist for a long…