Greener by Design: Talk at the Royal Institution
This talk by Chris Wise was at the august and venerable Royal Institution in London, sharing the platform with RIBA President Sunand Prasad.
Aimed at raising green awareness among designers about the energy consequences of their design decisions, the talk used as its evidence four iconic stadia, including the Birds Nest and Watercube in Beijing, Stadium Australia, and the new Velodrome being designed by Expedition Engineering and Hopkins Architects for 2012.
To make life easy for the speaker among others, their embodied energy performance was rated using a traffic light system more familiar to the purchasers of washing machines. On this basis, the much-feted Birds Nest came out 9 times worse per seat than its equivalent in Sydney, designed 8 years earlier. Such is progress. But a fine chat between speakers and audience took place afterwards in the RI foyer bar.
If stadia were washing machines, what would be their energy rating?
Lunar eclipse shot from London plus 25 miles