Personal Reflections on Energy & the Built Environment

Week 5 Pre-Session Reflection: Individual reflections on the article "Benchmarking building performance: what can we learn from LEED?" In the article the author is highly critical of the Green Star and LEED rating systems. He also sheds light on their limitations as well as emphasizing that their absolute implementation in the built environment is still relatively small. Just like the Green Star system, LEED is mainly used in commercial projects, and only influenced 4% of newly built up space since its conception in 1993. Out of these 4% only 6% were certified as LEED Platinum. There are, however, several limitations with the LEED rating system: LEED does not take into account the transport of “sustainable materials, LEED ratings are also awarded on the basis of “Design” and “as built”, but fails to take into account “in operation.” This is a significant shortcoming, as most buildings that were LEED cerittifed in the design or as built stage, do not match up to t...

Week 4 Pre-Session Reflection Personal reflections on the article “ Are We Ready for Zero Carbon Buildings ?” When we think about zero carbon buildings, it is important to look beyond how a building generates at least the same amount of energy on site as it used. Embedded carbon, and low embedded carbon materials, such as timer, could be important considerations. It is also evident from the article that in many countries, there have been two major constraint that have caused an impediment towards making zero carbon buildings more common – cost and our existing attitude. Personally, I believe the solution is quite obvious. On an individual level, the attitudes of investors, home owners, developer and builders need to change and they will as zero carbon building will make more and more economic sense when our electricity bills are increasing, there is a greater prospective return of investment. I believe, however, that on a legislative level the state and government also ne...

Week 3 Pre-Session Reflection on the Comic "Energy Slaves" The narrative of the comic is a very impactful one which gave me much to contemplate about. By illustrating the energy usage for our daily activities, and successfully comparing that to an easily comprehensible human scale - the "energy slave", the protagonist was able to make me realise the shift from the pre-industralised era to post-industrial modern era. Whereas in the past our economy depended mostly on human power or animal power to sustain itself, the present could not be more different. In order to fuel this immense economic growth, that is exacerbated by capitalism, we have resorted to depleting the earth's resources at unprecedented speeds. Our behaviour has disrupted the equilibrium of supply and demand, where it is getting increasingly uneconomic and requires more energy to extract fossil energy. At the same time, however, renewable energy sources would not be able to sustain our curre...

Week 2 Pre-Session Activities Reflections on Readings: 'Design for climate' by Chris Reardon and Paul Downton After reading this article, I understood the importance of thoroughly analysing and comprehending our local climate. Only then we can provide effective passive solar design strategies, which could potentially eliminate the existing energy requirements for heating and cooling (40% of household energy consumption). However, I do not believe that this is as straightforward to implement.  1. How can we reduce heating/ cooling loads in existing homes? 2. There is a widespread misconception that passive solar design incurs more upfront costs, where in reality lower operational costs would offset this. Another noteworthy problem we are facing is that thermal simulation software only take into account physiological comfort, whereas physiological comfort (radiation, air movement, conduction) is often overlooked. This in itself is often problematic, as psycholo...

Week 1 Pre-Session  Personal Introduction Hi everyone! My name is Yilin Lee. I was born and raised in Germany, where I have lived half of my life. After that I have moved around a bit, spending about ten years in Hong Kong and 2 years in the UK. I have graduated from a BArch at UNSW in 2015. I am currently in my second semester of MArch. After graduating from my undergrad, I have worked in an architectural company in Hong Kong. The company did not only build some of the tallest buildings in Hong Kong, but also put great emphasis on sustainable design, where some projects received BEAM and LEED platinum ratings. I was involved in the delivery of two waste treatment facilities, one being electrical waste and the other general waste. Since both of these were government projects, I have had to work in collaboration with the Environmental Protection Department, and also with integrated waste solution companies such as ALBA and Keppel Seghers. This exposure has certainly spark...