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A balancing between social end financial advantages and disadvantages of sustainability measures for housing associations and their tenants for an optimal decision making.

The concept of interaction and connection on different layers within the United Nations Environmental Council building design where the main concepts throughout the design process. On an urban scale the UN-plot is an exception to the typical urban structure of New York. It takes six blocks to complete the United Nations footprint. The Northside of the plot consists of a green structure, which has the opportunity to be an asset to the city in terms of development of public spaces. Besides Central Park and some small public parks inside the city, there are not many opportunities to create a new park in this concrete jungle. Through analysis, which lead to our urban masterplan, we wanted to improve the connection between the city and the waterfront along the East River. Improvements like rerouting the FDR underground and bringing the security level down of the plot were important criteria. In this way we could achieve the idea of making the UN-plot a part of a public structure. Instead of a high level secured terrain. Challenging the UN urban island effect, as I would like to call it. The UNEC building design should be a great value in order to achieve this public connection between the city and the riverside. The visual and physical connection between these two worlds runs by the east 47th Street. This street is directly across the UN green structure and defines itself by its profile, which is broader than other streets, and it consists a clear tree structure. Placing the footprint of the building design alongside this ‘green axe’ makes it a contribution in terms of visual guidelines. Next to that it respects the existing green structure. The concepts of connection and interaction were a great inspiration for the UNEC building design. The program consisted of mixtures between private and public functions. The scheme of the design was basically dividing the program into three boxes, private functions, public functions and joint functions. throughout the design process this resulted into three buildings, separated but also connected by an interspace. This interspace also created a visual connection to four viewpoints in its urban surroundings. A view on the United Nations plot, a view towards the city, a view alongside the East River and a view across the East River towards the borough of Brooklyn. The development on how to define the three different elements in terms of structure, connection and composition was an important part of the design process. Decisions made had an influence on different layers like the impact of the composition on an urban scale, but also on the spacial qualities inside the building and thirth, the materialisation of the three elements inside this composition. The structure, dimensions and facade typologies were a direct result of the systematic settlement of the program. Concepts like flexible workspaces, visual and physical connections between functions, and spacial qualities were a great asset in designing a new headquarters for the United Nations Environmental Council.

This project describes the development of an iconic contemporary building that will be a platform for the United Nations Headquarters for Sustainability. In 1983 the United Nations made a report “Our common future”. This report translates the concern about the accelerating deterioration of the human environment and natural resources and the consequences of that deterioration for economic and social development, and led to the groundwork for the policy on sustainable development for the UN. New York has ever since been the Icon of economic growth and prosperity, the place connected to the United Nations councils. Though the sustainable development programs are divided among the councils within the United Nations. To address this problem of environmental deterioration properly the sustainable development programs needs an infrastructure to accommodate and facilitate a new council within the United Nations. The United Nations Headquarters for Sustainability.

The assignment of the SADD (Strategic Architectural Design Development) studio is to design the UN Environmental Council at the existing UN plot in Manhattan. The main function of this organization and its building would be to house the coordinating body responsible for the sustainable development policies of the UN. In more detail the building itself has four main purposes – to collect, produce, propagate and exchange information about sustainability on a worldwide level. This also determines the visitors/users flows in the building that can be divided into general public, office employees and delegates.

The Mundaneum of Sustainability focuses on influencing people's consciousness of sustainability in their daily lives, by creating a place where people senses are triggered through spaces, materiality and program. The Mundaneum of Sustainability is an integrated design using rain water as an educational tool, a way to climatize the building and to create public space.

The building is the UN Environmental Council, the department of sustainability. Therefore the building should be sustainable itself. The building should have a clear position within the urban context of Manhattan. UNEC should also be open to the public with the measurement of the security, and also bring the nature to the new UNEC building.

TomTom is one of the leading firms in navigation devices. Their core business is Portable Navigation Devices (PND). The PND market is a fiercely competitive market. New products and features are launched within short periods of time. In order to stay competitive in the long run, it is crucial to look further ahead. As climate change is now an undeniable problem, environmental conscious behavior is growing among consumers and, with that, also their support for sustainable products and practices. Producing eco-friendly products will become more and more a necessity for companies like TomTom. As a result of the changing behavior in consumers and strong demands from governments, concerning the sustainability for consumer electronics and companies, new demands within TomTom will emerge. This project explores how sustainable TomTom is today and how they can improve their sustainability in the future. The degree of sustainability is determined by using a carbon footprint calculation by means of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) from one single PND. Subsequently, a carbon footprint comparison of the energy reducing services of a PND was measured. Finally, services and functions were developed, which improved energy reducing of a PND and these services and functions were translated in a roadmap.

Introduction Building activities have a great impact on the environment. The bearing structure contributes for around 60% to the environmental costs due to material use in a building and thereby for a large part of the total environmental costs for a building. This impact can be reduced by means of ‘Sustainable Construction’. Problem definition At this moment, a comparison between structural designs are based on the cost and time of construction, the integration of architectural and installation design and the required construction height. Sustainability is not taken into account in this comparison. For the development of ‘Sustainable Construction’, it is necessary to indicate the degree of sustainability of the various structural alternatives for a building. The current tools for measuring the sustainability of buildings, such as GreenCalc+, GPR Gebouw and BREEAM-NL, are very extensive and not suitable to evaluate the sustainability of different constructive alternatives. Research My research focused on the development of a method and design tool for the determination of the degree of sustainability of structural designs. The approach was divided in three phases: 1. Analysis of the problem: study to the present assessment tools and the influence of the bearing structure on the sustainability of a building. 2. The development of the method: Determining the basis for comparison (annual environmental costs) and determining the total environmental costs of a building, based on the structural design, and its estimated service life. The estimated service life is calculated on the basis of the specific building characteristics. 3. Implementing the method into the design tool, written in Java, and testing the tool by determining the sustainability of four structural designs, made for an office. Results 1. A method for determining the sustainability of a building, based on the structural design. Improvements over the current assessment methods: - A more detailed calculation of the environmental costs of a building through a detailed calculation of the material quantities in the bearing structure. - A better approximation of the lifespan of a building. 2. An easy to use design tool to determine the sustainability of structural design variants. Conclusions and recommendations A flexible designed building, ready for future changes in use of the building, can have a long lifespan. For an accurate assessment of sustainability it is therefore required that the life of a building is determined on the basis of the specific building characteristics and not only on its function. The developed method is able to evaluate the flexibility and approximate the lifespan of the building. With the development of the method for evaluating structural designs sustainability, it is now possible to asses structures, that are well thought out, properly. In contrast to the current methods, investment costs in the flexibility of a building can be made visible in the annual environmental costs. This has a positive influence on the ‘Sustainable Construction’. It’s recommended that the calculation of the estimated service life of a building will be further developed and calibrated. Further the aspect of dismountable building has to be integrated in the assessment method.

Design for a floating and sustainable harbour office.

This graduation project is a design for a sustainable building that houses the United Nations Environmental Council, within the urban context of the current UN site on Manhattan. The buildings contains a mixed programme of functions: the environmental council, auditoriums, offices and exposition space. This design aim to keep the recognizable symbols of the world organization and to create less building Volume by building under the ground building with large inner garden.

While sustainability in Design finds much attention in the literature, the education of sustainability in Design courses lacks discussion regarding curricula and importance. In an attempt to map the way sustainability is taught in Design Bachelor and Master Courses in the European Union, we began analysing faculties from a number of EU countries and present the initial results in the form of graphics, and, in addition to that, we discuss curricular contents. Furthermore, we looked at the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014 – an initiative that comprehends the UNECE region (that includes several EU member states), which has contributed to publications related to Design and sustainability, in order to understand how it has been (and can be)supporting the education of sustainability in Design. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the current practice in sustainability education in Design in the EU context and introduce the development of a sustainability curriculum for Design courses.

De focus in het eerste half jaar van mijn afstuderen bestond uit het ontwikkelen van de visie voor een multifunctioneel gebouw met publieke en private functies. Mijn ambities op dat vlak bestond uit conclusie die was ontstaan naar aanleiding van de High-rise workshop en de stedenbouwkundige analyse. Hieruit kwam naar voren dat dit gebouw een stukje stadsuitbreiding werd en het heel belangrijk was om het stedelijk weefsel door te zetten in je gebouw. Verder was voor mij een ambitie dat ik een gebouw wilde maken dat in proportie stond tot de rest van de stad en de menselijke maat. Om die reden heb ik een gebouw ontworden dat bestaat uit 3 lagen: - een publieke plint die een relatie aangaat met omringende straten en het stedelijk weefsel - een verhoogde kantoorband die een relatie aangaat met doorgaandewegen en de omringende wijk - een drietal torens elk met eigen functie die een relatie aan gaan met de hele stad De opdracht die wij binnen deze context kregen was om binnen dit studiegebied een TALL building met een programma van 363.000 m2 neer te zetten. In vergelijking: de Delftse Poort, tot 2009 het hoogste kantoorgebouw van Nederland heeft met twee torens van 164 en 93 meter een totaal oppervlak van 75.000 m2. Het programma dat grotendeels bestond uit kantoren, hotel en woningen, omvatte verder een groot casino, veel winkels, restaurants en clubs.

An Initiative from Ir. Ivan A. Cremer and ir. Henri van Bennekom to design a new authority on Environmental health. The new United Nations Environmental Council, a building that will lead the way towards global environmental health. A building that changes course of the current United Nations, from machine for peace towards a machine for global endurance. This design is trying to solve the problems that accured by the changing context that surounds the image and the physical of the current United Nations.

The design of a new self sufficient headquarters for the sustainability department of the united Nations on the United Nations' Plot in New York.

Dit onderzoek heeft ten doel om te onderzoeken of het haalbaar is om in de nieuwbouw van kantorenvastgoed de mogelijkheid van een toekomstige transformatie naar woningen in te bouwen. De haalbaarheid wordt vanuit vier perspectieven bekeken: juridische, technische, financiële en commerciële haalbaarheid.

The United Nations Environmental Council is a new sixth council for the United Nations and will coordinate information on sustainability. This new council will be located next to the headquarters of the United Nations in Manhattan, New York.

An update of the current allotment system in Den Haag on Scheveningen boulevard as a place where both tourist and residents can come to enjoy and learn about fresh produce and sustainable systems. This is an example of using the local conditions (sand) to develop a theme, growing in sand and sand art. The solution uses a powerful multi-objective evolutionary algorithm to optimize the location of the crops on the site.

An building design as a addition to the current United Nations in Manhattan, New York. A sixt Environmental Council. A building wich provides the basis for centralised worldwide coördination for sustainable development.

A new sustainable strategy for shrinking city Detroit.