quinta-feira, 19 de março de 2009
Edoardo Vanetti's organic tree house
Our colleague Edoardo designed and built a tree house.
Edoardo says "It’s a treehouse made by rattan in collaboration with VittorioBonacina & Co. (www.bonacinavittorio.it) for a children community near Varese.
It seems like a nest…"
It seems like a nest…"
Translation of what Elsa wrote
Mario
The SC's described in the article don't solve the issue you raise in 2) because for them to be ennergetically efficient, during part of the year, they must have the characteristics of an enclosed shopping center, namely in terms of insulation e heat transmission. Thus, the greek authorities will not accept to deduct the mall to the GBA. The SC's we have been doing in Greece exactly tho opposit of what you refer in 3) because the energy loss in the common areas is huge: they're climatized during several months areas like we would do in an enclosed SC without providing barriesr to heat loss and heat transmission between shops and mall. (It would be much more modern to have this discussion in a blog)
EM
The SC's described in the article don't solve the issue you raise in 2) because for them to be ennergetically efficient, during part of the year, they must have the characteristics of an enclosed shopping center, namely in terms of insulation e heat transmission. Thus, the greek authorities will not accept to deduct the mall to the GBA. The SC's we have been doing in Greece exactly tho opposit of what you refer in 3) because the energy loss in the common areas is huge: they're climatized during several months areas like we would do in an enclosed SC without providing barriesr to heat loss and heat transmission between shops and mall. (It would be much more modern to have this discussion in a blog)
EM
quarta-feira, 18 de março de 2009
Elsa Monteiro wrote
Mário
Os centros de que fala o artigo não resolvem a questão que apontas em 2 já para serem energeticamente eficientes, durante uma parte do ano têm de ter caraterísticas de um centro fechado, nomeadamente em termos de isolamento e controlo da transmissão exterior/ interior da temperatura. Ao ser assim, as entidades gregas dificilmente vão aceitar descontar a área de mall da área total de construção.
Os centros que temos feito na Grécia são precisamente o oposto do que referes em 3 já que o desperdício energético nas áreas comuns é imenso: estão a climatizar durante vários meses espaços que na prática não são fechados. Por outro lado, os lojistas conceberam os seus espeços como de um centro fechado se tratasse, não dispondo de barreiras às transmissões de energia entre a loja e o exterior...
EM
(era mais moderno termos esta conversa num blogue ou num "forum de discussão" virtual...)
Os centros de que fala o artigo não resolvem a questão que apontas em 2 já para serem energeticamente eficientes, durante uma parte do ano têm de ter caraterísticas de um centro fechado, nomeadamente em termos de isolamento e controlo da transmissão exterior/ interior da temperatura. Ao ser assim, as entidades gregas dificilmente vão aceitar descontar a área de mall da área total de construção.
Os centros que temos feito na Grécia são precisamente o oposto do que referes em 3 já que o desperdício energético nas áreas comuns é imenso: estão a climatizar durante vários meses espaços que na prática não são fechados. Por outro lado, os lojistas conceberam os seus espeços como de um centro fechado se tratasse, não dispondo de barreiras às transmissões de energia entre a loja e o exterior...
EM
(era mais moderno termos esta conversa num blogue ou num "forum de discussão" virtual...)
Pedro S. Rodrigues wrote
Mário,
Items #1 and #2 of your answer are obvious to me and I fully agree with them.
As for item #3 tough, I have the impression that in the cases of Mediterranean Cosmos and Pantheon Plaza, where it snows in winter and it is very hot in summer, there are terrible energy inefficiencies on the HVAC system in the mall – would it be a misperception of mine?
Another issue is that all tenant shop units must have facades and doors prepared for an open street – in the case of Gli Orsi many did not think on that, despite reportedly having been told that it would be an open-air scheme.
Items #1 and #2 of your answer are obvious to me and I fully agree with them.
As for item #3 tough, I have the impression that in the cases of Mediterranean Cosmos and Pantheon Plaza, where it snows in winter and it is very hot in summer, there are terrible energy inefficiencies on the HVAC system in the mall – would it be a misperception of mine?
Another issue is that all tenant shop units must have facades and doors prepared for an open street – in the case of Gli Orsi many did not think on that, despite reportedly having been told that it would be an open-air scheme.
Mario Santos wrote
There are several reasons to require a convertible shopping center:
positioning and perception - open air sc’s have higher perceived attraction in mature markets because of their similarity with the more natural/less enclosed environment of traditional downtown shopping streets;
legal and urban constraints and gba/gla ratio – as is the case in Greece where building approvals are granted to total built area, not commercial or sales area (in Italy is the other way around, licenses are granted to sales area;
energy savings – having less volume of air to deal with clearly brings energy savings even if the tenants need to spend a little more that in an enclosed environment (although other variables should be looked at such as the heat gain along the glass shopfronts could be higher that the heat gain through the skylight because the total amount of glass in the skylight is smaller but, in any case, complementary solutions such as canopies should be considered)
The initial cost of the equipment to allow the roof to retract is an issue, though
ciao
positioning and perception - open air sc’s have higher perceived attraction in mature markets because of their similarity with the more natural/less enclosed environment of traditional downtown shopping streets;
legal and urban constraints and gba/gla ratio – as is the case in Greece where building approvals are granted to total built area, not commercial or sales area (in Italy is the other way around, licenses are granted to sales area;
energy savings – having less volume of air to deal with clearly brings energy savings even if the tenants need to spend a little more that in an enclosed environment (although other variables should be looked at such as the heat gain along the glass shopfronts could be higher that the heat gain through the skylight because the total amount of glass in the skylight is smaller but, in any case, complementary solutions such as canopies should be considered)
The initial cost of the equipment to allow the roof to retract is an issue, though
ciao
Pedro S. Rodrigues wrote
Very interesting article… But I was wondering while reading it… At what price comes having “convertible” shopping centres? I know (by experience) it can mean having more GLA and therefore between having a project approved or not having for economical (IRR) reasons that do not fully take into account operating costs… Having retractable roofs mean not only more initial cost on equipment, but especially on maintenance and energy for HVAC…! At least that’s what I’m being told it happens with our projects in Greece! Or is just that these are not good examples of the right thing to do?
I was surprised by the following sentence, in the article “retractable roofs fit well with projects designed to conform to environmental standards such as the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification program, as City Creek Center does. “If City Creek were enclosed, you would be air-conditioning the project for nine months out of the year,” Laegreid said. “Instead, it will be open-air for those nine months.” This brings cost savings that will, over time, help to offset at least the upfront and maintenance expenses associated with the roof, he says.” Can that be true??? It isn’t at all what I’m told our experience shows!
I was surprised by the following sentence, in the article “retractable roofs fit well with projects designed to conform to environmental standards such as the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification program, as City Creek Center does. “If City Creek were enclosed, you would be air-conditioning the project for nine months out of the year,” Laegreid said. “Instead, it will be open-air for those nine months.” This brings cost savings that will, over time, help to offset at least the upfront and maintenance expenses associated with the roof, he says.” Can that be true??? It isn’t at all what I’m told our experience shows!
Rafael Pelote wrote
Pois...Muito interessante, obrigado! Era interessante perceber quanto é que pode custar e em quantos anos (ou décadas....) há retorno do investimento, por força das poupanças de energia. Na prática, a claraboia já é construída. É uma questão de lhe colocar uns carris e uns motores :-)
Joaquim Cantista wrote
We did the 1st 5 years ago, Great we are still in the top of the wave in this business.
The only problem is that they are able to certify it as green centers and our ESRd’s do not allow us to do so….
The only problem is that they are able to certify it as green centers and our ESRd’s do not allow us to do so….
Artigo publicado em SCT
Going topless
By Joel Groover
Outdoor centers are a natural fit for retail developers in temperate climes, where sunny, lushly landscaped and pedestrian-friendly projects tend to score a hit with shoppers, retailers and local officials alike. But in places where the weather turns extreme, even if only for a few months out of the year, moving forward with an open-air project can be a tough call.
Salt Lake City may be picturesque, but its scorching summers and snowy winters can make lounging outside a lifestyle center seem less than ideal. In Phoenix temperatures average in the balmy 70s and 80s for much of the year but can push past 105 degrees in the summer. The desert heat is no less blistering in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, or Cairo, Egypt, where shoppers face another obstacle to outdoor comfort: seasonal sandstorms large enough to blot out the sun.
In all four of these markets, however, developers are refusing to let Mother Nature have the last word. Instead of giving up on the concept of outdoor shopping, they aim to conquer the elements with malls, lifestyle centers and urban streetscapes that can be opened or closed with the push of a button. If retractable roofs work for convertibles and sports stadiums, they ask, then why not for shopping centers?
“If you can work it out so that it makes financial sense, the ideal solution is to have the project be open-air, but to close it when the weather is severe,” said Ronald Loch, Taubman Centers’ vice president for planning and design.
This is precisely what will happen at Taubman’s City Creek Center, a $1.5 billion, mixed-use streetscape now under construction and slated to open in downtown Salt Lake City in 2012. The project’s vaulted, 30,000-square-foot, glass roof will open and close over a five-level urban street. City Creek Center, built in partnership with the development arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, will occupy 10 acres directly across from the Mormon Temple. “When we started working with the city four years ago, we all wanted to have this beautiful, open-air street grid,” said Loch. “At the same time, we wanted to marry the idea of 365-days-a-year shopping with a climate that gets very hot in the summer and extremely cold in the winter.”
A retractable roof is on the drawing board also for all or part of the 1 million-square-foot retail component of Macerich-Westcor’s Palisene, a master-planned community in northeast Phoenix that is set to open in 2011 or 2012. Likewise, The Grove, a streetscape within Emaar Malls Group’s massive Dubai Mall, was designed to be open-air for much of the year, with a roof that closes in minutes to shut out bad weather. (Dubai Mall, part of the $20 billion Downtown Burj Dubai development, opened in November with 600 retailers. Eventually, it will encompass 3.8 million square feet of gross leasable area, with 1,200 stores.)
Meanwhile, the developer of an open-air center in Cairo is planning to use a retractable roof to help thwart Egypt’s notorious sandstorms, which usually hit in February and March, according to Stan Laegreid, a principal at Seattle-based Callison Architects. (Laegreid declines to identify the developer, because the planning for this project is still in the preliminary stages.) The allure of such projects, says Laegreid, is their potential to offer shoppers and retailers the best of both worlds.
Traffic at outdoor centers in desert locales like Phoenix can take a bit of a siesta during the brutally hot summer; indeed, Arizona’s record high temperature stands at 128 degrees. And outdoor lifestyle centers in cold climates tend to outperform their enclosed competitors during pleasant months, only to see sales lag during the critical, but frigid, holiday season. “We get this question all the time,” said Laegreid. “People ask, ‘When you go into northern climates, does it really make sense to provide a completely open-air center?’ Often, they want to know if there is a hybrid approach they could take.”
Giving shoppers the best of both worlds, however, comes at a steep price. Taubman has not released an exact cost for the retractable roof at City Creek Center, but Loch acknowledges that the bill will run into the millions of dollars. “It’s a huge premium,” he said.
But City Creek Center is no ordinary project. The 10-acre site will contain about 1 million square feet of office, a 500-room hotel, 700 residential units and some 900,000 square feet of retail, including a Macy’s and a Nordstrom. The site is served by the Salt Lake mass transit system, and visitors will also have access to 4,800 below-grade parking spaces.
Given the weather there, Taubman might have considered building an enclosed mall on the property. But from the beginning, city officials emphasized the need for connectivity and openness in this critical part of the central business district, says Loch. Underscoring this imperative was the fact that two enclosed malls downtown had already failed, Loch says. Taubman responded by subdividing City Creek into quadrants, with eight blocks of pedestrian-friendly streets. The climate question, though, still hung over the project.
Taubman’s solution, as designed by Callison, is a technological tall order. The barrel-shaped roof, made of tempered and tinted glass over an inch thick, spans 65 feet across the urban streetscape. When opening, it splits in the middle and then retracts to each side of the street until the rails and glass disappear from view. Power comes from a series of 15-horsepower motors, connected to a total of 12 retractable pieces. The device takes about six minutes to open or close from the time the master operator pushes the button. “We’ll even have a little weather station in there,” Loch said. “If a strong storm is coming, that will give us time to react, shut the roof and keep our customers dry.”
Were any part of the roof to remain visible when in the open position, shoppers might feel a sense of being enclosed inside a structure, albeit one with an operable skylight, says Laegreid. “The client didn’t want this to have an urban feel,” he said. “They wanted it to be an urban street.” The ability to make the roof disappear added significant expense, but other developers are opting for less expensive variants in which some portion of the roof stays visible, Laegreid says.
When it comes to U.S. malls, the earliest example of a design like this might be Westcor’s Scottsdale (Ariz.) Fashion Square, an enclosed super-regional mall built in 1961. “There actually is a component of the skylight system at Scottsdale Fashion Square that retracts,” said Scott Nelson, Westcor’s vice president of development. “So the retractable roof concept isn’t entirely new.”
Scottsdale Fashion Square clearly has the look and feel of a conventional indoor mall, though. What is new for Westcor is the idea of building an outdoor lifestyle center (with all the landscaping and materials one would expect) that can be enclosed in bad weather. Westcor is still studying exactly how to accomplish this, Nelson says, but the territory is not altogether uncharted. Retractable roofs are common for sports stadiums, he says. “It’s interesting: As soon as we announced the project, we got calls from consultants, engineers and designers who had worked on Safeco Field, in Seattle, the University of Phoenix stadium and our Chase Field downtown,” Nelson said. “The technology and engineering prowess are out there.”
Retractable roofs bring benefits beyond shielding people from the climate. Baseball fans arrive early at Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, just to watch the spectacle of its retractable roof in action, says Nelson. Such a feature could thus serve as a novel attraction and help a shopping center stand out from its competitors. To be sure, Taubman says it expects City Creek Center’s roof to draw crowds when it opens and closes. “It will be quite an awesome sight,” said Loch.
Moreover, a coterie of coveted national retailers now chases outdoor lifestyle centers built close to affluent residential pockets. Tenants that have discussed Palisene with Westcor are enthusiastic about the concept, says Nelson. “Obviously, this ability to be as productive as possible for a greater number of months out of the year is something they see as advantageous,” he said. “They’re excited.”
And retractable roofs fit well with projects designed to conform to environmental standards such as the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification program, as City Creek Center does. “If City Creek were enclosed, you would be air-conditioning the project for nine months out of the year,” Laegreid said. “Instead, it will be open-air for those nine months.” This brings cost savings that will, over time, help to offset at least the upfront and maintenance expenses associated with the roof, he says. Will these experimental projects be the ultimate solution to the open-versus-closed dilemma, perhaps sparking a wave of lifestyle center construction across Canada and the Middle East? Clearly, it is too early to tell. But developers, architects and retailers alike will be watching to see whether they can boost sales by raising the roof.
By Joel Groover
Outdoor centers are a natural fit for retail developers in temperate climes, where sunny, lushly landscaped and pedestrian-friendly projects tend to score a hit with shoppers, retailers and local officials alike. But in places where the weather turns extreme, even if only for a few months out of the year, moving forward with an open-air project can be a tough call.
Salt Lake City may be picturesque, but its scorching summers and snowy winters can make lounging outside a lifestyle center seem less than ideal. In Phoenix temperatures average in the balmy 70s and 80s for much of the year but can push past 105 degrees in the summer. The desert heat is no less blistering in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, or Cairo, Egypt, where shoppers face another obstacle to outdoor comfort: seasonal sandstorms large enough to blot out the sun.
In all four of these markets, however, developers are refusing to let Mother Nature have the last word. Instead of giving up on the concept of outdoor shopping, they aim to conquer the elements with malls, lifestyle centers and urban streetscapes that can be opened or closed with the push of a button. If retractable roofs work for convertibles and sports stadiums, they ask, then why not for shopping centers?
“If you can work it out so that it makes financial sense, the ideal solution is to have the project be open-air, but to close it when the weather is severe,” said Ronald Loch, Taubman Centers’ vice president for planning and design.
This is precisely what will happen at Taubman’s City Creek Center, a $1.5 billion, mixed-use streetscape now under construction and slated to open in downtown Salt Lake City in 2012. The project’s vaulted, 30,000-square-foot, glass roof will open and close over a five-level urban street. City Creek Center, built in partnership with the development arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, will occupy 10 acres directly across from the Mormon Temple. “When we started working with the city four years ago, we all wanted to have this beautiful, open-air street grid,” said Loch. “At the same time, we wanted to marry the idea of 365-days-a-year shopping with a climate that gets very hot in the summer and extremely cold in the winter.”
A retractable roof is on the drawing board also for all or part of the 1 million-square-foot retail component of Macerich-Westcor’s Palisene, a master-planned community in northeast Phoenix that is set to open in 2011 or 2012. Likewise, The Grove, a streetscape within Emaar Malls Group’s massive Dubai Mall, was designed to be open-air for much of the year, with a roof that closes in minutes to shut out bad weather. (Dubai Mall, part of the $20 billion Downtown Burj Dubai development, opened in November with 600 retailers. Eventually, it will encompass 3.8 million square feet of gross leasable area, with 1,200 stores.)
Meanwhile, the developer of an open-air center in Cairo is planning to use a retractable roof to help thwart Egypt’s notorious sandstorms, which usually hit in February and March, according to Stan Laegreid, a principal at Seattle-based Callison Architects. (Laegreid declines to identify the developer, because the planning for this project is still in the preliminary stages.) The allure of such projects, says Laegreid, is their potential to offer shoppers and retailers the best of both worlds.
Traffic at outdoor centers in desert locales like Phoenix can take a bit of a siesta during the brutally hot summer; indeed, Arizona’s record high temperature stands at 128 degrees. And outdoor lifestyle centers in cold climates tend to outperform their enclosed competitors during pleasant months, only to see sales lag during the critical, but frigid, holiday season. “We get this question all the time,” said Laegreid. “People ask, ‘When you go into northern climates, does it really make sense to provide a completely open-air center?’ Often, they want to know if there is a hybrid approach they could take.”
Giving shoppers the best of both worlds, however, comes at a steep price. Taubman has not released an exact cost for the retractable roof at City Creek Center, but Loch acknowledges that the bill will run into the millions of dollars. “It’s a huge premium,” he said.
But City Creek Center is no ordinary project. The 10-acre site will contain about 1 million square feet of office, a 500-room hotel, 700 residential units and some 900,000 square feet of retail, including a Macy’s and a Nordstrom. The site is served by the Salt Lake mass transit system, and visitors will also have access to 4,800 below-grade parking spaces.
Given the weather there, Taubman might have considered building an enclosed mall on the property. But from the beginning, city officials emphasized the need for connectivity and openness in this critical part of the central business district, says Loch. Underscoring this imperative was the fact that two enclosed malls downtown had already failed, Loch says. Taubman responded by subdividing City Creek into quadrants, with eight blocks of pedestrian-friendly streets. The climate question, though, still hung over the project.
Taubman’s solution, as designed by Callison, is a technological tall order. The barrel-shaped roof, made of tempered and tinted glass over an inch thick, spans 65 feet across the urban streetscape. When opening, it splits in the middle and then retracts to each side of the street until the rails and glass disappear from view. Power comes from a series of 15-horsepower motors, connected to a total of 12 retractable pieces. The device takes about six minutes to open or close from the time the master operator pushes the button. “We’ll even have a little weather station in there,” Loch said. “If a strong storm is coming, that will give us time to react, shut the roof and keep our customers dry.”
Were any part of the roof to remain visible when in the open position, shoppers might feel a sense of being enclosed inside a structure, albeit one with an operable skylight, says Laegreid. “The client didn’t want this to have an urban feel,” he said. “They wanted it to be an urban street.” The ability to make the roof disappear added significant expense, but other developers are opting for less expensive variants in which some portion of the roof stays visible, Laegreid says.
When it comes to U.S. malls, the earliest example of a design like this might be Westcor’s Scottsdale (Ariz.) Fashion Square, an enclosed super-regional mall built in 1961. “There actually is a component of the skylight system at Scottsdale Fashion Square that retracts,” said Scott Nelson, Westcor’s vice president of development. “So the retractable roof concept isn’t entirely new.”
Scottsdale Fashion Square clearly has the look and feel of a conventional indoor mall, though. What is new for Westcor is the idea of building an outdoor lifestyle center (with all the landscaping and materials one would expect) that can be enclosed in bad weather. Westcor is still studying exactly how to accomplish this, Nelson says, but the territory is not altogether uncharted. Retractable roofs are common for sports stadiums, he says. “It’s interesting: As soon as we announced the project, we got calls from consultants, engineers and designers who had worked on Safeco Field, in Seattle, the University of Phoenix stadium and our Chase Field downtown,” Nelson said. “The technology and engineering prowess are out there.”
Retractable roofs bring benefits beyond shielding people from the climate. Baseball fans arrive early at Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, just to watch the spectacle of its retractable roof in action, says Nelson. Such a feature could thus serve as a novel attraction and help a shopping center stand out from its competitors. To be sure, Taubman says it expects City Creek Center’s roof to draw crowds when it opens and closes. “It will be quite an awesome sight,” said Loch.
Moreover, a coterie of coveted national retailers now chases outdoor lifestyle centers built close to affluent residential pockets. Tenants that have discussed Palisene with Westcor are enthusiastic about the concept, says Nelson. “Obviously, this ability to be as productive as possible for a greater number of months out of the year is something they see as advantageous,” he said. “They’re excited.”
And retractable roofs fit well with projects designed to conform to environmental standards such as the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification program, as City Creek Center does. “If City Creek were enclosed, you would be air-conditioning the project for nine months out of the year,” Laegreid said. “Instead, it will be open-air for those nine months.” This brings cost savings that will, over time, help to offset at least the upfront and maintenance expenses associated with the roof, he says. Will these experimental projects be the ultimate solution to the open-versus-closed dilemma, perhaps sparking a wave of lifestyle center construction across Canada and the Middle East? Clearly, it is too early to tell. But developers, architects and retailers alike will be watching to see whether they can boost sales by raising the roof.
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