Antilla – The $1 Billion SUPER Home In Mumbai, India | Homes of the Rich – The #1 Real Estate Blog Location: Altamount Rd Mumbai, MH, India Square Footage: 400,000 Value: $1,000,000,000 If you haven’t heard of this home already, then you MUST be living in a hole. Dubbed “Antilla”, this massive 27-story home is located in Mumbai, India. Antila was designed by Chicago based architects, Perkins & Will. The 570 foot tall monster of a “house” features a whopping 400,000 square feet of living space. Cities for healthier lives | Pursuit by The University of Melbourne By Andrew Trounson, University of Melbourne Our cities are literally making us sick. We are sitting in worsening traffic jams, breathing in car fumes, living in isolated suburbs with no shops or services to walk or cycle to, and spending hours travelling to work because jobs are concentrated in unaffordable inner city areas. The way we are planning our cities is causing a host of preventable health problems, from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases to diabetes and stress. But we now have a blueprint for change. Published as three papers in The Lancet medical journal, the research was launched by the United Nations in New York on September 23, 2016, where the authors addressed a meeting of the UN’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Gaining Healthy Life If the compact city blueprint was implemented they calculate that a car-dependent city such as Melbourne would cut the burden of cardiovascular disease by 19 per cent and cut the burden of type-2 diabetes by 14 per cent. Read more
Cities and nature working together for clean air | Pursuit by The University of Melbourne By Dr Andi Horvath From the incredible flying fish whose modified pectoral fins allow it to glide up to 70km/h to a wriggling salmon jumping upstream – why do fish choose to leave water? University of Melbourne fish ecologist Associate Professor Stephen Swearer gives us six reasons. 1. To avoid being lunch It’s simple – so they won’t be eaten. “I’ve been on marine research vessels and seen flying fish leap out of the water thinking we might be a big fish predator. “They do this to get some distance on the predators but also so the predators can’t work out where they will land back in the water. 2. “Another reason fish leap out of water is to capture prey. “While it’s usually birds that dive into water to eat fish, there are some fish, like the arowana which live in the Amazon, that will dive into the air to eat birds.” Arowana have been found with the remains of birds, bats and snakes as well as crustaceans and insects in their stomachs. 3. 4. 5. Fish may be trying to get around obstacles.
Growing Greener Cities | Pursuit by The University of Melbourne By Dr Daryl Holland Who doesn’t want their house, apartment or office to be – literally – greener? Green walls (or vertical gardens) and roofs were once seen as just a yuppie fad – a novel building addition that might get you a few extra points for your outdoor area on The Block or bragging rights on your latest five star green building. But as developers and the public recognise the environmental, health, and economic benefits, and urban planners look for new ways to increase green space in our increasingly over-developed city centres, green infrastructure is going mainstream. Many people see the benefits and long for a piece of the action, but get stuck at the first hurdle. University of Melbourne researchers worked with government and industry groups to produce the Growing Green Guide, which is giving people the tools they need to incorporate green infrastructure into their buildings. The Guide has just been awarded a 2015 Premier’s Sustainability Award in the Education category.
Veggie gardens are so hot right now | Pursuit by The University of Melbourne By Julianna Rozek, Master of Science (Botany), University of Melbourne City slickers are going back to their agricultural roots in community gardens, pop-up veggie patches and roadside planters, which are sprouting up all over Melbourne. University of Melbourne students are exploring this phenomenon by building and tending their own veggie plots at the University’s Burnley Campus. Master of Science in Botany student Julianna Rozek writes about her experience and the wider urban garden movement. Getting our hands dirty In the first week of March I arrived in Burnley with a diverse group of Masters students to a bare, freshly ploughed field. This was our introduction to Food Production for Urban Landscapes, a new subject coordinated by Dr Chris Williams, Lecturer in Urban Horticulture at the University of Melbourne. We planted broccoli, tomatoes, silverbeet and beans, and also Oca - a delicious root vegetable from the Andes and one of the “lost crops of the Incas”. Embracing the trend
'IKEA on steroids': Flat-pack homes to bust Australia's housing shortage Updated Media player: "Space" to play, "M" to mute, "left" and "right" to seek. Video: Tiny homes for tiny prices. (Lateline) With just a few tools and a bit of patience, would-be home-owners can now build their own abode from a flat-pack, on the cheap and off the grid. A Sydney architect has designed the flat-pack home, describing it as IKEA on steroids, in order to combat sustainability and housing shortage issues. The one bedroom, 13.75-square-metre home comes on the back of a trailer. A drill, a hammer and a wrench are all that are needed to put together the 37 panels that make up the house. Architect Alex Symes, founder of Big World Homes, says anyone can put it together. "It's like IKEA on structural steroids," he said. "It has all its water tanks; we have two potable water tanks, we've got one grey water tank, so all the waste water effectively comes to the grey water tank, you add an additive to it and then effectively that's safe to go on your garden.
TESConnections An international interdisciplinary program is bridging together doctoral researchers from fields as diverse as religious studies and hydrology to advance sustainable water management for developing Asian cities. Professor Rebekah Brown and Professor Ana Deletic are co-leading a Monash University Graduate Research Interdisciplinary Program (GRIP) that involves a doctoral training partnership between the arts and engineering faculties, the Monash Sustainability Institute and the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities. The GRIP was launched in February 2015 and comprises an international cohort of researchers from Australia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, China, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Malaysia and the Netherlands. "Given the researchers' talent and drive, I am excited about the potential to make a real difference to the sustainability and liveability of communities and their environments in developing Asian cities," Professor Brown says.
About the Olmsted Legacy - National Association for Olmsted Parks Beginning in 1857 with the design for Central Park in New York City, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903), his sons and successor firm created designs for more than 6,000 landscapes across North America, including many of the world's most important parks. Olmsted’s remarkable design legacy includes Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Boston’s Emerald Necklace, Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, Mount Royal in Montreal, the grounds of the United States Capitol and the White House, and Washington Park, Jackson Park and the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. Olmsted’s sons were founding members of the American Society of Landscape Architects and played an influential role in the creation of the National Park Service.
Green buildings make you work smarter and sleep sounder, study reveals | Environment People working in green buildings think better in the office and sleep better when they get home, a new study has revealed. The research indicates that better ventilation, lighting and heat control improves workers’ performance and could boost their productivity by thousands of dollars a year. It also suggests that more subjective aspects, such as beautiful design, may make workers happier and more productive. An increasing number of green buildings are being constructed by developers as the cost and health benefits become better known, but this the first study to show such buildings can make their occupants brainier. The research analysed workers in certified green buildings in five US cities and compared them with other workers in the same cities employed in different offices owned by the same companies. The workers in the green buildings scored over 25% higher in a standard test which uses a Sims-like computer game to assess the ability to think and plan.
The impact of working in a green certified building on cognitive function and health Open Access Highlights 26.4% higher cognitive test scores in high-performing, green certified buildings. 6.4% higher Sleep Quality scores in high-performing, green certified buildings. 30% fewer symptoms in high-performing, green certified buildings. Thermal comfort and sleep quality associated with higher cognitive scores. “Buildingomics”: the totality of factors in buildings that influence health. Abstract Thirty years of public health research have demonstrated that improved indoor environmental quality is associated with better health outcomes. Keywords Green certification; Office buildings; Cognitive function; Indoor environmental quality; Buildingomics 1. Thirty years of public health science and building science have demonstrated that buildings play a key role in shaping our health [1], [2], [3], [4] and [5]. The adoption rates of the optional IEQ credits in LEED NC 2009 give an indication of how building owners are prioritizing certain aspects of IEQ [17]. Table 1. Full-size table