Throw Energy Out the Window With Thermique Heated Glass

Ooooh, there is nothing lovelier than a floor-to-ceiling window, and there are few better ways to waste energy, given the low R-value of most glass. Until now, that is, when you can throw electricity out the window with Thermique. This new invention burns up to 25 watts of electricity per square foot by turning the glass into an electric heater . They say it is more energy efficient because it eliminates drafts, and the conventional heating system doesn’t have to work as hard.” With heated windows, you can lower the set-back temperature for your HVAC system without changing the indoor temperature. The greater the total window area, the more dramatically you can alter the set-back temperature.”

It used to be that there was a limit on the size of windows in an Aspen ski chalet; it got uncomfortable when the windows got too big and created too much of a draft. Now the hedge fund jockeys can just install this coal-fired glass and have no discomfort at all.

No matter that a good portion of it is just being thrown away to the outdoors, or that the appropriate solution is to use smaller windows that frame the view or get a set of drapes. Now we can hook each picture window up to its own circuit breaker (about what it would need) and enjoy the view.

The Thermique page at Sweets Catalog and the company’s website make all kinds of cases for the comfort and efficiency provided by this technology, that it can “provide welcoming warmth without increasing your energy bills.” Yet somehow I can’t believe it, this is such a contradiction of every rule of energy-efficient design. It seems fundamentally wrong in this day and age to solve a design problem by electrifying it.

NY tower plans found in rubbish

The Freedom Tower will be the tallest building in New York

A homeless man has found confidential blueprints for New York’s new Freedom Tower dumped in a city rubbish bin.

Mike Fleming handed the documents - marked “Secure Document - Confidential” in to the New York Post newspaper.

The Freedom Tower is being built at Ground Zero, to replace the World Trade Centre towers destroyed on 9/11.

A spokeswoman apologised for the security breach and said that anyone found responsible would be liable for “serious disciplinary action”.

‘Game plan’

Mr Fleming said he was concerned that the documents might fall into the wrong hands.

“I was outraged, because this is priceless,” he told the New York Post.

“This could have ended up on eBay or gotten to al-Qaeda.”

The blueprints reveal details of the new building’s floor plans, along with the specifications of its concrete walls and its heating and ventilation systems.

Steve Yang, an architect who spoke to the New York Post, said that the plans would have been helpful for a terrorist planning an attack.

“An expert in explosives, demolition or biological weapons certainly could glean enough here to develop a game plan,” he said.

However, Candace McAdams, a spokeswoman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, said that the plans were “not very detailed” and available to anyone bidding on contracts.

The Port Authority will now conduct an inquiry to find out how the breach occurred.

Vertical (Diagonal?) Farm from Work AC in NYC

We love vertical farms and while they may not be as practical as green roofs, the idea of food being grown right in the city doesn’t get any more local than this. New York magazine asked four architects to dream up proposals for a lot on Canal Street and Work AC came up with this. “We thought we’d bring the farm back to the city and stretch it vertically,” says Work AC co-principal Dan Wood. “We are interested in urban farming and the notion of trying to make our cities more sustainable by cutting the miles [food travels],” adds his co-principal (and wife) Amale Andraos. Underneath is what appears to be a farmers market, selling what grows above. Artists would be commissioned to design the columns that hold it up and define the space under: “We show a Brancusi, but it could be anyone,” says Wood. ::New York Magazine

Keep reading for more vertical farms covered in Treehugger.

It is a “Center for Urban Agriculture,” a building, located on a .72-acre site, that includes fields for growing vegetables and grains, greenhouses, rooftop gardens and even a chicken farm.” Mithun Architects’ Vertical Farm for Seattle

We present Gordon Graff’s Sky Farm proposed for downtown Toronto’s theatre district. It’s got 58 floors, 2.7 million square feet of floor area and 8 million square feet of growing area. It can produce as much as a thousand acre farm, feeding 35 thousand people per year and providing tomatoes to throw at the latest dud at the Princess of Wales Theatre to the east, and olives for the Club District to the north. ::Sky Farm Proposed for Downtown Toronto

“Cities already have the density and infrastructure needed to support vertical farms, and super-green skyscrapers could supply not just food but energy, creating a truly self-sustaining environment.” Imagine an urban highrise CSA where we just walk across the street from our highrise to the next to pick our dinner. ::Futurama Farming in New York

“Robots tend crops that grow on floating platforms around a sea city of the future. Water from the ocean would evaporate, rise to the base of the platforms (leaving the salt behind), and feed the crops.”:: Wayback Machine 1984: The Future of Agriculture

Daekwon Park designed this prefab system: “Clipping onto the exterior of existing buildings, a series of prefabricated modules serving different functions would be stacked on top of each other, adding a layer of green space for gardening, wind turbines or social uses to make new green façades and infrastructures.” ::Retrofitting our Skyscrapers For Food and Power

::Weburbanist has great coverage of Pierre Sartoux of Atelier SOA’s vertical farm.”r. A light-shading skin wraps around the structure and opens to admit sunlight at particular locations for various functional (and aesthetic) purposes. The building’s air, heating and cooling systems are wind-driven and circulate oxygen and carbon dioxide between growing and living spaces. The simple but reinforced structure is designed to handle additional dead loads from the weight of growing floors and also serve to make the entire building more durable (and thus sustainable).”