Permaculture Elective WInter Session @ COFA

COFA (College of Fine Arts, UNSW) will be running the first delivery of a Permaculture Design Elective over winter break. Enrolment is limited to 24 places. (16 UG and 8 PG), Demand is high and we feel we will run each semester as a result.

It is a 6 UOC course and will run as a 1 week intensive. Monday June 25 – Sunday July 1

Mon – Fri classes will be held 10 – 4 in the new Design Rooms at Kensington Campus with a few off site local visits within walking / bus distance including Costa Geogiadis’s verge garden at Bondi and a couple of community gardens.

Sat – Sun – will be a field trip to a permaculture property near Sydney. We plan to camp there Friday and Saturday night and do some practical work – so it will be gloves, work boots and dirt under the nails. We have tents for everyone if you don’t have one of your own.

I will be working on the course outline over the next week or so with Cameron Little, a highly experienced and qualified instructor who will be our Lecturer for the course.

Assessment will be project based.

Course codes are  SDES9758-10334 (PERM) and  SDES3801-10337 (PERM)

To enroll please contact: selenagriffith@gmail.com

EnergyWise Design Workshops

Energy Efficiency is one of the most important strategies that any country, state, city or private entity can undertake to combat climate change. Understanding how a building consumes energy is very important to identify how we can conserve.

As Architects, Designers and Engineers, we have a tremendous opportunity to impact.

Achieving energy efficiency starts with understanding why and how a building consumes energy.

Here are some free online workshops that dissected high performance building design. Topics include Climate and comfort, Basic energy analysis, lighting design, HVAC design, and some more.

http://visualizegreen.posterous.com/pages/a-z-of-energy-efficiency

Number Crunching

Recent reports suggest that ‘energy efficient buildings’ are almost never as efficient as their intended design. Findings from the government’s low-carbon building programme, administered by the Carbon Trust, have shown that some buildings consume as much as three times their designed energy efficiency.

For more details, look at the following link

http://www.fm-world.co.uk/features/feature-articles/number-crunching/?locale=en