The building is real and was built as a prototype to demonstrate the use of wood for large-scale construction projects. The architects / engineers claim there are energetic / environmental benefits to use wood rather than other building materials. (Science Daily: World's tallest wood building completed: 18 storeys)
UBC’s tall wood building, Brock Commons.
Credit: Image courtesy of University of British Columbia
Right away we have concerns for the number of trees, likely hardwood, which would be needed for such a project. Assuming they come from a renewable process such as farming the trees, they would need to be on a cycle of maybe twenty years to get big enough to harvest again.
Advantages are subtle:
Wood is a sustainable and versatile building material that stores, rather than emits, carbon dioxide. By using wood, the impact is a reduction of 2,432 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide compared to other construction materials, the equivalent of taking around 500 cars off the road for a year.
UBC’s tall wood building, Brock Commons.
Credit: Image courtesy of University of British Columbia
Right away we have concerns for the number of trees, likely hardwood, which would be needed for such a project. Assuming they come from a renewable process such as farming the trees, they would need to be on a cycle of maybe twenty years to get big enough to harvest again.
Advantages are subtle:
Wood is a sustainable and versatile building material that stores, rather than emits, carbon dioxide. By using wood, the impact is a reduction of 2,432 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide compared to other construction materials, the equivalent of taking around 500 cars off the road for a year.
- Science Daily
It seemed concrete is generally benign since you build it and eventually it falls down but it's usually a long time and so what. There didn't seem much overhead to concrete since you mix it, spread it out, and it hardens. The overhead is in making the concrete in the first place as in the basic Portland process since this apparently takes high amounts of heat energy for long periods. There's also the expense of the rebar used to reinforce the concrete in terms of producing the steel.
The strong implication from the article is this construction medium results in production of quite a bit of carbon dioxide.
Thinking of each medium in terms of environmental impact isn't making a love connection either way here at the Rockhouse. Even when those trees are being farmed for replacement, it's still at a cost since there's no understory in a tree farm, all the smaller trees and shrubs will be eliminated. Concrete has tremendous advantages but the energy required to create it is much higher than anticipated as well.
Here at the Rockhouse, we want a fo' real rock house since cities are inherently destructive to the environment since they're powerful heat sources and significantly change local weather. Therefore, obviate one aspect of the heat problem by building down instead of up.
There's some consideration of claustrophobia from living, in effect, inside a cave but Visio has a TV they call a reference model and it's 120-inches with 4K HDR OLED and every other expensive letter you can put behind a TV now. That screen is ten feet across the diagonal and presents superlative realism so how does a real picture window do you any better. Does it really even matter?
Distance to neighbors doesn't have to be so much to ensure silence because hardly anything will get through solid rock. You could never ask for better soundproofing so your isolation in your own place should be as perfect as you like.
Your swimming pool will never ever leak unless there's one hellacious earthquake and we would probably all die in something that big anyway.
Climate control becomes almost effortless because the Rockworld doesn't ever need cooling unless it's from some heat source within the Rockworld. Any heat unneeded to warm other areas of the Rockworld get blown out the portholes.
We're assuming the piping used for the ventilation system within the Rockworld was not built by anyone involved with "Brazil" in any way. The Terry Gilliam approach may not be the best choice.
Such projects can't be so foreign on a governmental scale what with various defense projects they have built inside mountains in Colorado, New Mexico, and who knows where else. There should be tremendous available expertise and also the required mining hardware existing right now but it's not been exploited for any civilian purpose beyond incredibly deep parking garages.
So what if this gets too "Bladerunner" as they're talking about cutting down a forest to build an office building so wtf is that. Apart from the energy to blow the hole in the rock, using stone as the building medium costs nothin' of the environment so how about that instead.
It seemed concrete is generally benign since you build it and eventually it falls down but it's usually a long time and so what. There didn't seem much overhead to concrete since you mix it, spread it out, and it hardens. The overhead is in making the concrete in the first place as in the basic Portland process since this apparently takes high amounts of heat energy for long periods. There's also the expense of the rebar used to reinforce the concrete in terms of producing the steel.
The strong implication from the article is this construction medium results in production of quite a bit of carbon dioxide.
Thinking of each medium in terms of environmental impact isn't making a love connection either way here at the Rockhouse. Even when those trees are being farmed for replacement, it's still at a cost since there's no understory in a tree farm, all the smaller trees and shrubs will be eliminated. Concrete has tremendous advantages but the energy required to create it is much higher than anticipated as well.
Here at the Rockhouse, we want a fo' real rock house since cities are inherently destructive to the environment since they're powerful heat sources and significantly change local weather. Therefore, obviate one aspect of the heat problem by building down instead of up.
There's some consideration of claustrophobia from living, in effect, inside a cave but Visio has a TV they call a reference model and it's 120-inches with 4K HDR OLED and every other expensive letter you can put behind a TV now. That screen is ten feet across the diagonal and presents superlative realism so how does a real picture window do you any better. Does it really even matter?
Distance to neighbors doesn't have to be so much to ensure silence because hardly anything will get through solid rock. You could never ask for better soundproofing so your isolation in your own place should be as perfect as you like.
Your swimming pool will never ever leak unless there's one hellacious earthquake and we would probably all die in something that big anyway.
Climate control becomes almost effortless because the Rockworld doesn't ever need cooling unless it's from some heat source within the Rockworld. Any heat unneeded to warm other areas of the Rockworld get blown out the portholes.
We're assuming the piping used for the ventilation system within the Rockworld was not built by anyone involved with "Brazil" in any way. The Terry Gilliam approach may not be the best choice.
Such projects can't be so foreign on a governmental scale what with various defense projects they have built inside mountains in Colorado, New Mexico, and who knows where else. There should be tremendous available expertise and also the required mining hardware existing right now but it's not been exploited for any civilian purpose beyond incredibly deep parking garages.
So what if this gets too "Bladerunner" as they're talking about cutting down a forest to build an office building so wtf is that. Apart from the energy to blow the hole in the rock, using stone as the building medium costs nothin' of the environment so how about that instead.
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