Bahrain’s Green Building

Three wind turbine blades have been successfully installed on the Bahrain World Trade Center, a twin skyscraper complex. This is the first time that a commercial development has integrated large-scale wind turbines within its design to harness the power of the wind. The three massive turbines, measuring 29 meters in diameter, are supported by bridges spanning between the complex’s two towers. Through its positioning and the unique aerodynamic design of the towers, the prevailing on-shore Gulf breeze is funneled into the path of the turbines, helping to create power generation efficiency.

Now operational, these wind turbines deliver approximately 10 to 15% of the energy needs of the building, or 1100 to 1300 megawatt-hours per year — enough to provide light in 300 homes for over a year.

Open Water !

Nobody doubts anymore that climate change is at least in part man-made. And even if the effects of global warming remain at the most benign end of the predicted range, it will be a disaster of unprecedented proportions. For years, that disaster has been unfolding so slowly that it’s been invisible. But now you can see it: Mountain glaciers around the world are melting, along with North polar sea ice and the ice cap atop Greenland; droughts are baking the U.S. southwest, Australia and sub-Saharan Africa; floods are devastating Bangladesh; and Central America is reeling from powerful hurricanes. Not all of these events can be tied absolutely to global warming, but all of them will surely become more frequent and intense as the world warms – ultimately threatening the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people.
Latest scientist predictions claim that the North Pole will be open water by 2013 !

Oil and water can mix after all

Remeber this past article (http://mznblog.wordpress.com/2006/08/13/damage-is-done/), well researchers at Queen’s University in Canada have found an effective and environmentally friendly way to mix (and unmix) oil and water. This could help the oil industry to clean up oil spills and extract oil from tar sands. The ’surfactant’ (surface active agent) used at Queen’s provides several advantages over current methods. It’s cheap, reversible, and doesn’t require metals, acid, or light. In fact, it can be switched on and off by the respective presence of CO2 or air. But as the researchers don’t give a clue about commercial availability for their ’surfactant,’ I guess there are still some problems to solve.

Read more: http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn9781-oil-and-water-mix-and-unmix-on-demand.html

Threatened ecosystem

Did you know that Bahrain coral reefs are the home of the Arabian Gulf’s most ‎biodiverse marine systems. Yet, Bahrain has lost untold acres of mangroves to unplanned ‎coastal development, and the resulting sedimentation has stressed coral reefs. Pollution ‎from cities and oil spills remain as constant threats.‎ Thus, since the Gulf War, the oil slicks adversely affected the fishing industry, and marine biologists remained uncertain about the longterm ecological impact of the pollution.

Bahrain needs to introduce stricter rules on dredging sand from the seabed. Current ‎policies threaten to destroy marine wildlife, including entire ecosystems, if no action is ‎taken. Studies show that around 2.5 million tones of sand is taken from Bahrain’s waters ‎every year for use in construction and land reclamation. What make it even worse is that ‎part of that is actually discharged back again into the sea causing harmful conditions to ‎marine life.‎

With the increase in construction material prices, dredging marine sand from Bahrain’s ‎shallow regional waters is a satisfying solution for the increasing demand of the ‎construction sector, and provides the requirements of reclamation operations in the ‎shallow coastal areas to build new ports and causeways.‎

Tubli Bay, located near the northeast corner of the island, supports the last remaining ‎mangroves in Bahrain, is an important nursery ground for commercially important ‎shrimps and over 45 species of birds utilize the abundant food resources. The bay has ‎more than halved in size since 1950s due to alterations to the coastline. Over the past 50 ‎years it has gone from measuring 24 sq km in size to just 10 sq km today. Only recently ‎Tubli Bay was finally announced a marine reservation protected by law.‎

Fasht Al-Athem, another major coral reef located near the east cost of the island is in ‎jeopardy due to further construction development. If not directly affected, the alteration ‎of its surrounding ecosystems will allow it just few more years before marine life will ‎start to degrade.‎

Bahrain needs to reconsider about new locations for development by focusing on using ‎geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing techniques. Also introducing of ‎cleaner production techniques and alternatives that have less impact on the marine ‎ecosystems. It is of major significance to undertake detailed Environmental Impact ‎Assessments (EIA) especially over operations that are planned in environmentally ‎sensitive areas, such as shallow coastal ecosystems.‎

It goes without saying that artificial structures will never be a substitute for what is being ‎destroyed. Furthermore, the enormity of the dredge-and-fill is radically altering the ‎marine life, causing widespread mortality in neighboring ecosystems. Thus, even if corals ‎should settle on the breakwaters at some later stage, the natural dynamics of the system ‎would be irreplaceably altered.‎

Bahrain surrounding coral reefs offers excellent drift diving and some of the most prolific ‎marine life in the Gulf. Rays, moray eels, crayfish, trigger fish, clown fish, turtles, and ‎sturgeon fish inhabit the reefs while mackerel, cobia, whale-sharks, dugongs, tuna and ‎barracuda cruise above. It is even said that Bahrain coral reefs are endowed with the most ‎Indo-Pacific fish species typically found in the Red Sea, Maldives and Great Barrier ‎Reef. Fed by a cool upwelling from the surrounding depths.‎

Sony 50GB Blu-Ray discs

Sony Electronics has begun to ship its 50GB dual layer Blu-Ray discs to the U.S. while confirming its plans to make these recordable media available to everyone else later this year. Each of these 50GB discs can store over four hours of High Definition quality video and boast a 24Mbps transfer rate that empowers users to take advantage of current Blu-Ray disc burners from Sony and VAIO desktop and notebook PCs. These new discs also come with specially re-engineered AccuCORE technology which encompasses scratch guard, archival reliability that prevents data corruption and deterioration, stable writing, and temperature durability. The Sony 50GB dual layer Blu-Ray discs cost about $50 a piece.

Gibraltar Sovereign Bay

Gibraltar is a narrow peninsula south of Spain with sheer cliffs and a mounting of a ‎towering height of 426 meters. The existing harbour is bordered by a naval base on the ‎western side, while sandy beaches stretch along the edges.‎

A proposed marina development will be located on an existing area of reclaimed land to ‎the east of Gibraltar. The new harbour has been engineering to accommodate a full ‎marina for yachts and other watercraft. The sweep of the marina arm provides a focus for ‎retail, coffee shops and restaurant life, terminating in a luxury residential development on ‎the land-side. The scheme includes a comprehensive environmental strategy, which ‎capitalizes on the climate, location and orientation of the buildings, including using ‎seawater from the surrounding Mediterranean Sea to cool the buildings!‎

The residential component will include a range of apartments with private swimming ‎pools, terraces and sea views. The harbour will be connected to a series of landscaped ‎public squares and plazas, with naturally-lit underground parking and direct pedestrian ‎access, which will include a variety of leisure facilities. The special thing about this ‎project is that the design can still evolve to respond to changing needs and market ‎demands. Gibraltar Sovereign Bay is planned to be completed by 2014.‎

Dubai: One Central Park

Very few know about the new design for One Central Park that will be ‎located on a prominent corner site within the Dubai International ‎Finance Centre. The 80-storey 328m mixed-use tower, combining 520 luxury ‎apartments with 25 floors of office space, and shops, restaurant, pool, ‎and health club, will have the world’s highest apartment. This eye-‎catching shape building is planned to be completed by early 2008.‎

What makes this architecture unique and special is its east – west ‎orientation aimed to maximize views over the Finance Centre and to the ‎coastline and desert. This orientation also reduces solar gain, with the ‎building core mass absorbing heat to reduce mechanical ventilation ‎loads. A system of sunshades shelters the interiors on the exposed south ‎elevation.‎

The One Central Park will be featured on a landscape surrounded by ‎sculptured pools of water and underground car parks. The building will ‎serve over 40 levels of apartments rising above the office levels while ‎providing various facilities for residents including a reception, ‎lounge, restaurant, and fitness centre with a swimming pool. With all ‎this luxurious features I would hate to know that the purpose of such ‎engineered masterpiece is to provide empty penthouse apartments with ‎spectacular views!‎

Burj Dubai

Burj Dubai is set to be the world’s tallest building and the centerpiece of the Gulf regions most prestigious urban development, entitled Downtown Dubai. The Arabic meaning for the word Burj is ‘tower’, which gives Burj Dubai a meaning of ‘Dubai Tower’ or ‘ Tower of Dubai’. Its exact height hasn’t been disclosed but it has been confirmed that it will be over 700 meters tall and its design was influenced by the six petal desert flower.

 

Burj Dubai is being constructed on Sheikh Zayed Road, just after the first interchange (Defense Roundabout) and it will be surrounded by a man-made lake. It will also be surrounded by a combination of residential, commercial, hotel, entertainment and leisure outlets, along with open green spaces, water features, and pedestrian boulevards.

More Info: [http://www.burjdubaiskyscraper.com]

Damage is done

Over 120km of Lebanon’s coastlines have been damaged by oil spills only to recover after 10 years from such massive environmental disaster. Taking in to consideration that the fishing community will be hit for at least two or three years before the ecosystem re-establishes itself, warnings from Marine experts say that the spill could pose a cancer risk to people living in the affected area.Until there is a complete ceasefire no equipments, companies or labor can handle any clean-up operation. The more time wasted to tackle the problem the more time will be required to resolve the issue.The spill caused by Israeli bombing of the Jiyyeh power station killed large quantities of fish along Lebanon’s shores and now over two million inhabitants of Beirut are at risks from “toxic spray”.Yet officials from UNEP still believe that it’s too early to assess the potential environmental and health impact before conducting any sample analysis. Meanwhile, latest satellite images showed the oil slick was continuing to spread across the eastern Mediterranean Sea, threatening the coastlines of Turkey and possibly Cyprus.

Oil spills pose a dangerous ecological hazard to the environment, which are unpredictable and uncontrollable. They are thorough and indiscriminant killers that effect every organism in the impacted area. Oil spill impact, behavior and clean up are dictated by several factors including the type of oil involved and its toxicity, physical factors such as weather and topographical conditions, and availability of equipment and a well prepared spill response plan. The only way to control the impact of oil is to understand these contributing components and to improve current ways of control. Humans create oil spills thus, need to be controlled by humans.

Worldwide Building Boom

Building booms are becoming common lately. The earth’s surface is being processed, ordered, stacked, shipped, registered and reconfigured into “architecture” elsewhere. Materials, mineral wealth, reserves. Even in unexpected places, global blindspots, like China’s northwest desert province or the small island of Bahrain are all becoming similar to lower Manhattan, with skyscrapers rising almost in front of one’s eyes.

Many cities around the world were only considered as major trading stops are now starting to flourish with economic activity doubling every year. Cities are becoming the commercial trade capital of a wider region; a shopper’s paradise with huge bazaars everywhere. Nothing but multi-storey buildings full of small offices representing every possible manufacturer or distributor of consumer goods.

While the world focuses on Beijing and Shanghai as the new centers of building construction, Russia’s capital, Moscow, is undergoing a transformation unmatched since the massive overhaul of the Stalin era. The building boom has overtaken huge swathes of the where over 50 million square feet of housing were added. Public officials have spoken of building 38 high-rises of up to 45 stories in the next several years, with 22 more expected by 2015 as part of a program known as the New Ring of Moscow. The planned series of towers and modern infrastructure promise an infusion of high-tech energy whose vertical extension will resemble Kuala Lumpur and Shanghai more than a European metropolis. Then there’s the “Moscow-City” district, a sector northwest of the city center that has been designated as the future administrative and financial nucleus.

Bahrain, meanwhile, in forecasting the end of the oil economy, is setting itself up, through yet another building boom, to become a tourist attraction and offshore financial services hub. To do so, though, Bahrain – a very small kingdom – has turned to “innovative offshore developments and land reclamation projects.”

London now looks forward to “31 major new developments… all £100bn worth of them, including the 2012 Lea Valley Olympic Park.” That equates to “400,000 new homes, around 8m square feet of new offices (four Empire State Buildings’ worth),” as well as “so many secret, or simply obscure, developments” that the New London Architecture centre (aka NLA) was at least partially created to help make sense of it all.

Brief questions: where is all this material coming from? In case of Bahrain; you can only build so much architecture before you start to carve quite deeply into the land. So: where are the negative spaces of these building booms? For every skyscraper, is there a corresponding hole, quarry, or mine being dug or deepened somewhere?

The land reclimation projects of Bahrain, the New Ring of Moscow, New London Architecture – all rearrangements, transformations of the void, ever-deepening holes as we strip-mine the face of the planet.