Design Advisor - LEED

In the last class were discussed some concepts of LEED and we saw the website Design Advisor. This website works as a handbook for the design of affordable housing, where we can see the considerations for the design, the steps that must be followed to you project and examples of projects that have already been built.

I was looking at the gallery with the built projects, and caught my attention. I found it interesting that in them there are always a concern with community spaces and leisure areas for children and reading rooms and studies and not only separate houses for each family to isolate.

The designs are very well thought taking into consideration that in each place, in each city people are different and require different settings which ends up further enrich the designs. I found very interesting the quality of housing and the values of the them. In Brazil, for example, there is a federal program that annually builds more than 1 million homes for low-income families who often do not pay anything for it directly, but the downside is that these houses has a very low quality and those families who have nothing are condemned to live in these conditions. This is something but has a lot to improve, and I think the regulations of concepts shown in the Design Advisor could help them a lot.

This idea of the Design Advisor is really very useful and I would like to see in more places in the world. Let´s disseminate these ideas.

For more information about the Design Advisor: designadvisor.org

Ecology

               The question of how to bring ecology closer to us is often a cultural and social issue. We can see in many places in the world where a rich neighborhood is extremely woody, clean and well maintained while a poorer neighborhood is the opposite.

               I believe that one way to change that is to bring people information to encourage a change for the common good.

               During the class colleagues talked about their experiences in cultivating gardens in their own homes and this is an amazing and very simple idea. If we take the population the knowledge of how easy it is and showing all the benefits it would bring to them and the communities would be very important.

               I believe that in many cases the question of people's culture is that in some places people are not very concerned with others and does not try to help another, even does not care to improve the community where they live. If each develop itself an ecological and communal conscience I can see a much better future for the health and well being of people around the globe.

Segregation - Experience in Class

During the class of March 26 the teacher proposed an experience to do in the classroom. Where we separate ourselves from those who consider male and female and those who do not consider themselves neither.

The experience was interesting because often we do not realize how segregation can affect us in a negative way, both men and women, as between nations or between man and nature.

The manner in which we were arranged in the room, separate, gave the impression that we were enemies of each other, like we're in a battlefield preparing for war, wanting to be victorious there.

It was an incredible analogy to compare with our relationship with nature, we are away from it and act as enemies, hostile to nature. When we are together all the time we did not realize, as we used to the way things are, and only when we separate and then we turn to the mix that we realize how it makes a difference and how segregation is a big problem.

We need more communions between different people, between cultures, between academic areas, between urban and rural, between humans and nature.