The Chinese architecture firm Penda wants people to live in trees one day. It designed a building made of bamboo that doesn’t require any nails or planks to assemble – and it can be expanded almost indefinitely, reports the Swiss weekly newspaper the Handelszeitung.

The building blends into a bamboo forest and consists of both cut and still living bamboo rods. For every bamboo rod used, two bamboo plants are planted. The goal is to create a habitat over time that can support itself and naturally expand with the number of residents. According to Penda, one small bamboo tree house could eventually develop into a town with 20,000 residents.

The bamboo rods are interlocked with x-shaped joints of the same material and then fixed with rope for additional strength. Plants in and around the building could offer shade and also be used to grow food. Plans are underway to build the first model, which could house 20,000 people, on the outskirts of Beijing by 2023.

Bamboo fits nicely into the trend of sustainable architecture. Unlike bamboo wood, bamboo cane has the advantage that it grows faster. Even when the cane is cut, it still remains a part of the root system, enabling the plant to regenerate itself.

According to the architects, their bamboo house could be built anywhere in the world where bamboo grows and could contribute to the sustainable development of rural areas particularly in poorer countries. Penda was recently awarded second place in the internationally renowned A'Design Awards competition for their vision of eco-friendly architecture and construction....

Launched today in Bern, the Standard Nachhaltiges Bauen Schweiz or SNBS (in English: Standard for Sustainable Building Switzerland) is “the first comprehensive and certifiable standard” in Swiss construction, according to a post on the blog of the Federal Office for the Environment (FOE).

Unlike mainstream building labels in Switzerland, the SNBS label focuses more on the energy efficiency and health impact of the building. It is also a context-relevant label, in that residential developments should be steered towards “a sustainable, i.e. environmental, economic and socially responsible direction”. For this reason, both the use and cost effectiveness of a building are evaluated in its context when seeking the label.

Another difference to existing standards is in the methodology. Instead of using checklists of concrete details in which points are added up to reach an overall assessment, the SNBS specifies objectives and intended results for the construction. How these are met is left to the discretion of the developers, architects and planners. In this respect, the objectives are based on existing, recognised Swiss standards and guidelines, such as the building label Minergie, and are in line with the sustainability strategy of the Federal Council.

Among the buildings that certification of the SNBS was tested on is the new IOC headquarters in Lausanne. The FOE commissioned Société Générale de Surveillance (SGS) with certification. More information about the label can be found under www.nnbs.ch....

Heidelberg Village, which was designed by Frey Architekten, will have photovoltaic panels on the façade to generate renewable energy all-year-round but also lower the indoor temperature in summer by acting as a sunshade. The complex, which ranges from five to eight stories, will also have an accessible rooftop garden with trees and climbing plants along the balcony of each residential unit to create vertical gardens.

The architects have designed the complex to encourage an intergenerational community: over a usable floor space of 15,150 square metres, Heidelberg Village will feature 162 residential units ranging in size from one-bedroom flats to large units for families – all accessible for persons with disabilities. Services such as a nursery, household assistance and professional nursing care will be offered on site, and there will be permanent staff to organise and manage neighbourhood activities.

Community already begins in the construction phase: the architects are organising a weekly ‘soup kitchen’ where construction workers and future residents can meet and “bond over food and friendship”, reports Inhabitat.com.

Heidelberg Village is being built in Bahnstadt, a Passive House district in the city of Heidelberg that is currently being constructed on the premises of a former freight railway station. Once completed, up to 12,000 people will live and work in the new city district. The Passive House Institute calls Bahnstadt “probably the most significant Passive House project at the moment”....

The cable railway in Niderfeld will connect the future light rail Limmattalbahn stop with a possible urban rail stop, according to an article in the newspaper Limmattaler Zeitung. “Cable railways are something special for users, but they are also very efficient as they can be operated without a driver,” said the head of the urban planning department in Dietikon Jürg Bosch, when explaining its advantages over a bus.

Cable railways could one day be used in other parts of the canton of Zurich to alleviate traffic. For instance, there is a plan to connect the Altstetten railway station with the Hönggerberg campus of the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. The university district in the city centre could be connected to the main railway station with a cable railway, as could the Zurich Zoo to the Stettbach railway station. Here, too, the advantages are the ability to transport many people at a low cost.

There are also discussions underway to use a cable railway to make the park of the late artist Bruno Weber more accessible. Located between Dietikon and Spreitenbach, it is currently only reached via a steep path....

Federal Councillor Doris Leuthard was in China last week on a working visit and held talks with various representatives from the Chinese government. Both countries agreed that the economic ties between Switzerland and China have increased with the bilateral free trade agreement.

The two countries now want to strengthen relations on environmental issues and climate protection. China is reducing the high share of coal in its energy supply by turning to gas and renewable sources of energy, writes the federal government in a statement. Leuthard suggested last week that the two countries should extend bilateral cooperation in the field of energy.

Switzerland has extensive know-how in the areas of energy efficiency and storage. And as Leuthard pointed out, Swiss technology and expertise are being employed in the Sino-Swiss ‘low carbon cities’ project, which aims to reduce CO2 emissions in Chinese cities.

Switzerland and China also want to work more closely in smart transport infrastructure. In May 2013, the two countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperating in the transport sector. The specific details of this will now be drawn up. Both countries have also agreed to intensify the exchange of information on road safety....

There is little awareness about the work of spatial planners, explained Lukas Bühlmann, director of the Swiss country planning association ‘Schweizerische Vereinigung für Landesplanung’ (VLP), and Frank Argast, president of the spatial planners’ trade association ‘Fachverband Schweizer Raumplaner’ (FSU), in an article in newspaper “Neue Zürcher Zeitung”.

They believe that supporting trainees is an area that has long been neglected in Switzerland. At the same time, the demand for spatial planners has grown considerably, meaning there is a huge lack of these professionals in Switzerland. Associations, universities and institutions now want to counteract this trend. To this end, they have signed a charter that commits them to supporting trainees in spatial planning.    

The revised law on spatial planning lays out why well educated trainees are urgently needed. In Switzerland, space is becoming limited, meaning that residential areas have to grow inwards. This could lead to a variety of potential problems, such as traffic and noise, which need solutions. Spatial planners have competences in many areas and are able to develop comprehensive solutions for these problems.

“Spatial planners are responsible for ensuring that residential areas and traffic and energy infrastructure are arranged sensibly over as little space as possible, and that they are interconnected and sustainable,” wrote Bühlmann und Argast. As such, they play a key role in the economy and society.  ...

A Chinese development is aiming to ease traffic congestion in big cities. The new electric bus straddles two lanes, meaning that cars can move beneath it. As a result, it does not need its own lane and cannot be caught in traffic jams. According to an article in newspaper “20 Minuten”, the bus is 22 metres long, 7.8 metres wide and 4.8 metres high. It can carry a total of 300 passengers, but plans also include connecting buses to allow space for 1,200 people. 

The first prototype took to the road in Qinhuangdao in northern China last week, reported the article. Expected to commence operations this year, it will travel at around 60 kilometres per hour. The aim of the new development is to ease traffic congestion in the big Chinese cities while also reducing air pollution.    

According to Greenpeace, one electric bus alone could replace 40 ordinary buses. This could lead to a reduction in fuel of 800 tonnes annually, which equates to savings of 2,500 tonnes of C02 each year.   ...

A total of 15 international teams participated in the Smart City Hackathon. One of them represented the EU project ALMANAC (Reliable Smart Secure Internet Of Things For Smart Cities), which is being supported by the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT. The project is developing a so-called Smart City Platform to help record existing urban services, infrastructures, data assets and others resources.

Team ALMANAC adopted this approach in the Hackathon, securing second place. The team developed an air quality warning system for asthmatics. It used the Smart City Platform to access weather and traffic data, which it then collected and aggregated. With ALMANAC’s method, real-time conditions are required in order to develop new technologies for smart cities. The platform is also to collate data from waste disposal companies, energy suppliers, waterworks and telecommunications providers.        ...

The cantonal structure plan manages spatial development in the canton of Zurich in the long-term, explained the Government Council in a statement. It was adopted in March 2014 following seven years of review. During this time, contracts were awarded and legislative changes meant that, for example, adjustments needed to be made to water conservation. Changes were also made to certain projects.

The 2015 partial revision, which included the updated chapters, took only these changes into account. Held between November 2015 and February 2016, the public consultation received a total of 170 submissions. They contained suggestions and objections, which have now been incorporated into the new template. The submissions came from both authorities and private persons.          ...

KfW has agreed to grant India a loan of EUR 85 million (CHF 92 million) to build a dedicated water transport corridor in the city of Kochi, also known as Cochin. The money will go toward purchasing energy-efficient ferries, building and renovating jetties and dredging work along the waterways. The new ferries will consume 20 per cent less fuel than conventional ferries, and the water transport system will be connected to bus lines, metro stations and other forms of transport such as rickshaws and bicycle rental stations, writes KfW.

Kochi has set itself the goal of improving the quality of life of its population by investing in its infrastructure and modern services. Similar projects smart city projects exist in a total of 100 cities across India as part of Smart Cities Mission, a government urban renewal programme to make cities more citizen-friendly and sustainable.

“The expansion and energy-efficient modernisation of the water transport system will significantly improve the population’s mobility, reduce resource consumption and lower environmental pollution. Kochi is taking an important step in the direction of a smart city,” said Norber Kloppenburg, member of the executive board of the KfW Group....