Looking for Best Practices in Greening Tourism

Greening Architecture

One of the most problematic issues that mass tourism has raised in the Mediterranean is the non sustainible model of Real estate planning. Especially in Spain, but also in other Mediterranean countries, the occupation of the coastal land has been so intensive that the governments are considering to rearrange the landscape with new and tougher regulations for real estate.
However, apart from the landscape sustainibility, there is also another way to make architecture green: we can improve the sustainaibility in the design, in the infrastructures and in the materials we use in our buildings. Energy saving, climate isolation, water savings, ecologic materials,etc.
This section is the right page to share all the information on Greening Architecture.

2 Comments

Comment by Oriol Miralbell on March 23, 2008 at 6:54pm: Through Planeta.com I got this informatino on resources fro Green
Building: A Sourcebook for Green Sustainable Building:
http://www.greenbuilder.com/sourcebook/

Comment by Oriol Miralbell on December 1, 2008 at 12:00pm: Microclimatic Schell for Buildings
A new wood-and-glass construction stands at the site of the former Mont Cenis coal mine in Herne-Sodingen. Its vast interior accommodates the Further Training Academy of the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of the Interior, a hotel, a restaurant, a library and a community centre. The temperatures inside the structure are distinctly Mediterranean and allow all the buildings there to be made of wood, which involves substantial savings compared to building in an exposed location. The glass skin of the structure reduces the energy requirements of the institutions within and therefore lowers greenhouse gas emissions.
The buildings are heated mainly using methane from the former mine. Long unused, this gas from the shafts and tunnels below is an economically viable source of energy. The microclimatic shell is also the world’s largest building-integrated solar power station, producing 750,000 kWh of energy per year - twice the requirement of the buildings inside.
What is special about this model is the combined use of coal mine gas (methane), renewable energies and heat recovery in connection with direct benefits for quality of life. This stimulates urban and economic development in the region, and the concept can also be easily transferred to similar locations.
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