The Solar Shingle

The Dow Chemical Co. has developed a new roof shingle that doubles as a solar panel. The shingles, which can be incorporated into rooftops alongside traditional asphalt shingles, use low-cost thin-film cells of copper indium gallium diselenide. While Dow expects to profit greatly from the Powerhouse Solar Shingle — the company predicts it will bring in as much as $10 billion in revenue by 2020 — there will be significant benefits for consumers too. The innovative shingle is expected to cost 10% to 15% less than traditional solar panels and will be cheaper and quicker to install.

Read more here at TIME

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Leading by example- Ark Hotel Construction shows How Prefabrication can Change the Face of Construction Industry

This video titled "Ark Hotel Construction time lapse building 15 storeys in 2 days" surfaced only last month on the internet and it was seen more than 3.8 million times on Youtube alone. And there is a reason for that. It took just six days to build the Ark Hotel in Changsha, China. According to the video, no stationary cranes were used in construction and there wasn't single injury among the site's workers. The 15-story sustainable hotel already had its foundation but using pre-fabricated columns and modules as well as modern construction techniques, construction workers took just 46 hours to finish the main structural components and another 90 hours to finish the building enclosure. Construction Details: Level 9 Earthquake Resistance: diagonal bracing structure, light weight, steel construction, passed level 9 earthquake resistance testing 6x Less Material : even though the construction materials are much lighter(250kg/m2) than the traditional materials(over 1500kg/...

World's Tallest Building Sky City-1 Changsha China and BIM, Lean and Green - What might be coming?

I feel fortunate to be living in an era when there are Computers, iPhones, iPads, Androids, Google Glasses, Google Earth, Facebook, Twitter and Broad Sustainable Construction. All but the last one out of my list are pretty obvious and I do not feel explaining why they are awesome. However, I feel like talking a lot about Broad Sustainable Construction, a company which is based out of China and doing miracle after miracle and revolutionizing what world calls development. As a matter of fact, China is doing great with several other things too. But this blog won’t be talking about that. At this very moment (January 5 th 2013) Broad Sustainable Construction is building world’s tallest building – Sky City –1, which is almost a kilometer high (838 m/2749 ft to be precise) with 220 floors. They are set to complete the construction of this building within 90 days. This is remarkable and revolutionary. They claim to prefabricate 95% of building off site. Guess what, whole world is t...

Data Driven Design and Construction - Answers to Randy's questions

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BIM + Lean + Green

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