Green Healthy Places

Optimized Indoor Air Quality Software for Smart Buildings - SALLY R

Welcome to episode 45 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we discuss the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate today. I’m your host, Matt Morley, Founder of Biofilico Healthy Buildings and this episode I’m in Sweden talking to Fredrik Tunberg, CEO of Sally R, a cloud-based intelligent ventilation solution that uses algorithms to optimize indoor air quality while reducing overall energy consumption related to the HVAC system.

We discuss how buildings have traditionally had to make guesstimates about how much ventilation they will need, and then applies a blanket approach throughout the day, throughout the building, whereas the latest technology, sensors and IOT enabled software completely changes the game, opening up opportunities for far more tailored, efficient and cost effective solutions. Which is essentially what Sally R do. 

As Fredrik points out, high quality indoor air does not need to cost more, quite the opposite in fact, once you can see the air in a building and map that against usage data, and feedback from a network of air quality monitors, it’s a complete game changer that also saves on energy use in the process. 

Finally, they are also getting into Carbon capture in indoor farms, but I’ll Fredrik explain that part.

Welcome to episode 44 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we explore the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate. This time around we have more of a social equity focus as we're talking to Rashiq Fataar, the Founding Director of Our Future Cities in South Africa. 

Rashiq works across disciplines, engaging with city planners, designers, researchers and anthropologists in the quest for promoting more sustainable and inclusive cities not just in South Africa where they are based, but increasingly around the African continent as a whole.

Our conversation covers the weight of South Africa's history of top-down oppression and how that impacted urban development during apartheid, the kind of tactical urban intervention that can turn a handful of parking bays into a parklet, the challenges of developing enough affordable housing, how concerns over safety can be baked into new precinct development plans from the start, examples of successful downtown regeneration in Durban by developers Urban Lime, and the student accommodation opportunity in neglected 1960s era buildings in central Cape Town and Durban in particular.

Rashiq is erudite, determined and fighting on the front line of city development so here he is.

GUEST / RASHIQ FATAAR

• Our Future Cities
• Rashiq Fataar / LinkedIn
• Urban Lime SA

HOST / MATT MORLEY

• www.mattmorley.net
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

Welcome to episode 43 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast, brought to you by Biofilico healthy buildings & interiors.

In this episode I’m chatting to Danielle Trofe, a biodesigner with her own studio in New York who also lectures in biomimicry for The Pratt Institute and Parsons New School.

Danielle’s MushLume collection of lampshades made from organically grown mushroom mycelium and hemp have featured in the seriously cool, eco-luxury 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge amongst other projects and she is a leading proponent of biofabrication - that is using naturally grown materials in product design.

Our conversation covers all of these ‘bio’ terms that may understandably be new for many of you, we also look into the full Life Cycle impact of a design product from production through to end of life, we discuss how biophilic design can when delivered poorly equate to a largely superficial greenwashing of the interior design process, and we introduce the topic of green chemistry, that is research and development around new bio-based materials that designers such s Danielle can then introduce into  future product development.

GUEST / DANIELLE TROFE / BIODESIGNER

• https://danielletrofe.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielletrofe
• https://twitter.com/DanielleTrofe

HOST / MATT MORLEY / WELLBEING CHAMPION

• https://biofilico.com/
• https://www.mattmorley.net/

GUEST / JONSARA RUTH / HEALTHY MATERIALS LAB

• https://healthymaterialslab.org/
• https://healthymaterialslab.org/learning-hub/e-learning-online-certificate-program
• https://healthymaterialslab.org/learning-hub/the-affordable-housing-guide-program
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/healthy-materials-lab/
• https://www.facebook.com/healthymaterialslab/
• https://www.instagram.com/healthymaterialslab/
• https://www.saltylabs.us/
• The New Coal - Plastics & Climate Change, by Beyond Plastics

HOST / MATT MORLEY / WELLBEING CHAMPION

• https://biofilico.com/
• https://biofit.io/ 
• https://www.mattmorley.net/ 
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattmorleylux/

Conversation highlights

• It doesn’t feel right that with we have so little opportunity to connect with nature here given the huge percentage of our lives we spend in dense urban centers.
• Green roofs clean and cool the air, sequester carbon and provide rooftop habitats for birds, bees, bats, butterflies, and much more. 
• Farm-to-table is great but roof-to-table is even better
• Green roofs perform multiple functions with societal, environmental, building operations, and mental health benefits, all simultaneously. 
• Building owners should be thinking of their rooftops as buckets instead of lids, because there's money falling out of the sky.
• Solar panels lose operating efficiency when the ambient air around them gets too hot but Plants cool the air around them through through evapotranspiration so when you install solar panels directly on top of green roofing, the plants cool the air underneath the solar panels and help them to produce more electricity

GUEST / ALAN BURCHELL / PRINCIPAL, URBANSTRONG

• https://urbanstrong.com/
• LinkedIn
• Insta
• Facebook
• Book reference: Nature's Best Hope
• Brooklyn Grange Farm

HOST / MATT MORLEY / WELLBEING CHAMPION

• https://biofilico.com/    
• https://biofit.io/ 
• https://www.mattmorley.net/ 

GUEST / LIAM BATES / CEO OF KAITERRA

• www.kaiterra.com/
• Better Building Blog
• www.linkedin.com/company/kaiterra/

HOST / MATT MORLEY / WELLBEING CHAMPION

• https://biofilico.com/ 
• LinkedIn
• www.mattmorley.net/
• https://biofit.io/ 

GUEST / LILY TURNER / URBANSTRONG NYC

• https://urbanstrong.com/
• LinkedIn
• Insta
• Facebook

HOST / MATT MORLEY / WELLBEING CHAMPION

• https://www.mattmorley.net/
• https://biofilico.com/ 
• LinkedIn
• Insta

Conversation highlights:

• Everything is interconnected. So at the end, the relationships between plants, insects, and even humans, are crucial for our work, especially in an urban surrounding.
• We created a garden of pollinators that allows insects to gather and colonize.
• When we see butterflies in the neighborhood it means that we are recovering, and those vegetation communities are working well. It's like a biodiversity parameter for a healthy environment.
• In response to climate change, landscape architects have to design with nature, not against it.
• We did a study of the bird species of the area and their migration behavior then designed a rooftop with plant communities suitable for those nesting birds.
• Nature is complex, vivid, random, diverse...
• With our designs we want to bring back wild, uncontrolled nature into our cities - it’s much better for the soul.

GUEST / JORDI BARRI / BARRI STUDIO BARCELONA

• https://barristudio.com/ 
• https://www.instagram.com/barri.studio/ 

HOST / MATT MORLEY / WELLBEING CHAMPION

• https://www.mattmorley.net/
• https://biofilico.com/
• https://biofit.io/ 

GUEST / JOHANNES SCHMIDT

• https://buildingbiology.com/
• https://buildingbiology.com/building-biology-course/
• https://www.baubiologie.de/downloads/25principles.pdf

HOST / MATT MORLEY

• https://biofilico.com/
• https://biofit.io/
• https://www.mattmorley.net/

CONVERSATION HIGHLIGHTS

• The roots of healthy buildings and building biology are here in Germany
• If you study medicine, you learn about illnesses but not about sickness caused by spending time in a building
• In any house, the most important place from our perspective is the bedroom
• We have drastically changed the way we live over the last few generations. Just 100 years ago, we spent much more time outdoors.
• We don't want to say we have to go back to the Stone Ages. I'm using a computer, I use electricity, in the institute we simply use it in a more efficient, less harmful way.
• We should use our bodies as a tool for movement in a natural environment every day. 

GUEST / JAMES NASH / ACTIVE TRAVEL EXPERT

• https://activetravelscore.com/
• https://www.bikedocksolutions.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/activescore/

HOST MATT MORLEY / WELLBEING CHAMPION

• Biofit wellness concepts
• Biofilico healthy buildings
• Linkedin