Teaching teachers - capacity building for education for sustainable development

The AZB has been offering courses to international participants on the subject of energy efficiency since 2004. Last week the AZB hosted a group of 12 construction trainers from the UK, who have come here to Hamburg to improve their knowledge of sustainable construction methods. The aim of the course is to teach skills and knowledge that can easily be passed on in their lessons. The AZB has worked in cooperation with EUCONTACT Ltd, to provide this opportunity with funding from the European Union under the Leonardo da Vinci Lifelong Learning Programme (VETPRO strand).

The course started with an introduction and a tour around the AZB’s facilities. I think this was of particular interest to the visitors as construction training is not set up in the same way in the UK. On the whole, German construction apprentices undertake a 3-part apprenticeship with a construction company; 1 part theory at vocational school, 1 part practical sessions (at AZB) and 1 part within a construction company.

The second day of the course kicked off with an introduction to the passive house concept – something, which we here at the AZB consider to be a possible future house standard in terms of sustainable and energy saving construction. AZB works with the project Build with CaRe to promote energy efficient building and is developing a number of learning resources to achieve this knowledge transfer.

The achievement of the PassivHaus standard (and energy efficient building) in its nature exemplifies some of the problems that may exist in the current level of workmanship in the construction industry. Passive houses require a high level of accuracy – e.g. in order to make them completely air-tight. This means that there is no room for the “that’ll do” attitude which often exists among many construction workers.

The challenge facing the construction teachers now is- how to change this attitude? -especially when it exists among so many of the employers from whom current trainees are learning new skills?

The morning closed with a discussion about how to change attitudes among the trainees. The discussion highlighted some of the problems experienced in the UK system:

• Some construction trainees are paid to go to college, which has led to some students being there just for this payment rather than a real desire to learn.


• The lack of promotion of the building trade as an important career within schools leads to more and more people seeing it as one of the options for pupils if school grades are bad, rather than an option also for those with higher grades.


• The mentality of ‘getting the job done as quickly as possible’ rather than to the best quality possible.
  
  The overall image of the construction industry needs to change so that it is seen as a career worthy of respect. Perhaps when this capacity exists, construction trainees will be more able to recognise the positive impact they could have through their work in sustainable building, and take more pride in their work.
  
  The rest of the week’s course involved a mixture of theoretical presentations and practical sessions which provided the opportunity for an exchange of knowledge and further discussions around more specific, task-related topics. This ‘learning through doing’ approach is particularly effective for the transfer of knowledge.
  
  This newly-gained knowledge will be taken back to the UK and transferred again to trainees. Ideally, it could be transferred further from trainees to their future employers and from the employers to the other employees and so on and so on……
  
  To find out more about the courses run by the AZB, please contact Matthias Wurtzel
  email: matthias.wurtzel@azb-hamburg.de

Low awareness of low energy housing

One of the two English women at the AZB for work experience relating to sustainable building practices has studied architecture.

The terms 'passive house', 'low energy house' and 'energy plus house' meant something to her before she came to the AZB. I am the second person and I hadn't heard of these concepts. This is despite my reading the two 'quality' English newspapers each weekend, being engaged in eco-campaigning work and, I thought, generally being aware and receptive to topics relating to sustainability.

I felt it would therefore be a useful exercise to ask 10 of my friends in England, two questions:

a) have you heard the terms 'passive house', 'low energy house', and 'energy plus house'?
b) can you explain them?

The receipients were chosen solely on the basis of being a friend. None is an architect or to my knowledge has studied architecture or lives with someone who is qualified in this field. Several are actively engaged in promoting green issues, most are graduates and some have completed, or are engaged in, further study.

Mr Jens Schwarz, the Co-ordinator of the RCE Hamburg and Region, feels the exercise is sufficiently interesting to roll it out among the trainees who come to the AZB.

Of the 10 emails I sent, one person had heard the term passive house but only that person said they could explain it. Three people had heard the term low energy house of whom two responded that they could explain it. No-one had heard the term energy plus house.

People living, working or studying in, Hamburg or visitors to this city (perhaps for the Third European Fair on Education for Sustainable Development which takes place at the AZB this week, ie Wednesday 28 to Friday 30 October 2009) or for the Christmas Markets (23 November to 23 December 2009), have a chance to find out what an energy plus house is.

Next to Hamburg's main rail station an energy plus house has been set up. It will be there until 25 January 2010. See ZEBAU GmbH for details and related events.

Everything in Moderation(skoffer) for the Fair

The countdown to the Third European Fair on Education for Sustainable Development (28-30 October 2009) began many months ago.

But production has cranked up a level here at the AZB which is hosting it and now even I've been conscripted. While others are doing clever things with graphics packages to illustrate polysyllabic phrases I can't get my tongue, let alone my brain round, I've been introduced to the delight that is a 'Moderationskoffer'.

The site we use for online translation is Leo. Look up 'Moderationskoffer' and you get the wonderful phrase 'facilitator's toolkit'. Open the box itself and it's a box of handicraft treats... stickers in a range of colours, 2 sizes of circular card in everything from yellow to shocking pink, scissors, pin tacks in primary colours.

As befits the daughter of an erstwhile infant school teacher, I have been plundering the rainbow coloured stationery supplies and sticking and cutting, plus working my way through the fonts in Word that most resemble handwriting. Look out for my contribution to the Fair and be sure to award me a gold star for my efforts.

Anyone for tea? Just give me a bike and half an hour...

Cycling shorts, suitable attire for a trip to a shopping centre? And a well-known one at that.

In fact, Lycra and fingerless mitts were just the outfit, though you could also have made a case for wearing flippers, a mask and a snorkel.

It's Global Climate Week and between Saturday 19 and Saturday 26 September 2009 each of the 5 floors of Hamburg's Europa Passage has a climate-related theme.

There's the future level, the research level, the information level and the technology level, each with exhibitions and hands on (or, in one case, feet on) activities aimed at alerting visitors to their impact on the environment. There was everything from fabulous photos and the results of research on a reef in Belize to suggestions for homeowners on how they could save money.

I was headed for the fourth floor - the campaigns level - and the stand of the Hamburg Verbraucherzentrale (Consumers' Centre). As a cycle campaigner (a member of the London Cycling Campaign almost continuously since 1984 and a very active member of its voluntary offshoots Lambeth Cyclists and Southwark Cyclists) the mention of cycling in the overview of the week's events had caught my eye...

Energy bike

Your chance to participate: How hard do you need to pedal to make a cup of water hot enough to brew coffee? A climate and energy consultant advises.

("Energie Fahrrad

Mitmachaktion: Wie stark muss man für eine heisse Tasse Kaffee in die Pedale Treten - Klima und Energieberater informieren")

This experience taught me (the hard way!) what Jens Schwarz, co-ordinator of RCE Hamburg und Region, has been saying since I started this work experience placement - that lessons that teach people to adapt their behavour to be more sustainable need not take place in the classroom.

I consider my carbon footprint to be very small but I don't merit a halo made out of wood from a sustainable forest, or didn't, because I had a very bad habit.

Despite the pleas and finger-pointing, in the face of reminders and ridicule, I always filled the kettle even when I was only making a cup of tea for myself. Until 1pm on Tuesday 22 September 2009, that was.

On that day I got onto a stationary bike and in full view of visitors coming up or going down the escalator in the upmarket shopping centre, pedalled for 32 minutes.

This was the time it took me to raise the temperature of one mug of water in a kettle from the 21 degrees it was when I started to the 70 degrees Ms Andrea Grimm from the Consumers' Centre said would make a decent cup of instant coffee.

When I got off the wretched machine, though, coffee was the last thing I wanted. I had my eye on the ice cream of the man sitting watching my efforts.

So, Dave, you can now trust me to use your kettle. Though, if you don't mind I'll plug it into the mains rather than use your exercise bike to heat the water.

Walking through walls

Today "Halle H" (a huge hanger-like space) in the AZB Hamburg rang with the sounds of the scratching of pens on paper and the clicking open and closed of wooden rules.

Twenty-four final year bricklaying students (above, image courtesy of Marco Bleck) were sketching six of the reconstructions housed in the building and then measuring the 'before' and 'after' refurbishment dimensions.

Halle H looks like a cross between an adventure playground (albeit with a roof, a tile floor and plaster walls) and the premises of the builder and seller of upmarket wendy houses.

It contains examples of sections of seven buildings all in the ratio 1:1 and all built by AZB Hamburg students. The collection includes five houses - each typical of the buildings to be found in Hamburg. There is one each from 1900, 1950s-60s, 1970-80s, plus two modern buildings - one built to Passivhousestandard and the other a timber frame low energy home, and two commercial properties - one from the 1900s and the other of the 'nothing but glass' sort which are increasingly (and depressingly) so prevalent in my part of London (north Southwark) and The City. The glass and metal cube belongs to the Zentrum für zukunftsorientiertes Bauen (the Centre for Future Oriented Construction).

The five 'historic' models show the materials, how much space is required to renovate exisiting properties to meet the latest standards of insulation set by the German goverment, and, no less critically, how to avoid thermal bridges.

I gatecrashed the third year students' tuition session with the retrospective permission of teachers Herr Hoffmann and Herr Palm from the Staatliche Gewerbeschule Bautechnik G19 (Hamburg Vocational School for Building Crafts G19) to experience how the exhibits could be used as a teaching resource.

Herr Palm explained that before the existence of Halle H (it was officially opened in summer 2007) students had to use traditional teaching materials, ie textbooks, to learn the theory of refurbishing the city's buildings.

Once they realised what was required of them the students seemed to enjoy the task. You can walk into the exhibits and climb stairs, enjoy the 'view' from the second storey, the roof terrace or the balcony. Perhaps the architects behind the choice of room were fans of Big Brother as one of the demonstration buildings comprises a bathroom, another the toilet cubicle!

Herr Hoffmann explained that he has long been concerned about the environment and when he built his home he aimed for sustainability and to reduce his carbon footprint. With a smile he added that as that was in the 1970s there were things he would do differently if he were building it now as knowledge and materials have moved on.

He explained that although it was unlikely the students would be able to influence a developer or the house owner to build a passive or low energy house, it was important to provide them with the knowledge of why such designs are needed. This is because when qualified they might find themselves in a situation where they are able to make suggestions but at the very least they would be equipped with the techniques when called on to build such a design.

Japanese university seeks advice on setting up an RCE

The visitors to the AZB Hamburg on Thursday 10 September had come from further afield than those earlier in the week. Yoichi Kabutan (above left with one of his students of German) is professor in the Faculty of Arts at Shinshu University in Matsumoto. He came to the AZB Hamburg to ask Jens Schwarz (right, in front of a map of the location of RCEs around the world) about how to set up an RCE.

Professor Kabutan explained that the standard for environmental mangement system best known in Japan was the international ISO 140001. The technical department of his university had received this in 2001, while the campus, on which his faculty is one of five, had achieved that standard in 2007. He had heard about "BNE" (Bildung für Nachhaltige Entwicklung - education for sustainable development) during visits to German universities.

Over tea and biscuits Jens Schwarz explained how the RCE Hamburg and Region had come about and how it worked. He counselled Professor Kabutan to think locally and be patient.

Professor Kabutan was also interested in the AZB Hamburg and Mr Schwarz explained that the college taught not only those that "had" to receive education (young people) but also teachers. He talked the visitors through the college's belief that although there was political pressure to reduce greenhouse emissions in Hamburg and that the construction industry had an important part to play, it was important for an individual to recognise his or her own responsibility in relation to climate change and "to think beyond money", rather to ask what s/he could do for the global good.




The visitors brought with them gifts (above) for their hosts.

Tour of architect's own passive house home

Architects Nisse Gerster (in red shirt, above) and Robert Heinicke (in white) explained the technology involved in constructing a building to passive house standard to visitors from the AZB Hamburg and the latter's Build with CaRe guests from Scotland.

The tour started at the offices of the Heinicke Architekturbüro where Mr Gerster and Mr Heinicke talked their visitors through the models they have on display of wall insulating materials, three layer glass windows and how to avoid thermal bridges when installing a front door.

From the architects' office it was just a short walk to Mr Gerster's home.

The immediate clue that this was not a house like any other was the lack of a chimney. A second sign was those three panes of glass in every window. The front door was attractive but extraordinarily heavy to push open. For someone trying to explain the concept of a paasive house to a potential buyer, the security afforded by the windows and the doors would be good selling point.

As Mr Gerster is still working on his home, visitors were able to see some of the layers involved in insulating the property. Some people are concerned about potential noise associated with ventilation that is an essential component of a passive house. Mr Gerster turned up the air exchanger to full capacity to demonstrate that it was inaudible even when set to maximum.

Three hundred metres of piping in the ground underneath the house help to keep the Gerster family warm in winter and cool in summer.

Internally, the layout is open plan with much natural (and untreated) wood. However, before the next winter arrives Mr Gerster will be installing safety glass between the sitting room and the hallway; he has found that when the front door is opened in cooler weather the temperature of his home drops noticeably.

All the visitors appreciated the time both architects set aside for answering questions and Mr Gerster's opening his home for inspection.