Hasta La Ideas

Just learned about this: Traditional hatters used a pair of tools called a conformer and a formillion to ensure hats perfectly fit their clients.

The conformer captures the client’s head measurements in a math-free way, marking a paper template. That template is then used to position a series of dies in the formillion. The hat is then placed over the formillion and steamed into shape:

Here’s the longer version, with narration:

Incredibly clever!

Three-time Le Mans winner Andre Lotterer on racing and the automotive industry as a whole

At the TAG Heuer boutique on Fifth Ave, mere days before the Formula E Grand Prix is set to take the racing world’s main stage in Red Hook, Brooklyn, pedestrians would be forgiven any confusion over the race cars up and down the street. Normally only seen racing through Monaco for the Grand Prix or at Le Mans, these cars are in NYC gearing up for what is set to guide the future of the sport and the automotive industry as a whole: Formula E.

The E (of course, short for electric) represents the shift that the auto world has undertaken in recent years. While it has become almost commonplace to see Teslas and other major auto manufacturers promoting their electric, rechargeable vehicles, only recently have we begun to see where a lot of those innovations are derived from and how some of that technology is being used to revolutionize the racing industry and the world of consumer automotive.

With the inaugural season in 2014, Formula E might be in its infancy but its effects are being felt—leading many to wonder if these high-performance race cars can turn green, perhaps the same will be possible with every consumer car in the future.

Teams like Porsche and TAG Heuer’s have been at the forefront of the racing pack to create vehicles that are as precise as they are fast, pushing their technological limits further with every race. As Jamie Reigle (the CEO of the pioneering electric car race) tells us, “Porsche is a very premium brand with a track record in motorsport. The DNA of the company is all about racing and all about success and having really high standards, and that’s fantastic for us as a championship—it raises the bar and the standards for everyone. We believe in a continuation of a very long history in motorsport of innovation and progress. The beauty of motorsport is the pinnacle of human endeavor in a sense that these fantastic drivers, who are the best at what they do, and the engineering and science that goes into developing cars.”

Prior to the race in Red Hook, we spoke with race car driver and three-time Le Mans winner, German-Belgian Andre Lotterer (currently racing for TAG Heuer Porsche) about the future of the sport and the industry.

As we’re at the TAG Heuer boutique getting ready for Formula E, can you tell us where you see the future of the sport going?

Motorsport before was more about the racing, the sport, but now we’ve added the sustainability aspect and represent the race of the future with electro-mobility. As you know, we race electrically and it’s going very well. We have a lot of manufacturers that are in this series and use it as a platform. The technology that we are pushing through racing is passing some really tough tests, so it’s very relevant for the automobile industry to have better range and more efficient cars.And we’re introducing the Gen3, the next generation of Formula E car, and there will be new features—more of a smaller battery and fast charging, which I think is very important for everyone out there with their road cars.

We go to different cities, try to find new locations to inspire people to move to electric cars and to understand that we can race with electric cars, meaning that it’s a proven technology and therefore makes a better and cleaner world.

Can you tell us the difference between when you are racing on streets for Formula E and on tracks for the other races? Does the car have to be adapted to street versus to a track?

Formula E brings the race to the people, to the cities, and the chairmanship is trying to find new locations with governments and new cities. It’s a big difference because you have to imagine when you race in the city, wherever you can, the asphalt and the road conditions are not as good as a permanent racetrack where it’s a perfect track with runoffs. It’s a big difference and it’s more challenging for drivers to race in cities. But the cars are adapted for it. We have groove tires like normal race cars on permanent tracks have slicks. And we have these tires that allow us to race with all weather, if it rains or not. But they work very well for city tracks, and I think that the car has a bit more suspension travel so we can drive over bumpier tracks. It is adaptive.

Is there any technology from the electric cars that you think we might see migrating to commercial vehicles? 

I think we are the best example at Porsche because we are under the same roof as a factory team in the development center, and we have the Taycan as a high-performance electric sports car. We share a lot of information with the drivetrain, the way we calculate efficiencies. And us with the race car, we really go to the limit with the powertrain and the inverter and software and learn a lot of things that are put in our database and transferred to the Taycan or the future electric cars. It’s definitely a proving ground and especially at Porsche, because it’s a sports car brand. So every Porsche has performance in it and is built for the track as well.

What’s your favorite thing about driving electric race cars, and where in the world has it been the best to race them?

I think it’s Formula E in general; that we bring the races to the cities. We would never be able to race in New York or in the heart of Paris or in Rome or in Santiago. I think that it’s a privilege to be involved in, and link our sport with, sustainability and a cleaner world—which was very important for Motorsport to do. That is the aspect that I like most… but also racing. I really enjoy racing Formula E because the challenge is super-high, to race on city tracks between walls. Even though we might have less power than the cars in Formula 1, it’s still fun and exciting because we don’t need so much power on the city tracks. Everything is narrow. So we are at the end of a boulevard at 230-240 kilometers per hour, super-fast. I always say it’s like riding your bicycle inside your apartment—you don’t need to go very fast to get in trouble, and it’s very challenging.

Images courtesy of TAG Heuer/Porsche

Basé à Londres et dans le nord de l’Angleterre, Thomas Duffield est photographe et chercheur. Il termine actuellement un doctorat à l’université de Huddersfield. Ayant grandi dans une petite ferme à la périphérie de Leeds, la pratique de Thomas se penche sur sa propre expérience familiale. Abordant les aspects les moins discutés de la vie familiale, son travail photographique navigue sur un terrain de fragilité hthumaine partagée. Trouvant la force en réconciliant nos vulnérabilités, il célèbre à la fois la beauté et la tendresse de la vie de famille. Dans sa série « The whole house is shaking », il revisite sa propre expérience.

Les personnes photographiées dans cette série sont des membres de sa famille et les images ont été prises dans la petite ferme où il a grandi dans le nord de l’Angleterre. « Cachée à ma sœur et à moi en grandissant, la série aborde la lutte de mon père contre la dépendance à l’héroïne. Avec des portraits de ma mère, de ma sœur et de mon grand-père, la série se tourne vers les membres de ma famille proche comme moyen d’explorer les réverbérations émotionnelles qui découlent de ce chapitre difficile de notre histoire familiale« , explique-t-il. Pour ce faire, il s’est inspiré des travaux photographiques qui abordent le thème de la famille. Des œuvres telles que Pictures From Home de Larry Sultans ou Ray’s A Laugh de Richard Billingham. « L’expérience de ce travail m’a rassuré sur le fait que le sujet de la famille est non seulement un domaine légitime à explorer, mais aussi un domaine riche et stimulant. La nature performative des portraits d’Alessandra Sanguinetti m’a également marqué, car j’ai commencé à faire des allers-retours entre l’utilisation de photographies mises en scène et observées dans mon approche« , conclut-il.

Pour en savoir plus, rendez-vous sur son site internet  ou son  compte Instagram 

Google continues to emit greenhouse gases despite claiming to be carbon neutral, Dezeen has learned.

The tech giant, which says it has been carbon neutral since 2007 and claims to have eliminated its entire carbon legacy, has emitted around 20 million tonnes of carbon in that period.

Yet it has adopted a definition of carbon neutrality that allows it to claim its carbon footprint is zero while remaining an ongoing contributor to atmospheric carbon.

“Carbon neutrality still allows you to emit”

“Our legacy on carbon dates back to 2007 when we were the first major company to achieve carbon neutrality, and that was just nine years after we were founded,” said Robin Bass, real estate and workplace services sustainability programs lead at Google.

“We are carbon neutral in terms of purchasing renewable energy to offset all of our consumption and eliminating our legacy carbon, which is also part of our strategy.”

However, Bass admitted that the approach meant that the company continues to emit CO2 and that its offsetting programme does not compensate for its emissions by removing carbon from the atmosphere.

“Carbon neutrality still allows for carbon emissions,” she told Dezeen. “People are using a lot of different terms and some of them mean different things.

“The way that I think about it is that carbon neutrality still allows you to emit,” she continued. “You can still be producing carbon, you can still be connected to a grid that is burning coal or some fossil fuel.”

“And as long as you offset that by purchasing renewable energy somewhere, you can still achieve carbon neutrality.”

Offsetting is a “fallacy”

Google’s stance aligns with the international PAS 2060 standard for carbon neutrality. This allows companies to claim they are carbon neutral if they use offsets or carbon credits.

However, offsets that prevent additional CO2 from reaching the atmosphere, for example by buying renewable power or capturing emissions from factories, do not negate the emissions that have already been made.

Unlike net-zero, which is a far more demanding standard that has become the global benchmark for decarbonisation, carbon neutrality allows companies to continue emitting more CO2 than they remove from the atmosphere.

Offsets are becoming increasingly controversial. “I call it the fallacy of the offset,” sustainable design guru William McDonough told Dezeen in an interview last month.

“If somebody says, oh, I’ve got this much renewable power and I’m gonna offset my carbon emissions, you have to be very careful,” McDonough said. “That would logically then say that if you doubled your renewables, you could double your carbon and still be net-zero.”

“That doesn’t make any sense at all, because the atmosphere absorbs twice as much carbon. Renewables don’t equal to [removing] carbon.”

True net-zero “requires carbon removal”

Speaking to Dezeen this week, Taylor Francis of decarbonisation platform Watershed said that net-zero emissions can only be achieved by removing carbon from the atmosphere.

“We strongly believe that true net-zero requires carbon removal, which is taking carbon out of the atmosphere, rather than traditional offsets, which involve paying someone else not to emit carbon into the atmosphere,” he said.

Google says it became carbon neutral in 2007. In September last year, CEO Sundar Pichai announced that the firm had eliminated its carbon legacy dating back to its foundation in 1998.

“As of today, we have eliminated Google’s entire carbon legacy (covering all our operational emissions before we became carbon neutral in 2007) through the purchase of high-quality carbon offsets,” he stated in a keynote address.

“This means that Google’s lifetime net carbon footprint is now zero.”

Offsets make emissions “lower than they would have been”

However, a white paper outlining Google’s carbon offsets explains that these merely make emissions “lower than they would have been” rather than bringing them to zero.

“At Google, we reduce our carbon footprint through efficiency improvements, generating on-site solar power and purchasing green power,” the white paper states.

“To bring our remaining footprint to zero, we buy carbon offsets. A carbon offset is an investment in an activity that reduces carbon emissions. The reduction in carbon emissions is represented by a carbon credit.”

“The credit, usually verified by a third party, signifies that greenhouse gas emissions are lower than they would have been had no one invested in the offset.”

Google invests in offsets that burn captured methane

Google uses offsets that include capturing methane from landfill sites and agricultural sites. The methane is “captured and used or burned”. It also works with forestry projects that “protect forests from destruction and degradation or […] enhance and develop new ones”.

The white paper states that since 2007, Google has “partnered with more than 40 carbon offset projects to offset more than 20 million tCO2e emissions”.

This means that it must have emitted an equivalent amount – 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent – over the same period.

Bass works on the sustainability aspects of new Google buildings including the emerging campus at Mountain View in California, which has been designed by Bjarke Ingels Group and Thomas Heatherwick.

“We have a strategy to look for and innovate with manufacturers on lower-carbon options [for building materials],” she said, adding that in terms of lowering the embodied carbon of Google buildings, “we’re absolutely tracking all of that”.

“We’ve looked at the best-case scenario for mass timber. We will still use concrete and steel so we’re really driving innovation on both of those materials, which have a very big [carbon] footprint. There’s a lot of really exciting technology coming out for both of those products.”

Mountain View campus topped with “dragonscale” solar panels

The giant Mountain View building will generate some of its power from “dragonscale” solar panels on its roof while geothermal pilings will help heat and cool the building.

Pichai discussed the project in another keynote in May this year when he said the project was part of Google’s “moonshot” drive to achieve “24/7 carbon-free energy” by 2030.

“When completed, these buildings will feature a first-of-its-kind dragonscale solar skin, equipped with 90,000 silver solar panels and the capacity to generate nearly 7 megawatts,” he said.

“They will house the largest geothermal pile system in North America to help heat buildings in the winter and cool them in the summer. It’s been amazing to see it come to life.”

However, Bass was unable to say what percentage of the building’s power would be generated by the solar and geothermal systems.

In order to meet the objectives of the 2015 Paris Agreement and keep global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels, the global economy needs to halve emissions by 2030 and become net-zero by 2050.

Google aims to reduce Scope 3 emissions by 50 per cent this year

Last month, Google signed up to the United Nations’ Race to Zero campaign, which helps companies align their strategies with the Paris goals and achieve net-zero emissions.

Net-zero involves eliminating “Scope 3” emissions, which are emissions generated by a company’s supply chain, including embodied carbon emissions caused by the construction of new buildings as well as emissions caused by customers using a company’s products. These are the hardest emissions to eliminate.

“We will set a science-based target to reduce our Scope 3 emissions by at least 50 per cent later this year, in line with the guidance from UN’s Race to Zero campaign and Exponential Roadmap Initiative,” Google told Dezeen.

The United Nations’ Race to Zero campaign defines net-zero as meaning no carbon is added to the atmosphere either directly or indirectly over the entire lifecycle, which includes materials used in a project and emissions caused by customers using a product, service or building.

“There’s always more work to do”

Where emissions cannot be eliminated, they can be offset using carbon removal schemes that directly capture carbon from the atmosphere, for example via biomass or direct air capture technology. Offsetting schemes that reduce or defer emissions do not count, making Google’s offsets incompatible with the Race to Zero.

“There’s a ton of complexity in what makes something carbon-neutral or carbon-free,” Bass said. “As a company, we’re addressing it across all of our product areas, and certainly within the REWS [real estate and workplace services] portfolio as well.”

“We offset all of our electricity consumption every year and have achieved that since 2017,” she added. “Our really big goal is to work with local energy grids by doing things like the dragonscale solar and the geothermal and partnering with them on how we help them transition to cleaner energy supplies as well so that all of our buildings can plug into a clean grid.”

“There’s always more work to do,” she added. “If anyone out there is claiming that they’re 100 per cent carbon-free, red flags should be going up everywhere.”

Carbon revolution

This article is part of Dezeen’s carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.

The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

The post Carbon neutrality “still allows for carbon emissions” says Google sustainability lead appeared first on Dezeen.

Woven from the same premium full-grain leather used for their duffle bags and personal accessories, WP Standard’s new wine tote can accommodate two bottles—and comes complete with an affixed corkscrew pouch (which the brand can monogram). It’s a handsome, high-quality addition to any picnic ensemble.