Wednesday, May 23

Today, we focused on sustainable buildings. This morning, we took the bus to Villa Olimpia, a part of the city completely unlike anything we had seen so far. There were glittering glass skyscrapers, well-manicured corporate campuses, and people dressed in suits, ties, slacks. It looked like Boston's Seaport district on steroids. We met a member of Brazil's Green Building Council, who talked about their programs in Brazil and the current status of LEED certification there. Brazil ranks 4th in the world for number of buildings that were LEED certified. The building we met in was designated LEED Platinum for its green building impacts. Next, we heard from an architect at a consulting firm who had done some of the design for the building, and consults on all sorts of sustainable building projects. He talked about some of the features of the building, including an automated building management system, LED lights, environmental sensors in every room, light sensors, and a super high efficiency cooling system. Then, we got to see behind the scenes at all of the equipment that helps to make the building so successful.

It's green! It's a roof! It's a green roof!

Big ol' diesel generators in the basement.

It was interesting to see all of the equipment they use to minimize energy losses in the building. After the tour, we headed to a mall for lunch. It was in a shiny glass building, and filled with high-end stores. It was arguably nicer than any mall I've been to in the U.S. I had feijoada, a traditional Brazilian dish made of beans and pork. It was made by slaves in the 1500s, from the pork scraps that plantation owners gave them. Ironic that I was sitting in a sleek, 21st-century mall eating a dish with so much history.

Peep the Burger King Coxinha fries in the back

After lunch, we walked across the street to check out two massive towers that had just recently been constructed. We met with the owner representative who managed the building, and the same architect from earlier in the morning.

This building used many of the same technologies as the previous one we saw. It uses chilled water to cool air for the building. Water is pumped to each floor, where blowers cool air by passing it over the water. To maximize efficiency, outgoing cool air exchanges heat with incoming warm air, to reduce the temperature difference and extract all heat energy from the ventilate air.

These buildings are unique in that they have their own combined heat and power generation plant. This plant is located at the rear of the facility, and combusts natural gas to provide electricity for the building, while using the heat generated to help with the air cooling process. They use this facility to supplement power from the grid, disconnecting when electricity prices are high and creating their own power. The owner representative said that they run it about 3 hours each day. Altogether, the efficient designs reduce energy costs of the building by around 50-70%, if it hadn't included any sustainable features. 

Oh, did I mention we got to go the roof of the 31 story tower? No? Well, here's some amazing photos to show that we did. Holy moly! Sao Paolo is so big! This was the first time I really got a sense of the scale of the city. From the roof, we could see high rises stretched out as far as we could see, in almost all directions. The city is sprawling and busy, and we watched at least 5 planes touch down at the domestic airport, a helicopter buzz by, and hundreds of cars clogging the highway. It was definitely the coolest cityscape I have ever seen. 

For dinner, I went to a fish restaurant with David and Justin. We ordered a hearty spread of grilled fish, sausage, couscous, and fried shrimp balls. It was amazing. We topped it all off with a wine-soaked tapioca dessert.

Justin's face says it all