Yule Heibel's Library tagged green_buildings →  View Popular, Search in Google

This sounds like a great idea, except (as a commenter already points out) the bit about replacing windows. No, don't do it, especially not with vinyl window garbage!
QUOTE
Living City Block’s basic concept is simple. Small buildings rarely have the resources to do a serious retrofit. For most of them, the idea is cost-prohibitive. But what if you combined a small building with 10 more like it? If all of those building owners got together to order high-efficiency water heaters in bulk, or to collectively replace one-thousand windows, could they achieve the kind of economies of scale that the Empire State Building gets?

This sounds feasible, and Riley is sure the idea will work. But he's talking about creating a kind of building owners’ association that has never been modeled before, one in which neighbors who otherwise have very little in common might make common decisions about pooling their trash pick-up, paying their utility bills, and renovating their properties.
UNQUOTE

green_buildings green_strategies urban_energy atlantic_cities retrofit

"State of the art integrated food production": so cool!
QUOTE
The Plant is a three-story aquaponic farm in Chicago’s Back of the Yards Park, a neighborhood that inspired Upton Sinclair’s critical look at the meat-packing industry (among other things) in The Jungle. But this story’s far from dystopian, as an exciting new project is transforming a former meat-packing plant into a producer of fresh produce and new businesses.
UNQUOTE

urban_agriculture aquaponics green_buildings chicago smartplanet

Chad and Courtney Ludeman build LEED Platinum homes for ~$300K sales price. This is great, but consider building 3-BDR units so that people don't move out when they're expecting a second child?
QUOTE
2012 holds much promise for Postgreen Homes. Despite suboptimal economic conditions, the company plans to construct 16 row houses, two condos and a retail space in a completely new area: South Philadelphia. Plus, Postgreen will try its hand at its first rental project and a six-unit co-housing building.
UNQUOTE

ludeman philadelphia leed green_buildings urban_development infill

Five basic tips to design "green" from Zillow.
QUOTE
Designing a new home is part art, part science. It takes both to make a house that’s energy-efficient, uses less material to build, and connects with its building site – what we call “green building.”

But, beauty is skin deep and sometimes “green” is, too. A truly green home is green from the inside out; the “green” can’t be separated from the “home.” Sure, you can make any house more energy-efficient, but that’s usually just cosmetic surgery. Loading up a house with energy-saving gadgets helps a little, but a green home is born that way, starting before the design was just a twinkle in the architect’s eye.
UNQUOTE

zillow green_buildings design architecture houses

Must-see video, with Tom Rand explaining clean-tech.
QUOTE
Tom Rand, Cleantech Practice Lead at MaRS Discovery District, inventor of the Green Bond, previous entrepreneur and successful Venture Capitalist talks about his journey to build "the continent’s greenest hotel" - Planet Traveler.

Rand sees the world through green-colored glasses. There is too little time and too much at stake to invest in “green” technologies that do not succeed in effecting a substantive reduction in carbon emissions. Low carbon technologies represent a third-industrial revolution that Rand believes must take place. And soon.

In pursuing the goal of building the greenest hotel, Rand didn’t waste time quibbling over payback periods on geothermal heat exchangers, or spend months negotiating with government agencies to obtain retrofit grants. In fact, Rand and his partner are making this project work without the help of any grants or subsidies as an example to others that the adoption of green technologies isn’t prohibitively expensive. Day-to-day building operations are responsible for 40 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions: a huge market. And greening buildings are the low-hanging fruit of carbon emissions reduction, ripe for the adoption of new green technologies.

Rand talks about City cooperation, payback periods, technology and financing options and how to measure the cost savings of green technologies.
UNQUOTE

tom_rand cleantech economics ecology climate_change retrofit greenwashing green_strategies green_buildings

Another article about Dockside Green (by Ken Pirie), but this one is really quite good: it covers Victoria's history, how the city turned to tourism, the problems of dealing with brownfields/ polluted lands, and how Dockside Green fits into this picture as an example of "unsprawling."

terrain.org ken_pirie dockside_green victoria architecture green_buildings

Hemp as "cob-house 2.0"? Too bad it's illegal to grow industrial quality hemp in the US...

QUOTE
The industrial hemp used in Hemcrete (the same species as marijuana, but with far less of the narcotic THC) is currently sourced from England, where it can be grown legally, but Tom Glab of American Lime Technology told me that they are working to find a source in Canada, where industrial hemp is also legal.
UNQUOTE

Click through to the article for photos of a beautiful house in Asheville NC built with Hemcrete (at $133 per square foot, the house is a bargain).

hemp hemcrete architecture insulation building_materials buildinggreen green_buildings

Interesting interview with Kenneth Yeang on building green skyscrapers & cities.

QUOTE
The industry must revolutionize the entire building cycle, says Mr. Yeang, "from the extraction of materials to make the building material...to [their] transportation, storage and delivery, to the design, construction and assembly of the building, to the...transportation and movement of people to and from the building." The goal is to build structures that not only have a minimal impact on the natural environment but also benefit the ecology of the site and the world's climate.
UNQUOTE

kenneth_yeang skyscrapers cities green_buildings

Austria's Passive House in Whistler, BC may be costly at $408 (subsidized) per square foot (although compared to downtown Vancouver or even some Victoria condo costs, it's not that much), but it's a beauty and fits right into the West Coast Modern architectural style, too:
QUOTE
As explained in a story recently published by CBC News, the 3,000-sq.-ft. building cost about $1.23 million U.S. to build, including a $143,000 grant by the Whistler Blackcomb Foundation, or about $408 per sq. ft. The overall cost might have been higher but for the fact that many of the construction materials, including the wood and interior materials, were donated by Austrian companies and then delivered via container ship to Canada. Also, Whistler donated the land for the project and paid for the piping and utilities. The project collaborators acknowledge that importing materials from Europe is not a green process, but it was done to highlight not only energy efficient design but Austrian products.
UNQUOTE

austria passivhaus whistler green_buildings architecture

This is a great move:
QUOTE
"The ordinance will allow code exemptions for up to 12 buildings seeking certification through the Living Building Challenge (LBC). The exemptions will allow the buildings to meet LBC prerequisites that require techniques, such as onsite water treatment, that conflict with current land-use and building codes in Seattle (as well as in many other areas of the U.S.). City officials will use the review process to inform future code changes that could make the regulatory landscape friendlier to onsite water and energy strategies. "
UNQUOTE

seattle planning regulation green_buildings living_buildings

Love the sound of this panel (for a 2010 May conference in Seattle):
QUOTE
Occupant behavioral change is key to the success of high-performance buildings in all areas, including energy, water usage, and livability. This session will focus on strategies to “recommission” occupant behavior. Participants will be tasked with imagining the future for occupants and providing creative solutions to solve the framed problems. Some examples of discussion questions: Should tThe changing nature of work, including increased capability to work in a multiplicity of spaces throughout the day with remote connection to people and information, . s. How should this impact the way we condition, furnish and use office space? ? Should conditioning be based on occupancy levels? 2. Should the building’s heating system always be required to keep the building at 72 to 75 degrees, or should the indoor temperature fluctuate with the seasons? Does occupant knowledge about the building’s performance lead to behavioral change to reduce energy or water use? What are other assumptions about ‘the way things are done’ that are increasing a building’s environmental burden? This will be aThe session is intended to be creative, foreword-thinking session, with an emphasis on out-of-the box ideas.
UNQUOTE

judith_heerwagen seattle conference cascadia living_future environmental_psychology green_buildings

Interesting environmental/ sustainability angle: Boston's Children Museum is stepping up its green credentials:
"The museum expansion and renovation was designed to enhance the building's connections to its urban waterfront site, guided by a desire to build environmental education opportunities into the design. From the adaptive reuse of the onsite 19th-century wool warehouse and industrial site to the new graywater storage system and green roof, the museum has become an environmental teaching tool for its young audience, in addition to becoming the first LEED-certified museum in Boston."
And:
"The museum is a working exhibition that demonstrates green building elements. The programs incorporate three principles:

1. Green by Example: The "Green Trail" is a series of interactive stations with age-appropriate explanations of the building's green elements and their relationship to the ecology of the area.

2. Green Hands-On: All programs will be based on current research on how children learn about the natural world. For example, children and families were invited to help plant parts of the green roof.

3. Green at Home: The museum will create a "Growing Green" section of its website for further interpretation of the building as well as steps for children and families to take toward greater sustainability in their own lives."

green_buildings museums boston childrens_museum environment

Nice article about Yale's Kroon Hall and Victoria BC's Dockside Green as true carbon-neutral projects (with Dockside Green a model for building entire neighborhoods as green/ carbon neutral).
"Across the continent, at the southern tip of the mountainous and densely forested Vancouver Island, Dockside Green will soon become carbon neutral. A mix of town houses, mid-rise apartments, and commercial buildings being built on a brownfield at the edge of downtown Victoria, British Columbia, the large, multiphase urban development takes a comprehensive approach to carbon reduction, showing how much is possible at the neighborhood scale. "

green_strategies green_buildings dockside_green victoria metropolis_magazine yale kroon_hall

It starts as a photo-essay, but this being the Tyee, the comments muscle their way in to center stage, too. (An aside: I'm getting fed up with all the negative commentary that craps all over all newspaper - including Tyee and my local paper, Times-Colonist - articles that allude to anything creative, innovative, or full of change. It brings out all the usual suspects, who waste no time burying a good idea under cyncism and negativity. Ugh.)

thetyee vancouver eco_density architecture green_buildings futurismo

Portal page for Passivhaeuser.

passivhaus germany darmstadt passive_heating ecology green_buildings

Brief article by Andrew Blum about Oxley Woods, a development of "90 eco-friendly homes, with 55 more planned to fill its seven acres." The key aspect? They're all pre-fab, relatively cheap to build, can be built quickly, and have in-built green features.

If Canada had a federal housing plan/ strategy, this would be something the Feds (and the Province) could take a closer look at. It sounds like it could be a reasonable (if partial) solution to our affordable housing crisis.

andrew_blum wired_magazine prefab green_buildings green_technologies oxley_woods affordable_housing

bc green_buildings policy