Archive for the ‘Architecture’ Category
May 16th, 2008
New Solar Trends at Solar 2008 Conference
Written by Carol Gulyas, courtesy of GreenOptions.com
New trends spotted at the American Solar Energy Society conference last week in San Diego:
- From Bosch, a new generation of solar flat plate collectors (used in solar thermal water heating applications) that can be mounted on the roof at a lower angle, addressing some peoples’ aesthetic concerns. The panels are also lighter-weight and easier to mount even on high roofs. Low-profile collectors were also unveiled by Schuco, Viessman, and Velux. Perhaps next year, one of the innovative solar companies will be from the U.S.?
- Solar thin film technology is exceeding expectations, with market share estimated at 3%, vs. 1-2%. Thin film is the new solar kid on the block, celebrated because of its lower cost, higher efficiency and more flexible applications.
- SolarBuzz reported a 62% increase in world PV production. “Germany’s PV market reached 1,328 MW in 2007 and now accounts for 47% of the world market. Spain soared by over 480% to 640 MW, while the U.S. increased by 57% to 220 MW, [making it] the world’s largest market behind Japan, once the world leader.”
- ASES (American Solar Energy Society), the conference’s sponsor, announced a push to establish more student chapters, in order to enlist solar energy’s future leaders. (Photo from VELUX image gallery.)
May 15th, 2008
Green Events Across the US, late May and June 2008
Here are some of the major green events going on across the US in the next six weeks.
Green Festival 2008–Chicago, May 17 & 18, Navy Pier, Chicago, Illinois
Celebrating what’s working in our communities, Green Festival showcases more than 350 diverse local and national green businesses displaying and selling eco-friendly, fair trade and sustainable products. More than 150 speakers appear for standing-room-only panel discussions, presentations and main stage speaking events.
Greener Homes and Gardens Expo, May 17 & 18, Portland, Oregon
This year’s show features Green Home Building & Remodeling; Sustainable Landscaping & Gardening; Renewable Energy & Conservation; Alternative Transportation; speakers, hands-on workshops, food, live music and more!
Sustainable Arkansas 2008, May 19 & 20, Hot Springs Convention Center, Arkansas
SA08 offers three sustainable tracks for conference attendees: Commercial Green Building, Residential Green Building, and Public Awareness.
Green West Expo, May 20-22, LA Convention Center, Los Angeles, California
Green West will feature the full spectrum of green, sustainable, and environmentally-friendly products and services. Exhibitors and attendees include architects, builders, designers, renewable energy professionals, city and state government representatives and more.
Homing in on Green: Jumpstarting the Demand for Eco-Friendly Housing in Chicago, Friday May 23, Chicago
The USGBC - Chicago Chapter and the NIHBA are hosting a special event that features an open forum to explore the methods, programs, organizations, and resources available to encourage sustainable housing. This event is being held in Chicago on Thursday evening and in Lisle on Friday morning. The program will be the same with the intent on giving attendees in the Chicagoland area an opportunity to attend at the venue that is most conveniently located.
Drive Nowhere Day 2008– May 30, Nationwide
May 30 is Drive Nowhere Day. Join the fun! Sign the pledge here.
JUNE
Clean Technology 2008, June 1-5, Boston, Massachusetts
Clean Technology 2008 is the largest and most comprehensive technical and business event in clean technology world-wide.
Sustainable Brands Conference, June 2-5, Hyatt Regency Monterrey, California
The global move toward innovation for sustainability is alive and well, and companies big and small are capitalizing on this new opportunity to build sales and brand equity. How can you join their ranks? Come find out at Sustainable Brands ’08.
Greener by Design: Strategies, Tools, and Markets for Product Innovation, June 12 & 13, Alexandria, Virginia
The only how-to event that focuses on the greening of mainstream products. Participants will hear from leading companies, both large and small, as well as the top green product designers, and participate in innovative techniques that combine the best elements of a traditional conference and an experiential workshop.
The 8th Annual Ann Arbor Green Fair, June 13, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Downtown Main Street will be open to pedestrians for free entertainment and more than 100 exhibits with environmental information, hands-on youth activities, green energy construction and transportation options, Bike Fest 2008, WasteKnot Business Partners, walking tours and more.
The Green Living Expo, June 20, Las Vegas, Nevada
Free for the entire family. Find the latest in eco-friendly products and services. On June 20th & 21st from 10a to 5p both days. Don’t miss our live entertainment, educational seminars, eco-fashion show or our exciting Green Kid’s Zone!
Bronx Green Roof Tour, June 20, New York
Visit 6 Green Roofs in the Bronx.
Greening the Heartland, June 22-24, St. Louis, Missouri
This regional U.S. Green Building Council conference will promote sustainable design and construction strategies for the built environment by encouraging joint leadership by the private and public sectors. The conference will highlight the latest in green building techniques that achieve energy and operational efficiencies, apply responsible construction and demolition practices, and aim for carbon neutrality. It will also demonstrate how green buildings promote the “triple bottom line” of profitability, people, and the environment – without compromising resources for future generations.
May 13th, 2008
Green Homes for Regular People
Written by Chris Schille, courtesy of GreenBuildingElements.com
The iconoclastic owner of the San Jose tract home featured in this article takes exception to the notion that green is expensive. Green, to him, is rooted in conservation of all resources, not the least of them being money.
Frank Schiavo’s compact, tract-built, three-bedroom ranch-style home in a modest San Jose neighborhood demonstrates that remodeling to create a cutting-edge green home is neither difficult nor expensive. Heated with sunlight and cooled by night air, his home is comfortable, quiet and tasteful, filled with light and local art. With only modest investments in a sun room, extra insulation, new windows, a very small array of rooftop photovoltaic and solar hot water panels, his electricity bill for the coldest, cloudiest months of the year averages a few dollars a month. His gas bill is even more modest.
What’s most impressive about Schiavo’s house isn’t that it’s so comfortable and practical for him to own, it’s that it demonstrates that lofty resource conservation goals can be achieved on a modest remodeling budget.
Passive Solar Energy is Inexpensive
Schiavo’s remodel performs so well, and for so little, because it focuses on conservation, not features. San Jose has plenty of sun, so Schiavo’s house exploits passive solar design. First, Schiavo thoroughly insulated. Next, he added heat-collecting thermal mass (in the form of a small sunroom addition) to store heat energy in the winter and stabilize temperatures. In the summer, he stores the cool of the night air. Interior walls sport an unusual finish detail that, at first brush, appears to have been motivated by modernist aesthetics.
Stacks of black, rectangular solids suggestive of consumer electronics protrude from interior walls extending from the floor to chair-rail height. As Schiavo explains, these are actually five gallon metal cans that have been painted black and fitted into steel support racks in key wall sections. The cans are filled with water, which has terrific thermal mass for its weight and volume. Many of these cans are situated in an interior wall that separates the interior from a south-facing sunroom. The water-filled cans store heat in the winter (and the cool of night air in the summer) and release it into the interior of his house.
Passive Solar Heating/Cooling: Operating the House
In the winter and early spring, Schiavo lowers special insulated doors in his sunroom, exposing the water-filled cans. Sun enters the windows of the sunroom and heats the brick-in-sand floor. The warm air in the sunroom then heats the water-filled cans. At night, Schiavo closes the insulated doors, and the water-filled cans radiate heat back into his house. This is an implementation of a passive solar Trombe Wall.
An added benefit of the sunroom space is that it makes an ideal place to hang laundry to dry. Schiavo admits he does use his gas dryer: about a minute or two per load, with no heat, to fluff-up his clothes and remove lint.
Schiavo Himself
A sustainability activist, passive solar design consultant, and retired environmental studies instructor from San Jose State University, Schiavo doesn’t shrink from publicity. A recent article in the San Jose Mercury News (4/5/2008, Is that a lion in the yard? S.J. fence-mural draws second looks) covers the extensive mural in Schiavo’s front and side yards, painted by a friend.
Schiavo first found the public eye in a well-publicized struggle with his local garbage company. Through a combination of disciplined purchasing habits, composting in his yard, and extensive recycling, he has virtually ceased to produce any trash. For years, he continued to pay the local garbage company for a service he wasn’t using. The mayor of San Jose found out and ordered the garbage company to stop billing him. His example led to the City’s composting program, run, incidentally, by a former student.
If you live near San Jose, you can see Schiavo’s house and mural at 1186 Bayard Drive. Look for footprints painted on the sidewalk, position your feet in them, and watch mural, building and landscaping meld into one large piece of art.
May 7th, 2008
Are AIA COTE Winners Too Much of the Same?
Written by Philip Proefrock, courtesy of GreenBuildingElements.com
The winners of this year’s AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Top Ten Green Buildings were announced this week, and there certainly are some very attractive buildings among the lot. Some of these buildings are certified, or in the process of becoming certified, to high LEED standards, in addition to their COTE Top Ten recognition.But while I’m excited by some of the design presented in this year’s lineup, there are some troubling aspects of the roster as a whole that struck me almost immediately.
There is a strong slant toward a certain general kind of public building in this year’s COTE Top Ten. Of the ten winners (plus one honorable mention) almost all of the projects are buildings with a strong visitor component. Most of the buildings are Visitor Centers, Galleries and Libraries. Only one is a residential building, and the only office building is the honorable mention Internal Revenue Service Center in Kansas City MO.
Of the remaining nine, there are a Sculpture Building and Gallery, a Botanical Garden Visitor & Administration Center, a Learning Center, a University Center, a Center for Science and Art, an Environmental Education/Visitor Activity Center, a Discovery Center, a Library, and an Environmental Center. These are buildings which typically have a sizable budget and which are showpieces, meant to impress visitors. The inclusion of green building elements in all projects like this should be a given.
But do these really represent the best “examples of sustainable architecture and green design solutions that protect and enhance the environment”? Or should the best buildings represent the whole range of building?
As a program of the AIA, superior architecture and design are going to be key in any national awards, whether related to environmental issues or otherwise. So expecting these to be more ordinary buildings may be a bit much to ask of COTE.
The best examples of environmental design should be found in a range of buildings and building types. Monocultures are rarely a good thing in the long run. Too much of the same kind of building runs the risk of developing a public perception of green building being limited to only certain types of buildings, a niche, rather than a direction in which all building must start moving.
All of these projects are fine examples of green building, and I do not want to detract from any of this year’s winners. But if the AIA is going to “Walk the Walk,” it needs to promote a broader range of sustainable building projects. The Committee should take a closer look at its selection process and the methods it uses to arrive at its Top Ten award winners. A wider range of the implementations of green building needs to be recognized as part of the program. Without a greater representation from a wider variety of project types, the COTE Top Ten recognition runs the risk of becoming a marginalized and insignificant award, rather than a standard of excellence for all building design and construction.
My congratulations to all of this year’s winners.
See Also:
What Makes It Green? 2008 Winners
Architecture Week 2008 - Is It Sustainable?
Image: Pocono Environmental Education/Visitor Activity - Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, Architects, via: AIA.org
April 30th, 2008
The AIA and Dwell Magazine Team Up To Spread The Word About Sustainability
By Kristin Dispenza courtesy of GreenBuildingElements.com
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has ambitious goals for reducing carbon emissions related to the built environment: it hopes to make all buildings carbon neutral by 2030, and aims for a 50% fossil fuel reduction by 2010. But to accomplish what is, in effect, a complete overhaul of the way the construction industry operates, the AIA must make sure that its message is heard by people outside its own membership. Toward that end, the group announced its “Walk the Walk: Architects Leading the Sustainable Evolution” campaign On January 15th of this year.
Intended to “inform the marketplace” on the benefits of green building, the initiative sets forth a multifaceted communications strategy. Christine McEntee, Executive Vice President and CEO of the AIA, is quoted as saying, “As America continues to be saturated by messages of ‘going green,’ there is a general lack of understanding that buildings are one of the primary sources of the greenhouse gases contributing to global warming and climate change. The ‘Walk the Walk’ program will raise awareness of this issue and provide practical energy saving solutions for people who build, work and live in buildings of all shapes and sizes.”
The marketing firm Giant Ideas was hired to orchestrate “Walk the Walk,” and their website has a blog detailing the campaign’s development. One component of the campaign is the AIA/Dwell “How Green are You” contest, which focuses on sustainable home design and renovation. Tapping into Dwell’s audience should be a strong move for the campaign; the research company Erdos & Morgan found that Dwell magazine reaches an affluent, professional readership, and has the unique duality of appealing to consumers and trade members (in a 60/40 split). Dwell has received many awards and honors, including a 2005 National Magazine Award, a 2003 Circulation Excellence Award from Circulation Managment, and a Top 10 listing in Capell’s “Best Performers in Circulation for 2005″.
“How Green are You” is open to anyone and the entry period is from April 5th to June 20th, 2008.
Judging Criteria include:
- Sustainability
- Functionality
- Originality
- Cost effectiveness, and
- Design
To enter the contest, click here.
Image credit: AIA
April 13th, 2008
Eco-friendly Cabinets: The Definitive Guide
If you are considering any kitchen or bathroom remodeling, likely cabinets are on your list. In any green home remodel, incorporating eco-friendly cabinet choices into your plans is a great idea.
Fortunately there are many excellent options available to us now as green consumers. We are trying here to create the definitive list of eco-friendly cabinet options available across the United States.
First and foremost to embrace sustainability we should try to save as much of existing cabinets as possible– perhaps you can just put a new face on your cabinets and save the underlying ”boxes”? That can be a great way to reduce your use of new materials and cut your waste output. But if you need entirely new cabinets, here are some great options from the leading green cabinet makers in the U.S.
Bamboo Cabinets
AlterECO creates unique and beautiful custom bamboo cabinets built to high standards of craftsmanship, utility and sustainability. Based in San Francisco.
Grass Cabinetry creates custom, green cabinets in Sacramento, California. They also do work in hardwoods.
Laguna Bamboo is another leader in bamboo cabinets. Surprise– they are located in Laguna, CA.
Cabinet Makers Working with Mixed Materials (Bamboo, FSC Certified woods, reclaimed woods, etc.)
M8 Cabinetry is an innovative firm that is creating recycled and recyclable cabinet solutions. Their work is modern and beautiful.
Kirei board is a gorgeous option for cabinet fronts. Kirei is a unique material made from compressed sorghum stalks. Please give it a look!
Artistic Freedom Designs, based in San Diego, uses FSC woods, Smith and Fong Plyboo bamboo plywood, biocomposites, salvaged woods, and AFM safecoat finishes.
Sustainabuilt is based in Boise, Idaho and uses a wide variety of sustainable building materials in their cabinets, including Plyboo and FSC Certified hardwoods.
Neil Kelly Cabinets is a leader in the field and uses FSC certified woods, formaldehyde-free agriboard case/drawer material, and low VOC glues/adhesives/finishes.
Woodshanti is a wood-working cooperative based in San Francisco. They do gorgeous work in FSC hardwoods, and/or reclaimed woods.
CitiLog, based in New Jersey, reclaimed wood for use in their cabinets and other products. They also use non-toxic bonders and sealants.
Green Leaf Cabinetry, based in Cleveland, OH, manufactures cabinets using FSC certified woods, formaldehyde-free bonding agents, and low-VOC finishes.
Fiddle Head Designs, based in Brunswick, Maine, uses locally-milled, sustainable woods, and non-toxic glues and sealants. They also purchase 100% of the shop’s electricity from wind power!
Green Forest Kitchens & Baths builds cabinets from 100% reclaimed woods. They are based in Whitewater, Wisconsin.
Humabuilt creates a line of cabinets from their Wheatcore product, a LEED certified wheat-board.
Breathe Easy Cabinetry uses responsibly harvested solid woods which are formaldehyde-free and non-toxic water-based glues and finishes. They are based on the East Coast but have reps across the country.
Case Green Cabinetry is based in Denver, CO, and builds cabinets out of wheat board composites or Medite II.
John C. Duval Designs offers custom casework using sustainable materials. They are located in White Post, Virginia. (Also a green builder.)
GreenTech Cabinety offers a variety of sustainable materials and finishes. They have dealers across the country.
Blue Plum Design offers a variety of eco-friendly cabinet options. Based in San Francisco.
We have eco-friendly cabinet resources listed across the country– search your area by visiting our cabinet category.
Also be sure to check our green retail outlets across the country as many of these stores carry mutliple lines of eco-friendly cabinets: search your area by visiting our green retail category.
Are you a green cabinet maker and would like to be added to this list? Please send an email to info@lowimpactliving.com.
