City Dirt is a brilliant urban gardening blog. The founder will be publishing the book A Little Piece of Earth this coming winter. Don’t wait to start planting some seeds now and have fun experimenting with growing food in small spaces. It is truly possible! Read the rest of this entry »
“Our homes embrace the principles of eco-friendliness and cost-effectiveness, without sacrificing beauty. We can ensure that each dwelling achieves a gold or platinum LEED rating, depending on the particular finishes, building systems, and site design an owner chooses.” ~ Michelle Kaufmann Designs
Each Glidehouse home is solar ready with other renewable energy system options possible such as geothermal, wind generator or hybrid systems. Designed for clean, simple living. The Glidehouse is built in a factory, using the most modern and environmentally friendly building methods and materials.
Some eco features of the Glidehouse include:
With so many recent initiatives aimed at combating climate change, energy prices have obviously taken a hit. To compensate for this change, though, many architects and builders have begun using Daylighting to a great degree in construction.
“Daylighting,” or “daylight harvesting,” has been growing in popularity recently because it uses natural sunlight to its advantage. A number of automated systems are able to measure free natural sunlight and figure out how it should use controlled lighting in relation to that. Then, a system will automatically dim or brighten the lighting so that only artificial light which is needed is used. From an architect’s standpoint, it’s an important thing that the most beneficial entry points of daylight are decided on before construction. North-facing windows are great because they will definitely reduce unwanted glare. A designer, in turn, would decide on a quality lighting control system for dimming indoor light fixtures. There are a lot of systems out there, so deciding on a single one has a lot to do with finding a balance between natural lighting availability and extra electric lighting needs. Read the rest of this entry »
There is a brilliant sustainability series on urban gardening (Alive Structures and roof garden tutorials will be featured) in New York City this summer put on by a non-profit called New York Restoration Project. There will be four talks, every other Thursday from 7 pm to 8 pm, in NYPC’s Toyota Children’s Learning Garden. All of them are open to the public.
Where? Toyota Sustainable Summer Series Toyota Children’s Learning Garden 603 East 11th Street, New York, NY
When? July 30, 2009 from 7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
What? Sarah Seigal, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates. She will give a short garden tour and speak about the garden design, specifically the shade tolerant planting palette she created for this garden.
What else? Refreshments at the end of each event.
NYRP works exclusively in New York City managing community gardens to help ensure their liveliness in each community. Keep reading for more details on the series in August and beyond… Read the rest of this entry »
It’s a pleasure to finally begin writing here at Green Options! This time around, I’d like to focus on green building ambitions in the corporate world. I’ve been hearing a lot about Wal-Mart, Intel, etc. But have you heard about what Leviton just did with their headquarters? Read the rest of this entry »
The new flick 500 Days of Summer, which generated much buzz as the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, rolls out in limited release today. Lot’s of people are talking about it as a romantic comedy meets Memento which in film terms means that those with ADD or short attention spans might be confused by this rambunctious romantic romp. But for us, the buzz doesn’t just lie in the zigzagging sex talk but rather in the architecture talk. Even more specifically in the Green architecture talk.
Given the climate change coming to most regions of the US, this new roof idea is a great passive cooling solution worth looking at even if you don’t live in the desert regions… now.
Because, by century’s end; you might.
“Summer temperatures in Florida could rise by 10.5F, with the heat effect multiplied by decreased rainfall under the higher emissions scenario. There would be increased hurricane intensity and rising sea levels leads to loss of wetlands and coastal areas.”
“When you’re out in the desert, shade is gold. It’s the most valuable asset you have, so to make more shade was [the] strategy,” says Lloyd Russell of this house he designed to withstand both the scorching heat and the cold of the desert for a client in Southern California.
Russell’s very low carbon way to cool a home is another example of how creatively some architects are thinking out of the box and in the process creating an entirely new design vernacular - architecture for zero energy use in a carbon-constrained, hotter, wilder new world.
If every building had a white roof, we would be able to cool the surrounding areas. That is the reasoning behind a California law about to go into effect next month requiring light reflective roofs on all new buildings. It is already the law for new flat roofs here.
Here, architect Richard Meier and his partner Michael Palladino have apparently created a design to go one further. It’s entirely white; roofs, walls, and interiors.
So this luxury design of a cool and airy Southern California beach house is glamorous and climate friendly.
Well, no. The McMansion-sized size of the thing at 4,280-sq.-ft is not so planet friendly; because it takes more energy to heat and cool a larger space. But this house would be well suited for a ground heat exchange to passively heat and cool itself with 55 degree air cooled from 10 feet under the ground.
As architects in California get closer to 2020, they will need to think more about passive cooling and heating and zero energy houses, as that will be the law by 2020. All new building must be zero energy by then.
Incorporate solar roofing on the white roof, and this could be a zero energy house.
The blue of a solar roof would visually extend right out to the ocean. (And conceal that horrible mess of mechanical contraptions on that roof.) White elastomeric cool roof paint under the solar panels would help cool the modules making them more efficient on hot days.
But are architects thinking about these things?
With 2020 almost upon us: “The beams at the roof, located above the horizontal framing, express the structural rhythm and layering of components,” explains the architect. “This cadence is repeated with the joinery of the painted aluminum exterior wall panels and modular windows. The mass of the exterior plaster walls are juxtaposed to the transparent glazed facades, creating a mosaic of layered materials.”
Blah, blah, blah.
Via Digs Digs
Images: Scott Frances/Esto
At the other end of the design spectrum from the energysucking gizmology that now pervades our lives; simple tech is quietly bringing back simplicity and sustainability as a worthwhile goal for industrial design. Here’s a good example; a low tech kitchen appliance that would go well beyond a simple energy star rating for efficiency.
This practical and simple energy efficient dish washer/dish storage unit by design students Schwartz and Steiner at the Bauaus Universität Weimar is a great example of the simple tech that the world needs now.
It is a reduction of a machine to its essentials, orientated to user-needs. This dish washer builds on the movements that we already make…
U of Kansas grad students have just completed their chic Buffalo House at Springfield in Kansas City, designed with a very elegant approach to sustainability.
We are seeing more climate conscious design in architecture: In this case; the rain screen.
A skin over the house is designed to manage and harvest occasional heavy precipitation, to provide protection from premature decay from moisture intrusion.
I like the way the rain-screen is carried up over the roof and mounted flush with the photovoltaic solar panels on the roof for a sleek look while also protecting the building.
Like a skin over the building; this Cumuru wood cladding is designed to shed rain water separately from the structure of the building. Rain screens deter rainwater intrusion into walls - by shedding most of the rain and by incorporating storage to reuse the rainwater - which you can see below the doors here.
There’s 8 other sustainable features, as well.
Rather than attacking the symptoms of moisture intrusion, rain screens tackle the source-the forces that drive water into the building shell. By neutralizing these forces, rain screens can withstand extreme environments. They appear to be effective in any climate and handle any weather condition short of a disaster.
All rain screens include the following elements:
Integral gutters and downspouts are hidden behind the rain-screen. These then carry rainwater for storage in underground tanks.
The home also features passive solar heating through large expanses of south facing glass. These windows are protected from the summer sun with fixed sun louvers made of steel and Cumaru wood.
So as not to trap too much heat, low South-facing operable windows work in tandem with skylight vents in the north-facing roof-top pull hot air out of the top of the building for a thermal chimney effect.
For maximizing filtered daylighting, a three-level steel frame with milky glass inside encloses the staircase for spatial separation but spreading daylight between the rooms of the house.
The sustainable features are:
1. Enough rooftop photovoltaic solar panels for a net zero electricity supply (90-100%) for an average home.
2. One on-site 1.2 KW Windspire wind turbine that could produce about 20% of the energy an average home (550 kWh a month) assuming wind speed of at least 12 miles-per-hour year round.
3. Geothermal heat exchange between the house and the below-ground 55 degree temperatures year round, providing a constant starting point for both heating and cooling.
4. Epoxy coated gyp-crete floors for interior thermal mass to prolong passive heating and cooling
5. Passive solar design: low South-facing windows with sunlight access to thermal mass in the floor.
6. Heat-chimney effect created with roof ventilation in North skylights for expelling hot air
7. The framing wood was recycled from an ammunition plant.
8. Recycled materials in interior finishes such as the composite recycled paper countertops.
and of course
9. The rainwater reclamation using a wooden slat skin to keep water off the building and stored in underground tanks. Cumaru is one of the hardest woods on the planet and can be harvested sustainably.
But it comes from South America, so there is quite a carbon footprint getting it to Kansas City.
Images: Robert McLaughlin
Via Jetson Green
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At Green Building Elements, home owners and LEED accredited professional alike can learn about advances in green and renewable building materials, current projects in sustainable architecture and progressive urban planning, and local guidelines for creating green structures in different regions of the U.S.
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