Green Building Elements

As part of its well-publicized 2030 plan (reducing the fossil fuel use of buildings by 50% in 2010 and carbon neutrality by 2030), the American Institute of Architects is offering a wonderful guide to 50 strategies for greening up buildings.  The strategies provided in the “50to50″ book range from “Active Solar Thermal Systems” to “Windows and Openings.”

 As stated in the introduction:

The 50 strategies … have been selected to provide readily available and effective tools and techniques that will have an effective and immediate impact on architects’ ability to achieve significant carbon reduction. The strategies span a spectrum from broad-based site and planning objectives to specific, building-based concepts.

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Instead of usual colors that we associate with wine such as white or dark red, our color paradigm might shift to say Gold. With the CADE Winery just about to open, this solar powered and organically farmed winery, hopes to garner LEED Gold status and if so, would be the first Estate Gold LEED certified winery in the Napa Valley.

When visiting a winery, people’s olfactory system normally goes into overdrive but instead of inhaling the aromas of vanilla, rosemary, oak and sage here we took deep breaths of the air. As in indoor air quality. No stuffy AC here as the building relies on natural ventilation. While others admire the wines, we admired the other green aspects. CADE will utilize 100% solar power and organic farming methods which both sound tasty to us.

From top to bottom, we got our buzz from the other building features like the concrete composed that contains a generous amount (30 percent) of fly ash, steel made up of 98 percent recycled material, FSC glass and wood, as well as blue jeans for insulation and its own concrete mass for cooling.

The Green aspects just don’t stop at the building. It’s too bad that we didn’t bike or drive our electric car (we did carpool) because the winery offers a plug-in base for hybrid electric cars; and bicycle racks. Even better, they offer a shower (hopefully with low flow showerhead) so cyclists can clean up before tasting or event.

One the eating side, they will have a full-time chef on site who will focus on organic, sustainable cuisine grown on site. We haven’t had the chance to sample some of the sustainable cuisine but we’ll report back when we do.

We, like many people, wondered about the name. The winery name CADE derives from a Shakespearean term used for an oak cask or barrel, — comprises more than 60 acres, 23 of which were planted as vineyards in 2003. Of the remaining land, 28 acres will be protected in a land trust to ensure that they will always remain open space.  Now there should be a big “Cheers” to that fact.

Last week I talked about how to live simply and decrease your carbon footprint living in a tiny house. Even better than buying a tiny house is making your own, and Michael Janzen is blazing a trail with his free tiny pallet house. Not only is his house made out of recycled shipping pallets, it isn’t costing him anything to build. And lucky for us, he’s sharing his plans so you too can build your own tiny free house.

You can save money, sharpen your DIY skills, and further decrease your environmental impact by following Janzen’s example of building a free pallet house.

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While any structure built in a way that lessens its footprint is welcomed, some of the buildings that people try to turn green simply make no sense.

LEED certification, in all its greatness, does not take the building’s intended purpose into account; this leaves us with some hilarious, unabashedly self-contradicting buildings. Here are the ten of the most laughable green buildings:

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While we are on the topic of decreasing our energy footprints in small homes, I’d like to share the simple and small round yurt design, that has been around for ages. The yurt is a type of “Green Weefab Mini-Home” and can be customized into another kind of hand-built “Earth Sheltered House” for those on a budget.

Yes a yurt is a portable, felt-covered, wood lattice-framed dwelling structure used by the nomads in the steppes of Central Asia for centuries, and yes it is also a modern dwelling here in the west. I have often seen yurts perched on ocean side clifftops, in horse pastures for riders, and used as outdoor guest houses for those with big yards. Read the rest of this entry »

“Tiny houses” are starting to enter mainstream consciousness, due in large part to new companies dedicated to manufacturing and promoting tiny homes, especially Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. And for good reason, too: one of the most effective ways to decrease your ecological footprint is to buy a tiny house. For obvious reasons, a tiny house requires little energy to build, and less energy to keep comfortable. There’s also the benefit of not maintaining extra unused space. Ultimately, you can live more simply and happily in a tiny house.

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Shown below is another rendering of a winning design for Bird Island called the Rafflesia House.

While it is intentionally named, it “unintentionally looks like the Rafflesia, the largest flower in the world and a native to the rainforests of Malaysia. (Rafflesia used to be Malaysian national symbol, but it is now replaced by Petronas Towers.)

The Rafflesia develops from the bud into a flower over a period of nine months. The blossom is pollinated by flies attracted by its scent, which resembles that of the carcass. The flower lasts for only a few days. Rafflesia challenges traditional definitions of what a plant is because it lacks chlorophyll and is therefore incapable of photosynthesis. Rafflesia is a parasite. It did not begin its life as a parasite, but evolved this lifestyle. Biologists do not know what the Rafflesia’s function is in its ecosystem. This mystery incites one of the most elementary questions: What is the function of the humans in the world’s ecosystem?“

The award winning Rafflesia House shown above is a spectacular study of the human habitat evolving and becoming an integrated part of its tropical, urban, and site-specific ecosystem. The architects, designers and builders “searched and re-examined the ideas of the right balance between the connection of the building to the outside and the shelter the building provides from the outside elements: plants, creatures, rain, sun, wind, or heat.”

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With the economy in turmoil, a real estate prices dropping, green communities and green building will become more important. It’s easy to see how broken our current community model is in terms of the urban sprawl; the average American commute continues to grow longer. Between 1969 and 2001, the number of vehicle miles traveled for commuting jumped from 4,180 to 5,720.

The Sierra Club notes that today’s average American driver spends what amounts to 55 eight hour workdays behind the wheel every year. Gas won’t stay at the current level so we need to look at developing more sustainable communities.

San Francisco area architect Michelle Kaufmann & Kelly Melia-Teevan came up with a top 10 (sorry Letterman) EcoPrinciples for Communities.

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Are you interested in a hands-on straw bale building experience? As you know, there is no better way to learn than by doing. Red Earth Farms is an 80 acre, off-the-grid intentional community based in northeastern Missouri, composed of individual homesteads. Members strive to live ecologically – this means, of course, that members use natural building materials in their homes. Mark Mazzioti is one such individual building a straw bale house, featuring a pasive solar design, post-and-beam framing, and a cement-free rubble trench foundation. Mark, an experienced natural builder, is seeking interns for the upcoming 2009 building season. Here’s his strawbale house and natural building internship information:

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Advanced Micro Devices – Lone Star Campus

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), a leading global provider of innovative processing solutions in the computing and graphics markets, has been awarded gold certification under the U.S. Green Building Council Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ for its Lone Star campus in Austin, TX.

The Lone Star campus, which is home to AMD’s business operations and the Austin design engineering center, was designed and constructed by a diverse team of internationally recognized architects, engineers, ecologists and sustainability experts. The site development plan for the 58-acre, 870,000 square foot campus was based on three key tenets: limit site impact, protect water quality, and use innovative sustainable design. The award makes it the largest gold certified LEED® commercial building in Texas.

“From the inception of the Lone Star project, AMD sought to set the standard for responsible development, and this award recognizes AMD’s Austin campus as one of the greenest corporate facilities in the U.S.,” said Allyson Peerman, vice president, Public Affairs, AMD. “Earning LEED gold certification not only demonstrates AMD’s leadership in green building and green energy practices, but also highlights our commitment to our employees and the communities where we conduct business.

Key sustainable design elements include

• Energy Use: Powered 100% by Austin Energy’s GreenChoice® electricity, which comes from clean, renewable energy sources such as wind power
• Rainwater Collection: Designed with a 1.2 million gallon capacity rainwater collection system, which is designed to provide water for the buildings’ cooling towers and irrigation
• Construction Materials: Incorporated  more than 20% of construction materials based on recycled content, and with more than 20% of locally sourced construction materials
• 100% Native Landscaping: AMD partnered with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center to salvage the native trees, shrubs and grasses within the footprint of the campus, and replant them following construction.

For more information, visit http://www.amd.com.

Image Credit: AMD