Green ArchiTEXT

Popular Mechanics: How to Build a Greener Office Building - Seattle's Bullitt Center

By Tim Newcomb

Seattle's new Bullitt Center—which will house eco-conscious tenants such as the International Living Future Institute and the University of Washington Integrated Design Lab—is the brainchild of Bullitt Foundation president Denis Hayes. He's the guy who coordinated the first Earth Day, which, not surprisingly, will serve as the grand opening date for the center. Hayes spent more than two years sourcing materials for the office building as part of his attempt to build the largest structure to qualify for the Living Design Challenge.

The solar panels dangling over the downtown Seattle sidewalks and the composting toilets on the sixth floor have gotten most of the publicity as the Bullitt Center has grown skyward. But there's more to sustainability for a 50,000-square-foot structure than net-zero energy usage (check), onsite wastewater treatment (check, check), and harvesting rainwater (check, check, check): The builders have tried to filter out all toxic chemicals from the construction process. Here's how. READ MORE >>

via www.popularmechanics.com

Living Proof: Building the Bullitt Center (VIDEO)

Nice video story of Seattle's new Bullitt Center, designed to be the greenest commercial building in the world.

Living Proof: Building the Bullitt Center from Brad Kahn on Vimeo.

Living Building Challenge: What if every single act of design made the world a better place? (VIDEO)

The Living Building Challenge | David Henderson-Hean & Todd Brooks from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

THE LIVING BUILDING CHALLENGE is a Semifinalist in the $200,000 FOCUS FORWARD Filmmaker Competition and is in the running to become the $100,000 Grand Prize Winner. It could also be named an Audience Favorite if it's among the ten that receives the most votes. If you love it, vote for it. Click on the VOTE button on the right side of the video player. Note that voting may not be available on all mobile platforms, and browser cookies must be enabled to vote.

THE LIVING BUILDING CHALLENGE
produced & directed by: David Henderson-Hean & Todd Brooks

Phipps Center for Sustainable Landscapes: Largest Living Building Yet?

The Phipps Conservatory in Pennsylvania is on the verge of completing its new Center for Sustainable Landscapes, a project the organization’s leaders hope will earn recognition as the nation’s largest Living Building Challenge (LBC) project.

...

The $23.5 million expansion project will update a 119-year-old non-profit conservatory, creating a state of the art 23,350-square-foot structure. The project was designed by local firm, Design Alliance Architects, with Turner Construction, also out of Pittsburgh, serving as the general contractor.

The design team used a large variety of green techniques in its quest for net-zero energy including: a green roof, energy recovery, geothermal power, natural ventilation, solar photovoltaic energy and vertical axis wind turbines, to name a few. READ MORE >>

via www.greenbuildingnews.com

UniverCity Announces Plans for World’s First Living Neighbourhood

UniverCity on Burnaby Mountain aims to be home to the world’s first community designed as a Living Neighbourhood as part of the Living Building Challenge. This new phase of the community will eventually create as much energy and water as it consumes and be built using healthy, non-toxic materials. The plan will provide the platform to build, over time, a neighbourhood with a net zero energy, water and waste footprint– a global first.

via univercity.ca

Canada's SFU child care building gives back to the Earth

By Randy Shore

The new child care building at Simon Fraser University is designed to collect more water than it flushes and generate enough energy to sustain itself and have some left over for its neighbours.

More than just sustainable, the UniverCity Childcare Centre is poised to be a net contributor rather than a consumer of energy and precious resources.

“We thought if we are going to put anybody in the greenest building in Canada we should start with the kids,” said project leader Dale Mikkelsen. “That way what is weird to us just becomes normal to them. They will move on and wonder why they aren’t flushing the toilet with rainwater.”

SFU’s Community Trust, which develops and administers the on-campus sustainable community, opted to attempt a Living Building-certified structure, a standard that when fully achieved goes beyond the industry’s usual sustainable building standards.

Most buildings in the neighbourhood are built to silver and gold LEED standard, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system.

But the sustainability knob on the Living Building standard goes up to 11. READ MORE >>

via www.vancouversun.com

Fast Company: Portland, Seattle Duke It Out For World's Most Nature-Inspired Building

By Christopher Mims

Ever since the invention of the skyscraper, the contest between cities to see who could be home to the tallest building has had a symbolic potency on par with the space race. Now two of America's "greenest" cities are engaged in a whole new sort of architectural cage match, and in the process they're inverting the dated priorities of the profligate, fossil-fuel soaked 20th century and instead designing buildings based on the harmonious functioning of ecosystems.

Within weeks of each other, groups in both Seattle and Oregon announced that they were building the world's "greenest" office building. These structures go way beyond the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED Gold standard, aiming instead for the much more stringent and results-oriented Living Building Standard.

The defining feature of the Living Building standard is that, true to its name, a building must behave like a living organism. And not just a wasteful, unsustainable individual, but an entire, self-contained ecosystem. A Living Building must produce all of the electricity it uses, and collect 100 percent of the water it consumes. Both requirements mean that a living building must be extremely efficient with both energy and water in addition to being especially good at collecting both.

So far only three buildings in the world have attained Living Building certification, in part because a structure's performance must be measured for a full year to establish its bona fides. So it will be some time until we know whether--and by what measure--Seattle or Oregon is home to the "world's greenest building."

Here are the contenders:

The Cascadia Center for Sustainable Design in Seattle will be six stories tall and include 50,000 square feet of usable space.

The Oregon Sustainability Center will include four different kinds of solar panels, including ones embedded in its windows that allow visible light to pass through while also generating electricity. READ MORE >>

via www.fastcompany.com

Coming Into the Country: Living Buildings in Alaska's Aleutian Islands

Teams from cities ranging from Hong Kong to Budapest, Brooklyn to Sarajevo, have accepted Cascadia Green Building Council’s challenge to design – and build – an affordable, energy-efficient home in one of the world’s most challenging environments.

Nearly 200 teams have signed up to design a small home on the Aleutian Islands that just might revolutionize how we build affordable housing. 

The winning design will be used to create a new home for Jimmy Prokopeuff, a 32-year-old Aleut man living in Atka, Alaska, whose current house is badly in need of replacement. But the true goal of the project is to re-envision sustainable, affordable housing in one of the world’s harshest locales.

The Living Aleutian Home Design Competition, hosted by Cascadia Green Building Council in partnership with the Aleutian Housing Authority, aims to inspire teams to bring the tenets and principles of the Living Building Challenge 2.0 ™, to Atka, an Aleutian Island that has been continuously occupied for more than 2,000 years.  Currently, Atka has a population of 61 people.

The Living Building Challenge dares the building industry and all inhabitants of the built environment to rethink how buildings are designed, how materials are sourced and how people interact with the built environment. The Aleutian Islands, often called ”the birthplace of the winds,” encompasses a 1,050-mile archipelago that is a treeless, windswept land of steep, high volcanoes, flower-strewn, moss-covered meadows and long, wide beaches.

Prokopeuff is an Alaska native, and more fortunate than many of his classmates, he found a good job in his hometown and is happy to remain. He is the production manager at the Atka Pride Seafood Plant, the community’s largest employer. He says he’s hopeful the plant will continue to thrive, with plans in the works for additional processing lines. Prokopeuff’s love for family and a passion for hunting and fishing make Atka the perfect place for him. Almost.

His living conditions are less than optimal. His small, ranch-style home was built by his father and grandfather shortly before he was born.  It is typical of any house built during that time – where comfort depended on cheap fossil fuel.  But heating oil shipped to Atka is no longer cheap. Given today’s prices of $6 to $8 a gallon, that can mean monthly heating bills of $600 in the heart of winter, which can last anywhere from four to six months.

“It is so expensive,” Prokopeuff says. “I am so excited for my new home. Everyone here is. It could change things.”

It could change things everywhere. The Living Aleutian Home Design contest challenges teams to create a prototype for affordable, sustainable residences in a rural community confronted with sky-high construction costs, an extreme climate and a pressing need for adopting alternative fuel strategies.

When it’s over, the Aleutian Housing Authority (AHA) will have a replicable design it can use in all 10 villages where the authority builds homes.  And it will help demonstrate to others, in rural areas everywhere, that there are ways to radically reduce energy consumption and make the switch to renewable energy, in safe, healthy, affordable homes, explains Mark Masteller, Alaska director for Cascadia.

“The Living Building Challenge deals with far more than energy, of course, but that’s the big driver in rural Alaska,” Masteller says. “With this competition, the AHA will be able to help scores of families, and it will stimulate progress among other builders, here and hopefully across the globe.”

Judging the contest are:

Dan Duame, Director at Aleutian Housing Authority
Sebastian Eckmann, Builder at Nordic Constructors
Jack Hebert, President/CEO at Cold Climate Housing Research Center
Bryan Mackay-Lyons, Principal at Mackay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects
Jason McLennan, Architect and CEO at International Living Future Institute
Lauri Straus, Architect at kpb architects
Susan Szenasy, Editor-in-Chief at Metropolis Magazine

The first prize submission will receive a $35,000 cash prize and have the option to work with the AHA to bring the design to completion. The second-place winning entry will receive a $15,000 prize. Winners will be announced at Living Future 2012, Cascadia Green Building Council’s annual unConference, May 2-4 in Portland.

'Living' buildings could inhale city carbon emissions | CNN

London (CNN) -- What if buildings had lungs that could absorb carbon emissions from the city and convert them into something useful? What if they had skin that could control their temperature without the need for radiators or air-conditioning? What if buildings could come "alive?"

Science fiction?

"Not as such," claims Dr Rachel Armstrong, senior TED fellow and co-director of Avatar, a research group exploring the potential of advanced technologies in architecture. "Over the next 40 years, 'living' buildings -- biologically programmed to extract carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere -- could fill our cities."

Armstrong works on the cutting edge of "synthetic biology," a relatively new science devoted to the manufacture of life-like matter from synthesized chemicals, and is something of an evangelist for the discipline. READ MORE >>

via www.cnn.com

How to Cut Buildings' Energy Use Without Expensive Renovations | GOOD

By Sarah Laskow

Building engineers are like doctors who treat structures instead of humans: they monitor a buildings' vital functions, diagnose problems, and figure out how to remedy them. They’re responsible for heating, cooling, electricity, and water systems, and everything else most people take for granted in their daily lives. In the past decade or so, buildings have been wired to report their symptoms to engineers, but they don’t always share the most relevant information about what’s ailing them.

In an energy efficiency pilot program, Microsoft set out to change that. The company concluded that streamlining communication between its buildings and engineers, it could significantly reduce energy use. In a report [PDF] co-authored with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the management company Accenture, found that Microsoft can save as much as $1 million in a year and pay back its investment within 18 months. Similar programs have found that, on average, companies can cut energy use by 10 percent and in some cases by as much as a third. 

The findings are significant because they signal that investing in physical retrofits of its buildings isn't necessary for major energy savings. For the experiment, Microsoft installed software that collected data on its buildings’ vital signs and told building engineers about the most pressing problems. The software helps engineers prioritize before they have to wade through gigabytes of complaint report forms, and identifies problems that engineers might have missed. READ MORE >>

via www.good.is