Green ArchiTEXT

Bob Berkebile: On Responsible Design, LIving Buildings and Restorative Communities

The latest issue of Cascadia's terrific Trim Tab magazine features an interview with Bob Berkebile of BNIM. See "Bob Berkebile: A true pioneer in the sustainability movement".

Bruce Mau's Massive Change: A Design Manifesto

From Bilt Magazine:

Too often we ignore homegrown heroes for those who were born further afield, reared on fairy dust and magical fruit and who must have something better.

BILT doesn’t believe in fairies and so is giving a whoop-whoop where it’s due, to Bruce Mau, a northern Ontario boy who’s is talking revitalization of his hometown of Sudbury, while dabbling in a little redesign of Mecca and changing the face of the planet one visionary project at a time.

From Mau's 1998 “Incomplete Manifesto to Growth”:

1. Allow events to change you.
2. Forget about good.
3. Process is more important than outcome.

...and 40 more tips...

via avnerd.tv

Toward an Architecture of Place

By Fred Kent, President, Project for Public Spaces

Good design involves much more than making bold and innovative aesthetic impressions; design should help people find solutions to the major urban issues confronting the world today – from environmental destruction to economic decline to social alienation. The current economic slump provides opportunities to emerge armed with bold design innovations that can be used to strengthen local communities and economies and establish a new kind of architecture rooted in a sense of place and the mission to help improve people’s lives.

The most successful cities are being defined by their public destinations, which presents a major challenge and opportunity for design today. Examples of these public destinations are Bryant Park and Central Park in New York City and Lower Downtown in Denver, and are found in cities like Barcelona, Copenhagen, and Melbourne.

The best public destinations are defined by the local community. Nearly every city can point to at least one success story in which determined residents, guided by the principles of place making or creating great places, have made a difference in their hometowns.

via www.pps.org

Malcolm Wells, an architect ahead of his time, dies

Malcolm Wells, the visionary Cherry Hill architect who died Nov. 27 at 83, was considered a crackpot in 1964 when he gave up lucrative commissions for the RCA Corp., and began advocating underground buildings with earth-friendly sod roofs. But he lived long enough to see some of his most radical ideas become standard practice.

via www.philly.com

Art Like Earth Like Architecture: Biomimicry on a Grander Scale?

CREDIT: ALOS/ESA                                         CREDIT: Aqua/MODIS/NASA
CREDIT: EO-1/NASA

Amazing photos found on guardian.co.uk taken by the European Space Agency and NASA. Gives new meaning to the ideas of "Earth Architecture". (top left) The Tanezrouft basin, in the Sahara desert, south-central Algeria, (top right) Fires burned along the coast of Queensland, Australia, and (above) Caldera on the southern end of Onekotan Island, located off the southern tip of Russia's Kamchatka peninsula.

See all 19 photos at “Satellite eye on Earth: October”.

Return to IslandWood

I was pleasantly surprised to come across a “Virtual Tour of IslandWood” posted recently on Mithun Inc.’s blog. This may be one of the greenest, restorative, 255 acres on the planet. IslandWood is more than just an environmental education center; it’s an experience in design: integrated, biophilic, educational, transformational. The slideshow recaps the visit made by a group of ‘Mithunees’ in July, from IslandWood’s ‘entrance sequence’ out front and throughout the heavily-wooded site.

Even after seven years, IslandWood stands out as one of our best examples of green design, a place I was privileged to visit for nearly a full day while writing Integrated Design: Mithun. As described in "IslandWood, A Light in the Forest", the center’s very concept was experimental, with Mithun’s design process a mix equally of exploration and collaboration. Overarching goals for the project included:

• Protection of the entire property through environmentally-intelligent design
• Best practices in environmental education for a state-of-the-art facility
• Buildings that function as interactive learning tools
• Connections to nature

Located only a few miles from downtown Seattle on Bainbridge Island, IslandWood is both a return to another time and a glimpse of a possible future. In addition to the six-acre campus of buildings (3 of them LEED Gold), the site features a solar meadow, living machine, tree house, PV arrays, and healthy use of sustainable design strategies for daylighting, rainwater collection, natural ventilation, recycled materials, and more.

For more on IslandWood, see Mithun’s IslandWood and “A Light in the Forest”.

Bob Berkebile: 40 Years of Leadership

A very nice postcard/annnouncement from BNIM on founder Bob Berkebile's recent Heinz Award:

The email also read: "BNIM would like to congratulate our guardian Bob Berkebile on receiving a Heinz Award from Theresa Heinz and the Heinz Family Foundation for his leadership and commitment to the environment."

Congrats Bob!

Yes, Virginia, There is a Brad Pitt

Really nice coverage by TreeHugger of Brad Pitt’s appearance at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) this week. The piece includes a few example renderings of the green, affordable homes being designed and built for residents of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward as part of Pitt’s Make It Right Project (MIR) there. But the most compelling images perhaps are those of Brad with Bill Clinton and some of the MIR recipients on stage during the event. The photos say it all.

For his article, “How Brad Pitt Could Spark a Green Building Revolution”, Brian Merchant also sat down with Tom Darden of MIR and USGBC’s Rick Fedrizzi to discuss the broader significance of Make It Right and what it could mean for the green built environment. He writes:

“Everyone wins – New Orleans residents who tragically lost their homes get help moving back to their hometown. They'll live in great green homes (and save hundreds of dollars on their electric bills). The world gets an example of how green building is indisputable future of development. And that's how Brad Pitt (and Fedrizzi and Darden, of course) may help ignite a green building revolution.”

The CGI also offers this video of the 2009 Infrastructure Special Session and a short video of the MIR initiative, featuring interviews with Robert Green and other Lower Ninth Ward residents. It's a long session - the good stuff starts at the 4:07 mark.

Connecting the Dots: Climate Change & LEED

CREDIT: Always With Honor

Always With Honor is Tyler Lang and Elsa Chaves, Portland design collaborators who specialize in map, icon,  and information design. Their mission: to create work that helps break down complex information into simple (and fun) designs.

For Seed Magazine, they created “Connecting Distant Dots”, which they describe as “A diagram which maps out the connections between the most disparate of forces, events, and systems affecting our planet.”

See up close, along with other visualized concepts at Always With Honor.

What Green Architecture Really Means

   IBN, The Netherlands
   IMAGE: Behnisch Architekten

Architect David Cook of Behnisch Architekten takes a turn in flavorwire at describing why sustainable design/green architecture should be more than the sum of its parts: buildings for people, buildings for the planet:

“Increasingly misused in architecture, the term sustainability is in danger of becoming a mere label. In man’s relatively short occupation of the Earth, we have succeeded in acutely threatening its future and our habitat. However, we now appear to be gaining a common understanding of the urgency of these matters. Perhaps, for whatever reason, we have finally reached a “tipping point,” where we cannot remain in denial. For us sustainability is less a political issue than a humanistic issue; for qualities are just as important as quantities and a “sustainable,” or indeed “green,” architecture must not solely focus on environmental constraints or pre-defined performance criteria, but also celebrate the wealth and diversity of nature.

Buildings can only be spoken of in sustainable terms if they suit their purpose and are efficient to operate. Otherwise they consume unnecessary resources, are a burden to the owners and risk premature replacement. The process of design requires the consideration of the whole life cycle cost of a building, both in terms of economics and environmental impact; for buildings with a design life of 60 years, the cost of ownership and operation actually far exceeds the cost of construction. Therefore the design approach for any new construction should seek to maximize the efficiency of the building fabric in order to conserve resources in future operation. For us, sustainability in architecture is really about acknowledging the diversity of patterns of use and promoting the wide range of quite subtle, often conflicting, qualities in our built environment. In each project we seek to adopt design strategies which recognize that the building’s occupants and their response to their immediate environment as an integral part of these systems.”

Cook and his U.S.- and German-based partners are certainly as well qualified as anyone to address sustainability. Behnisch Architekten has designed some of the greenest built spaces on earth: The Genzyme Center near Boston, the Institute for Forestry and Nature Research (IBN) in The Netherlands, and RiverParc in Pittsburgh.

Read Cook’s full essay, “What Green Architecture Really Means“, here.

Genzyme Center, Cambridge, Mass., USA
IMAGE: Behnisch Architekten

LVA, Lubeck, Germany
IMAGE: Behnisch Architekten