Green ArchiTEXT

First Net-Zero Neighborhood in the U.S. Being Built in Boulder

A new development in the north of Boulder, CO stands to be the first completely net-zero neighborhood in the U.S. Dubbed SpringLeaf Boulder, the project aims to bring net-zero homes “to the masses” by streamlining green technologies and driving down costs. The twelve homes are designed for LEED Platinum certification, will be fully powered by photovoltaic systems, and are very close to shops and restaurants, creating a little eco-community within Boulder.

via www.inhabitat.com

Dallas Creating a Carbon-Neutral Urban Block

Dallas aims to take a vacant inner-city block behind City Hall and transform it into a carbon-neutral, sustainable community.

Urban Re:Vision- Dallas and the Central Dallas Community Development Corp. have chosen a design for the community.

Dubbed “Forwarding Dallas,” the city block aims to run off the grid, reports PegasusNews.

via www.environmentalleader.com

"dia vlog" with David Orr: Confronting Climate Collapse

Green thinker David Orr (Design on the Edge, The Nature of Design) on his latest book - Down to the Wire.

Confronting Climate Collapse

• David’s new book, “Down to the Wire” (02:59)
• How bad would climate change be for the US? (09:24)
• The costs of climate change vs. the costs of fighting it (12:47)
• Are the consequences clear enough to demand major changes? (07:06)
• Killer asteroids vs. melting ice caps (07:54)
• David favors cap-and-trade bill, but suggests much greater action (03:59)

Homes of the Future: BaleHaus at Bath

Climate Change and Culture Shift?

FLYP is an amazing online/multimedia magazine. In this essay, Alan Stoga wonders about "Change We Don't Think We Can Afford".

The Curious Designs of Make It Right

WebUrbanist offers a quick look at some of the designs created by 21 local and internationally-known architects assembled for New Orleans' Make It Right Project - an 'eco village' emerging within the Lower 9th Ward of 150 green, affordable, storm-resistant homes.

"Make it Right in New Orleans: 5 Slick New Home Designs" highlights renderings based on the traditional "shotgun" style vernacular, including those from Adjaye Architects, Kieran Timberlake, Pugh & Scarpa's single family homes and duplexes inspired by American patchwork quilting traditions, and the MVRDV 'bent house'.

See the full article and renderings here.

Architecture as Nature: the Digital-Botanic Designs of Dennis Dollens

The current issue of Leonardo Journal (Vol. 42, Issue 5, 2009) features a new article by artist Dennis L. Dollens, outlining his ideas on a biology-based procedure for experimental digital architecture. In “Architecture as Nature: A Biodigital Hypothesis”, he writes of theoretical ideas emphasizing biodesign and bioarchitecture's role as part of nature. In addition, “new projects and digitally grown tree/truss experiments illustrate generative, digital-botanic designs integrating biological simulation and/or 3D parametric components inspired by nature."

In part, the piece further explores the historical precedents of Louis Sullivan's System of Architectural Ornament (1924) and Dollens’ own earlier paper in Leonardo in 2005, “A System of Digital-Botanic Architecture”:

“…how visual biomimetics and digital production can present ways to conceive, visualize, generate, draw and model physical forms from natural elements such as shells, seeds, plants, rocks, etc. In particular, the author explains how designs 'grown' in plant-generating software can be deployed in other software and built as stereolithography (STL) models to illustrate a new system of architectural and sculptural design and production."

Go to Leonardo Journal for more information.

Also see Dennis Dollen's Web site, Exodesic.

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”.

Cities in Motion, Shifting Landscapes and Systems in Chaos

CREDIT: Semiconductor Films, Time Out of Place

Environmental Graffiti continually discovers the most amazing images, videos and art installations – all centered on nature, environmental science, the built environment. Recently the site featured Semiconductor, UK artists Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt, who use digital animation to explore sound, time and natural forces.

“Sound As You’ve Never Seen it Before” begins:

“People become trains, trains become movement and sound, and time blurs into past, present and future simultaneously. Meet Semiconductor, a Brighton-based artist duo obsessed with our environment, landscape, architecture, chaos theory and other subjects. In creative and original fashion, they have been creating cutting-edge digital artworks – their sound films – since 1999.”

Semiconductor describes their moving image works as revealing “cities in motion, shifting landscapes and systems in chaos.“ Short films include The Sound of Microclimates, Acousticity, Earthmoves, Matter in Motion, and Time Out of Place (from
 2007), illustrating how  the Kings Cross area in London “is rapidly transforming, creating a city in flux.”

Returning the Urban Forest

A nice interview with Wangari Maathai, 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and global advocate of reforestation, in the November/December 2009 issue of Resurgence Magazine. Professor Maathai is founder of The Greenbelt Movement (GBM) and backed by the Billion Tree Campaign, which was launched in Nairobi in 2006 in association with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

Reflecting on her upcoming trip to the COP15 Copenhagen Climate Conference next month, she commented in the interview:

“I also encourage the protection of standing trees. We have not yet appreciated the true value of the tree: it stabilises the soil; it gives us shade; if it is a fruit tree it gives us fruit. The tree fixes carbon for us; gives us oxygen; regulates the composition of the air… Trees are a wonderful gift to humanity!”

Read the full interview here.

While much of the Greenbelt Movement’s work is focused on massive tree-planting projects in Kenya and the Congo Basin Forest, her message extends beyond Africa. The organization has extended its work internationally to Europe and the U.S. Although not connected directly with GBM, urban reforestation – the power of habitat corridors and greenbelts within cities – seems to be a theme gaining momentum worldwide, such as with ReForest London and “Return to the Forest Where We Live”, the PBS series about the devastation on urban forests in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast caused by Hurricane Katrina. Among the most extensive restorative designs devoted to this idea currently, at least within the urban environment, is Mithun’s Lloyd Crossing Sustainable Urban Design Plan & Catalyst Project, an AIA COTE Top Ten winner in 2005.