Green ArchiTEXT

Beautiful Strangeness for a Sustainable World

The latest work from Alastair Fuad-Luke is Design Activism: Beautiful Strangeness for a Sustainable World (2009), an overview of the origins and continuing influence of design activism. Fuad-Luke also recently published The Eco-Design Handbook and The Eco-travel Handbook. In her review, Ann Thorpe writes:

Fuad-Luke comments that conventional notions of beauty are those that align with financial profitability, a profitability that is ultimately destructive in social and environmental terms. He argues that instead, “we need new visions of beauty—we could call this beauty, ‘beautiful strangeness’, a beauty that is not quite familiar, tinged with newness, ambiguity and intrigue, which appeals to our innate sense of curiosity,” a beauty that, rather than stemming from profits, stems from resilience. Positioning of the goal of activism—its destination—in aesthetic terms is important for a design audience, but selection of the word “strangeness” strikes me as unfortunate given the weight of negative connotations that terms such as “activism” and “sustainability” already confront. We are in need of more resonant rallying cries, and the book does offer these within its pages.

via designactivism.net

Can Skyscrapers Be Green? Yes, Says Ken Yeang

But first, he says, architects, designers and governments must realize that there is more to green design than "stuffing buildings with ecogadgetry or getting a certification."

The industry must revolutionize the entire building cycle, says Mr. Yeang, "from the extraction of materials to make the building material...to [their] transportation, storage and delivery, to the design, construction and assembly of the building, to the...transportation and movement of people to and from the building." The goal is to build structures that not only have a minimal impact on the natural environment but also benefit the ecology of the site and the world's climate.

via online.wsj.com

Toronto's Sherbourne Park: Water Treatment As Green Infrastructure

IMAGE: WATERFRONTToronto

Waterfront Toronto, the innovative and ambitious plan to revitalize Toronto’s old harbour, has led to the development of Sherbourne Park, a new $28 million storm water treatment facility that will also function as an accessible public park. It’s a prime example of green infrastructure in action. The Star writes: “The idea that everything we build in a city should do double- (even triple-) duty is one whose time has come.”

Sherbourne park will be designed to ”reveal, even celebrate” the process of storm water purification. By making the water infrastructure visible, the designers also believe that they will demonstrate the system’s complexity (and its value) to an indifferent public. ”At a time when Canada’s infrastructure deficit stands at $123 billion, such exposure couldn’t be more welcome. These are the systems, usually out of sight and out of mind, that provide the basic urban functions we take for granted but can no longer afford to do so.”

via dirt.asla.org

Is LEED Losing Its Edge?

"LEED Support Slips Again in Construction Industry", reports Environmental Leader:

Nearly 93 percent of design and construction professionals continue to endorse green building despite the recession, according to a new green building survey. The survey also finds that support for the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification slipped again in 2009, widening the gap between support for green construction and LEED certification.

The “Fourth Annual Green Building Study” (PDF) reveals that support for green construction has slipped slightly over the past three years — 96 percent of respondents supported green construction in 2007, 93.5 percent in 2008 and 92.3 percent in 2009. There was a more significant change in LEED support, falling 11 percent in 2008 and 4.7 percent in 2009, with 62 percent of respondents supporting LEED certification. In 2007, 77.4 percent of respondents supported LEED certification and 66.4 percent in 2008.

via www.environmentalleader.com

U.S. Directs $36 Million Toward Net-Zero Building Research

By Tim McKeough

Reflecting the rapidly growing interest in sustainable design and construction technologies, the U.S. Department of Energy has announced new funding to support research on net-zero energy buildings.

Berkeley Lab plans to use the funds to construct a new facility to research net-zero energy buildings. While the lab currently tests building products, “with this new facility, we’re scaling up to full building systems,” explains Stephen Selkowitz, head of the Building Technologies Department in the lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division. Plans are still being finalized, but the project is expected to consist of a series of structures, either standalone or within existing buildings on campus, for researching HVAC systems, facade systems, lighting and interiors, skylights, and building sensors and controls. The centerpiece will be a set of three 5,000-square-foot structures where these different systems can be tested together.

via archrecord.construction.com

It Takes A Village? Checking In On Slate's Collective-Intelligence Home Efficiency Experiment

As you might expect, much of the interest and conflict in the piece comes from the confrontation between what David Owen calls LEED Brain – that is, the urge to solve every efficiency problem in the most ostentatiously futuristic and expensive newfangled fashion – and the fact that such comparatively dull efficiency measures as improved insulation are far more effective than, say, solar showers or suburban-scale geothermal. There's something gratifying about Slate taking a break from tweaking expectations to get as service-y as Gross does here, in his recent celebration of insulation. "Insulation is more expensive and more intrusive than things like smart meters, programmable thermostats, or compact fluorescents," Gross writes. "Improving your insulation could involve cutting holes in walls and ceilings, ripping some stuff out, and blowing or rolling other stuff in.

via www.greenbuildingsnyc.com

David Orr | The Hour Glass

Editorial by David Orr of Oberlin College, one of our best thinkers and writers on sustainable design and education, for Solutions Journal:

A Copernican shift is underway in fields as diverse as agriculture, materials science, architecture, engineering, business, economics, urban planning, waste management, national security, and many others. In every case, it is driven by the need to discover patterns and larger systems essential to reaching higher levels of efficiency and lower environmental impacts—and by the requirements of fairness and human decency. The second driver is the need to extend horizons for planning, accounting, and decision-making to a longer-term view, in order to improve resilience and stability. This revolution in design goes by a variety of names: natural-systems agriculture, biomimicry, green business, the fifth discipline, green building, ecological economics, ecological engineering. By whatever name, it reflects common purposes and similar dynamics across fields, and it arises from a common set of principles. But the various conversations arising from the design revolution are still confined to separate disciplinary arenas, each with its own jargon, methods, and focus.

via www.thesolutionsjournal.com

On Seeing Air

By Jennifer Yoos

The growing crisis of pollution and global climate change has made the chemistry of the earth’s atmosphere the most pressing problem of the 21st Century. It has also made the performative aspects of architecture much more a part of architectural discourse. If we learn to see air as the essential medium of architectural space, we will also begin to see it as a fundamental material shaping habitation and form. If we avoid building metaphors of fluidity in favor of acting directly upon the temporal field, we may gain a new understanding more appropriate to contemporary conditions of architecture as a mediator of the environment. Architects could even move beyond ceding the design of air movement to mechanical engineers and HVAC systems and engage it as an essential issue in defining the shape of buildings.

via www.arcadejournal.com

Martin Melaver on Sustainable Development

Eric Corey Freed interviews green developer Martin Melaver, CEO of Melaver, Inc.: on the place of sustainable design in real estate, a new approach to business, and recreating the urban fabric. Based in Savannah, Georgia, Melaver is known for its green shopping centers throughout the southeast, including Abercorn Common, the First LEED Retail Center in the U.S.

MartinMalaver from Urban ReVision on Vimeo.

How's the environment doing? Ask the buildings

PHOTO: CNN

By Niicolai Hartvig

Imagine that you could double the size of your apartment as a reward for saving electricity, water and gas. It's an idea proposed by the Seoul-based design collective Randomwalks and architect Lee Min-soo for the green redevelopment of Incheon, outside the South Korean capital.

Called Data Formation, apartments would start at 90 square meters, with a system of sliding modules stretching the space according to how much energy each dweller uses and saves. Bespoke furniture would be designed to fit the size-shifting rooms.

via edition.cnn.com