Green ArchiTEXT

Green Building and a critique of biomimicry, part 1

By Andrea Brennen

There is something undeniably cool about Biomimicry as an approach to green building. Looking to natural systems and processes for inspiration for design solutions just seems like a good idea. The proponents of biomimetic architecture are convincing; their images are sexy; the reasoning, at first glance, seems infallible. Is there a catch to this utopian green building philosophy?

As with other approaches to green building, biomimicry brings with it a very optimistic - borderline-visionary rhetoric. Nature, believers will tell you, has answers; lots of answers; all the answers we need! Sure, nature has been around longer than we have, and yes, there are lots of examples of cases where "natural" models have offered inspiration for how to solve complex and complicated predicaments. However, as much as I want to believe that biomimicry is the solution to all of our green building woes, there are a couple of things about this approach that I haven't quite been able to reconcile.

Biomimicry re-enforces an overly-simplistic distinction between "nature" over there and us [humans, designers, architects, etc.] over here. If you read between the lines, the over-arching assumption is that "nature" is pure and logical and balanced and good and we are, well, somewhere in between not and less so, depending on your personal environmental politics. The implication is that as humans, we are flawed; therefore, we ought to look to "nature," the ultimate teacher, in an effort to understand and replicate the "right" [i.e. "natural"] way of doing thingsyou know, all of the things we have ignored and overlooked over the past few hundred years of our mis-guided modernity.

via www.justmeans.com

Let's Colour Project: Transforming Rio, Paris, London

Dulux's 'Let's Colour' by Euro RSCG London. It's fantastic: a crack team from Dulux travels the world, partnering with local communities to rejuvenate areas of urban decay. Apparently brand representatives, bloggers, Dulux executives and creatives from the agency visited Jodhpur, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, London, among other cities.

Armed with brushes, ladders and cans of paint, they created a 'colour movement'. They organised groups of people in these challenged communities who then set about beautifying their houses, streets, squares, schools and even a multi-story parking lot.

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What was once depressing becomes delightful. What was once dark becomes bright. What was once scary becomes welcoming. The grey is out, the gloom is literally gone. Progress from each city was documented by members of the team via their Twitter feeds and a video and photo journal was compiled at the campaign blog (www.letscolourproject.com). Very moving indeed.

via www.contagiousmagazine.com

Proactively enabling sustainable design

Paul Tunstall and Brian Spires, sustainability director of HLM Architects, explain the practice's innovations to embed sustainability into the design process.

Quality design and sustainability are more intrinsically linked than ever before - numerous and ever more stringent sustainability regulations have seen to that. Architects and indeed all members of the construction team must embrace and integrate sustainability into their approach, whatever their service. At HLM, we've created a suite of tools that facilitate and encourage sustainable design. We hope that others will take the same initiative and follow suit to improve the quality of every building we, as an industry, create. READ MORE >>

via www.building4change.com

Zen and the Art of Design

Human ingenuity is bounded only by what we can identify as an opportunity through unmediated experience.

By David Sherwin

Questioning Our Patterns

This, to me, is the secret to the greatest leaps made in design. Human ingenuity is only bounded by what we can identify as an opportunity through unmediated experience. The act of identification with what you observe is not work — but observation itself is the surest path to discerning human intent. Design then follows from that intent, and with it, our work begins.

This may sound reductive, but we are too often caught up in the patterns that shape our daily lives to question them. We must learn to observe them without filtering everyday moments through our preconceptions. We can submerge our hands in the river of lived experience, but as soon as we try to grab hold of the water, it flows out of our grasp. Some may feel sly and cup their hands to trap the water, but they will only see what the liquid reflects. Others stare into the river, but only see what rocks and creatures struggle beneath its surface. But those who choose to observe the river without preconception can shift their idea of self out of the way of what they observe. They become the river. Then, in that observation, they can capture more directly what they have experienced and share it with others. It can become the work. READ MORE >>

via designmind.frogdesign.com

Oregon Sustainability Center’s Living Building Tower

The living building challenge was created by the Cascadia Green Building Council to guide commercial development that would be net-zero energy and net-zero water use. Based in Portland, the Oregon Sustainability Center has stepped up to the challenge as they are working to build the first high rise of its kind to follow this standard. They first approach the issue with aggressive passive design. Proper fenestration, thermal mass and natural cooling is carefully incorporated. User energy consumption will be carefully monitored with feedback and active systems to encourage the occupant’s management of energy usage.

Active solar energy production, then, is anticipated to provide the building with its net yearly energy consumption. Four separate solar panel installation systems will be incorporated into the building to maximize solar output while shading the glazing from midday solar gain. Water systems are designed to minimize consumption and maximize reuse before final treatment and discharge. Rain catchment and greywater are plumbed into the building. All excess water will be discharged by various means onsite or nearby.

via www.evolo.us

Striving for Zero in New York City

A modular-construction project underway in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood aims to be one of the first live-work structures in the city to achieve NZE performance.

By Richard Defendorf

The Red Hook section of Brooklyn isn’t what it used to be. Less than 20 years ago it was regarded as a desolate patch of New York City borough that was no stranger to urban struggle. The neighborhood in recent years hasn’t exactly shaken off its social and maritime/industrial legacies, but the community has been living up to its recently acquired “resindustrial” reputation.

One bit of evidence supporting that notion is a live/work project called Redhook Green.

Announced in December, Redhook Green is designed as a four-story modular structure with about 4,000 sq. ft. of interior space, including an apartment, offices, a studio, and a multi-car garage. The project’s developer, technology and media entrepreneur Jay Amato, noted that the shell of the building, which features a stacked-container appearance, is designed to provide R-50 thermal resistance and net-zero-energy performance. If it meets the performance criterion, it will be one of the first NZE live/work projects in New York City

via www.greenbuildingadvisor.com

NPR: Celebrating the New Greensburg

PHOTO: www.547artscenter.org

Three years ago, the town of Greensburg, Kan., was almost totally destroyed by a tremendous tornado. Ninety percent of the population became instantly homeless. Eleven people died.

Near Main Street, there is still evidence of the devastation: Piles of brick and debris, flat empty lots filled with a dusting of snow and dirt, skeletons of trees that once made up the beautiful arbor that this town was known for.

But there is also new growth: a super-energy-efficient City Hall made from reclaimed brick and wood; an art center powered by the sun and wind; and in the distance a home modeled on a geodesic dome. They're things you wouldn't expect to find in rural conservative Kansas.

via www.npr.org

What does a living hill look like?

IMAGE: Forrest Fulton Architecture

Forrest Fulton Architecture has created an 85,000 sqm 'living hill' for a proposal of a new development  for Yerevan, Armenia.

Lace Hill stitches the adjacent city and landscape together to support a holistic, green lifestyle, somewhere between rural hillside living and dense cultured urbanity

To create a new, firmly rooted architecture-urbanism-landscape, the project morphs the common urban element of Yerevan, the superblock, to the site, a truncated hill along the natural amphitheater of Yerevan. This act extends the amphitheater and completes the hill, creating more capacity or 'seats for the viewing of Yerevan and Mt. Ararat. READ MORE >>

IMAGE: Forrest Fulton Architecture

via www.architectureanddesign.com.au

Giving Green Buildings a Smarter Skin

Of the three essential material necessities – food, clothing and shelter – buildings represent the biggest capital cost and embody the most energy. Depending on how you add up life cycle costs and inputs, they account for about 40 percent of our energy usage.

Many have long argued that we design and make buildings in a flawed way. It is only relatively recently, however, that alternatives have been proposed that employ paradigms, rather than just forms, from nature. Are these paradigms just extensions of the old “building as machine” utopian dream? I think they are fundamentally different and will outline below why I think so and describe one of the pioneering partnerships that may change the way we make buildings. READ MORE >>

via www.greenbiz.com

Tulane's URBANbuild Makes it Right

Construction underway on the first duplex at the Make It Right Project (March 2010)

By Ryan Rivet, Tulane

The School of Architecture's URBANbuild program was conceived before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast region, but after the storm, the project has become focused on the recovery process. This year, URBANbuild 5 continued that mission by teaming with another group with the same focus, the Make It Right project in the Lower Ninth Ward.

URBANbuild project architect Byron Mouton says the partnership with Make It Right was a natural fit. Make It Right, conceived by actor Brad Pitt, embraces new technologies and energy-efficient materials in its homes, just as URBANbuild does.

"There are lots of people out here with similar ambitions, trying new systems and technologies and figuring things out together," Mouton says. "Since we're using all these new methods, all the builders are sharing what they learned." READ MORE >>

via tulane.edu