Green ArchiTEXT

Getting It Right: What Is Brad Pitt Really Doing for New Orleans?

To people who lived where the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood once lay, just east of the Industrial Canal in New Orleans, Katrina wasn't really a natural disaster. It's remembered more as a catastrophe of human design, the failure of poorly conceived levees and susceptible homes, the shoddy construction of one giving way to the complete destruction of the other.

"One of the architects we've worked with a lot, Bill McDonough, always says that design is the first signal of human intention," says Tom Darden, the executive director of the Make It Right foundation, which has been working to rebuild part of the neighborhood since 2007. "If you extrapolate that statement to New Orleans, what were we intending when we were building ranch-style slab-on-grade houses that were not elevated at all? That were below sea level? That were supposedly protected by man-made levees? Those houses had no chance of being protected."

The people at Make It Right, the organization founded by the architecture enthusiast Brad Pitt, have slowly been constructing a design solution to that original design problem. With the right kind of housing plans, they figure, you can design your way out of low-lying floodplains, out of 130-mile-an-hour winds, out of humidity, high heat, and higher electric bills.

via www.good.is

A Housing Project in Victoria That Embraces Nature

By Linda Baker (NY Times)

VICTORIA, British Columbia — Rare are the homeowners who welcome a sewage treatment plant in their backyards. But at Dockside Green, a 15-acre mixed-use development being built just north of this city’s downtown harbor, neighborhood utilities are less a cause for alarm than part of the amenity package.

“These are our best-selling units,” said Joe Van Belleghem, a local developer who won a city-sponsored competition in 2004 to develop Dockside Green. On a recent Friday afternoon, Mr. Van Belleghem was on site, pointing to ground-floor condominiums with decks jutting over a network of ponds and waterways containing native plants, otters and ducks.

The artificial creek circulates wastewater from an adjacent underground sewage treatment plant. That water is also used to flush toilets and irrigate the landscape — a closed system that helps reduce water bills for residents, provides a refuge for wildlife and “improves the marketability of the space,” Mr. Van Belleghem said.

“So it’s all integrated: the economic, the environmental, the social,” he added.

The holistic design is the hallmark of Dockside Green, which will eventually encompass 1.3 million square feet, including 26 buildings and 2,500 residents. READ MORE >>

via www.nytimes.com

NY Times: For a Premier Lab, a Zero-Energy Showcase

Department of Energy The new Research Support Facility in Golden, Colo., will generate as much energy as it uses.

The federal government has just finished construction on a zero-energy office building, the nation’s largest, and is hoping that commercial developers will follow its lead. The 222,000-square-foot Research Support Facility is on the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory campus in Golden, Colo. Just over 800 employees will occupy the building once it officially opens in late August.

A zero-energy building creates as much energy as it uses over the course of a year, said John Andary, a principal at Stantec, the sustainable design consultants for the project. Thanks to various “passive” design techniques and technologies, the facility will consume 50 percent less energy than buildings constructed to current commercial codes, he predicts. The remaining power needs will be generated onsite from solar panels, allowing the building to operate at an annual net-zero energy basis.

Remarkably, many of the efficiency “innovations” are existing building techniques, some of them centuries old, that were developed to make the best use of natural light and the earth’s ability to heat and cool. By contrast, modern building design, based on the ubiquity of cheap energy, moved away from many of those principles.

via green.blogs.nytimes.com

Forbes: The Most High-Tech Green Buildings

Buildings that communicate and change shape to keep their occupants comfortable and safe.

In Pictures: The Most High-Tech Green Buildings

In England there is a building made with insulation that can be inflated or deflated to adjust to outside temperatures. In Germany there is a house designed to be easily disassembled and recycled. The New York Times Co. building is draped in shades that automatically adjust to the movement of the sun. In Milwaukee a museum changes its very shape to shade itself.

The point of a building is to keep its inhabitants comfortable: Humans want to be warm (but not too warm) and dry. The problem comes in providing heating or cooling, and replacing the light lost when the sun is shut out. The solutions are becoming ever more creative.

via www.forbes.com