Green ArchiTEXT

Steven Winter's Melody Uses Active Design Principles to Go Platinum

The Melody’s 63 units are surrounded by amenities for the active person — a sunny gym, an outdoor fitness circuit, play areas for children, balconies and ter- races. The new multifamily development, which opened its doors on June 1st, is the first project to achieve a LEED innovation point for the emerging field of Ac- tive Design. From the art- and music-filled stairwells to the signage prompting smart exercise choices, the LEED Platinum building is designed to help its occu- pants lead active and healthy lives.

The Melody is an afford- able housing project built on a former City-owned brownfield in the South Bronx, NY. Award- winning affordable hous- ing developer Blue Sea Development Company pursued the project in partnership with Habitat for Humanity of New York City, with support from NYC Housing Preservation and Development, NYC Hous- ing Development Corporation, NYS Homes and Community Renewal, NYC Dept. of Design and Construction, the Bronx Borough President, and NYSERDA. Steven Winter Associates, Inc. supported the green initiatives and ENERGY STAR certifica- tion on its third LEED for Homes Midrise Platinum certified collaboration with Blue Sea by providing field inspections, performance testing, energy analysis, docu- mentation, and commissioning services. READ MORE >>

Value of Solar Power Far Exceeds the Electricity

By John Farrell

From the ability to reduce peak demand on the transmission and distribution system, hedge against fuel price increases, or enhance grid and environmental security, solar power has a monetary value as much as ten times higher than its energy value. 

The cost of residential-scale distributed solar PV is around 23 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in a sunny climate like Los Angeles, 24 cents in Colorado.  While the average cost of grid-delivered wholesale electricity in many parts of the country is low (4 cents per kWh), a new report lists many ways that distributed solar adds value beyond electrons.

Distributed solar power provides electricity on-site or near to demand, reducing transmission losses, as well as wear-and-tear on utility equipment by mitigating peak demand.  It also eliminates the need to hedge against fuel price swings.  These benefits add 3 to 14 cents per kWh to the utility bottom line.

Distributed solar also provides value to society, by reducing the economic losses of blackouts (just 500 MW of distributed solar could have prevented the massive 2003 Northeast blackout), reducing pollution, hedging against finite fossil fuel supplies, and creating jobs.  These benefits add 11 to 16 cents to the taxpayer’s bottom line for every kWh of distributed solar. READ MORE >>

via www.renewableenergyworld.com

Robert Ivy on the Future of Architecture « The Dirt

At a meeting of the D.C. Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), Robert Ivy, the new CEO of the national organization and former editor of Architectural Record, said architects are already expanding their offerings beyond traditional building design to “supplemental services.” Eventually, architects may even become “creative consultants” to a wide range of industries, particularly given the drop-off in building work with the economic downturn. Business schools around the country are now promoting the benefits of “design-thinking” and architects may be uniquely positioned to “intuit, analyze, and solve problems in different ways.” Perhaps much the same can be said for landscape architects and other design professionals though.

The economic landscape has changed in the past few years. Just in 2008, at the height of the economic boom, architects were “cult figures.” It was the “era of the star, with Frank Gehry on billboards and Zaha Hadid on the cover of magazines.” Architecture was seen as “fantastic formalism.” Now, there’s a “different economic landscape. Projects are on hold, and the practice is also shifting.”

Indeed, architectural practice may be shifting in some positive ways. Ivy believes “sustainability is now widely embraced, and has been embedded into our designs. This is now our accepted way of working.” This new sustainable approach to design is crucial because of the dire pressures facing the planet. The global population is expected to grow to 9.4 billion. In the U.S., the population will hit 450 million by 2050. There has been an “assault on nature,” and architects must come up with design solutions to those environmental challenges. With increasingly cataclysmic weather events and earthquakes, “architects and engineers” (but not landscape architects or planners?) are central to “avoiding losses of life.” While designing aesthetic and inspiring buildings is important, perhaps designing safe buildings that can hold up in earthquakes is “more vital considering human life is at stake.”

Ivy sees the rise of cities as a largely positive phenonemon because urban living is how countries will create low-carbon societies. However, he argues all urban residents need to have a good quality of life, which will be a major challenge given two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities by 2025. He quoted Peter Calthorpe, who said in a recent interview: “urbanism is the foundation for a low carbon future,” and the most cost effective solution to climate change, even more so than renewable energy. In addition, David Owen’s arguments in “Green Metropolis” (see an interview) are used to emphasize the idea that “dense urban living is the most sustainable form of human organization.” Shanghai is cited as an example of the growing trend of the megalopolis, a collection of cities around a central city. While rural areas can be connected to cities via information and communication technologies (ICTs), cities themselves are still very important and the source of “knowledge and human innovation.” READ MORE >>

via dirt.asla.org

Infrastructure for All: Transforming transportation systems into multi-use infrastructure

Infrastructure for All from ASLA on Vimeo.

Fast-Forward Urbanism: Rethinking Architecture's Engagement with the City

By Shannon Harvey

The two most devastating urban catastrophes of recent memory in America, 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, also appear to be the most frequently cited examples of the failings of urbanism today. In rebuilding New Orleans, the only architects who were organized enough to immediately respond were the New Urbanists, and even their primarily prescriptive plan was quickly undermined by political, economic, and cultural forces. Similarly, at the World Trade Center site in New York, even the powerful vision of a singular, virtuosic architect has been compromised and transformed beyond recognition by the local political and market conditions.

In this post-Katrina, post-9/11, post-Bilbao, post-2008 moment, the principal players in the process of city-making (namely developers and policy-makers) have repeatedly treated architects as irrelevant in the battle for control. It is in this opportunistic urban landscape that Fast-Forward Urbanism seeks to reconfirm the role of architecture. Edited by Dana Cuff and Roger Sherman of cityLAB (a think-tank in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA), and stemming from the proceedings of a 2006 symposium on the topic, the book puts forward a collection of essays, opinions, and design projects that together lay the groundwork for a new theory of architecture-as-urbanism.

Fast-Forward Urbanism is based on the proposition that change today occurs as a series of jump-cuts, with effects appearing as if out of nowhere, without any sense of how we got there. The result is a fragmented urbanism that is only understood in retrospect, when historical narratives help piece together the disparate events. The editors propose eight principles of the fast-forward urbanism that call for a “rejiggering” of existing behaviors, encouraging an accumulation of interventions as a means of catalyzing change, and demanding a renewed connection to the local political economy.

The manifesto builds upon the infrastructural outlook of landscape urbanism but articulates a concern for the limited progress that the field has made in urban settings. At a time of unstable economic horizons, the grand gestures of a modernist tradition fail to address specific conditions, while “everyday urbanism” rejects the top-down flow of capital and all-too-readily relinquishes the role of design in shaping cities and stimulating their recovery. Fast-Forward Urbanism seeks to fill in the city’s weak spots not with unique projects but with systemic transformations that are neither top-down nor bottom-up and instead negotiate a middle-ground through applied research and the direct interaction of architecture with commercial and political spheres. READ MORE >>

via archpaper.com

The Cities Most Prepared For Climate Change | Fast Company

By Ariel Schwartz

Even if you haven't been paying attention to the seemingly nonstop stream of wacky weather recently, chances are that your local government has. According to the first Global C40 Cities Report, a look at how 42 of the world's largest cities (including Jakarta, Berlin, Los Angeles, and New York) are preparing for climate change, local governments are moving quickly to mitigate the effects of climate change--and profit from them, too. Few of these changes are happening at the nation level. But because cities can react more nimbly, we may see some of the most innovative responses to climate change coming out of our urban governments:

Plans To Increase Resilience

Twenty six of the C40 cities already have plans to protect their infrastructure against climate change. Sao Paolo has sped up the implementation of a drainage master plan, and Copenhagen plans to become the world's first carbon neutral capital city. Jakarta is taking advantage of an anticipated uptick in rainfall to think about extending green areas.

Capitalizing On Climate Change

Six very smart cities--Seoul, London, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Yokohama, and Rio de Janeiro--believe climate change is an opportunity "for economic growth and as a key area for differentiation, improved competitiveness and a timely opportunity to kick start a green economy." These cities realize, in other words, that they will be at a competitive advantage if they are more prepared, and that everyone is going to be needing climate-proof technology soon. READ MORE >>

via www.fastcompany.com