Green ArchiTEXT

Portland Commits to the World's Greenest Office Building | The Atlantic Cities

By Brian Libby

Leave it to a city both satirized and celebrated for its earnest quirkiness to buck the trend.

While governments from Washington to Athens hack their budgets, and Wall Street’s fervor for solar and other alternative power companies wanes amid bankruptcies and falling stocks, last week Portland’s city council affirmed its commitment to the $62 million Oregon Sustainability Center, a public-private partnership to construct what would be the world’s greenest office building.

If constructed next year as planned, the Center would be the nation’s first mixed-use office building to meet Living Building Challenge strictures, which are far more rigid than even the Platinum-level LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) certification offered by the U.S. Green Building Council. The building, situated downtown near Portland State University (one of its development partners along with the City of Portland and local private developer Gerding-Edlen), is designed to achieve net-zero levels of electricity and water usage. READ MORE >>

via www.theatlanticcities.com

Preservation and Sustainability: The District Approach | Metropolis POV

By Julia Levitt

In 2009, The National Trust for Historic Preservation launched its Preservation Green Lab. Based in Seattle and headed by developer and urban policy consultant Liz Dunn, the Lab’s mission is to work with cities to develop new policies that leverage the value of the existing building stock as a resource for achieving cities’ overall sustainability and climate action goals.

As Dunn says, her work is founded on a belief that “existing buildings can be made to perform very well environmentally (and many of them already do)  but they also contribute to social and economic uses that cities care about when they think broadly about sustainability — including affordability, walkability, opportunities for local businesses, and overall quality of life.”

According to the Lab, district energy is one of the most promising solutions for bringing valuable old buildings up to new standards. District energy systems generate thermal energy at a central plant and distribute it to a group of buildings via underground pipes carrying hot or cold water. These systems are widely used throughout Northern Europe and are common in the U.S. for large campus-based institutions like hospitals and universities that benefit from economies of scale. Pioneering projects, including cities like St. Paul, Minnesota, Portland Oregon and West Union, Iowa, have brought renewed interest to the time-tested system. READ MORE >>

via www.metropolismag.com

The Architecture of Disaster Recovery | Solutions

Joplin, Missouri, September 2011

Terrific piece in Solutions Journal, out now.

By Marie Aquilino, Deborah Gans, Robin Cross, Francesca Galeazzi, and Sergio Palleroni

Two hundred million people have been affected by natural disasters and hazards in the last decade. For every person who dies, some 3,000 are left facing terrible risks. Ninety-eight percent of these victims live in the developing world, where billions of dollars in aid are absorbed annually by climatic and geologic crises. Extreme temperatures, intense heat waves, increased flooding, and droughts due to climate change are expected to turn ever more people into “eco-refugees.” Among those most affected are recent migrants to cities, where the need for space is so great that many elect to live on dangerous sites such as unstable slopes, fault lines, and flood plains.

The lack of suitable planning—both before the disaster and afterward—is a striking problem with which the design world has only slowly been coming to terms. Following the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, which killed more than 200,000 people, the first questions were asked about the role and responsibility of architects in disaster risk management. A succession of disasters like the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province, China, and the 2010 earthquake near Port-au-Prince, Haiti, have offered urgent reminders that professional architects—whether in the developing or developed world—are generally absent from efforts to protect people from disaster. They have had no sustained role in shaping policy or leading best practices in disaster prevention, mitigation, and recovery. There is still no career path that prepares students to work as urgentistes—design professionals who intervene at a crucial moment in the recovery process to produce enduring solutions.

But who, if not architects and planners, is in charge of rebuilding towns and villages leveled by earthquakes and cyclones and of ensuring that the same level of destruction does not occur again? The answer is disquieting: no one. Typically, a patchwork of nongovernmental charities, government agencies, and local residents cobble together solutions. Few among them specialize in building homes or infrastructure before disaster strikes, and rarely are they screened for expertise. Competing mandates and donor priorities, weak coordination, fragmented knowledge, and a blatant disregard for environmental health often characterize the failed practices that prevail after a disaster, and that lead to new dangers as well as intolerable waste. After the Indian Ocean tsunami, the World Conservation Union in Sri Lanka reported that mangroves were cleared haphazardly, trees decimated, and sand dunes mined, and that debris contaminated water supplies and blocked drainage canals. Such environmental degradation puts communities at risk for generations. It does not help that most shelter groups define themselves solely in terms of emergency work, which stops abruptly at the transitional-shelter stage, precluding long-term solutions and effectively condemning people to years of inadequate housing. Still fewer have the breadth of view to go beyond housing and tackle schools or clinics—the public buildings and public spaces which form the built environment that can save or threaten life. Donors aggravate the problem further by insisting on short-term results. READ MORE >>

via www.thesolutionsjournal.com

Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans, February 2007

Bjarke Ingels: Sustainable Cities of the Future (VIDEO)

Cities as Ecosystems: A Fresh Look

By Michael Totty

Cities are hot (as in buzz, not global warming) among environmental thinkers, thanks in part to the growing consensus that dense urban areas represent the most sustainable way for billions of people to live (at least when compared with suburban sprawl). So we asked some economists, planners and urban experts to suggest the most influential books on sustainable cities. Here are their recommendations:

Matthew Kahn is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, teaching in the school's Institute of the Environment and the departments of economics and public policy.

"Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence" By Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy

"The Transit Metropolis: A Global Inquiry" By Robert Cervero

Both books introduced me to the broad idea of how a city's urban form affects its residents' travel behavior. Put simply, when people live and work at higher density in closer proximity to fast public transit, they are more likely to use public transit, and the end result is a smaller per capita carbon footprint. It is important to note that none of these authors are economists—economists can learn plenty from urban planners!

Peter Weingarten is the director of architecture in the San Francisco office of the Gensler architecture, design and planning firm.

"Living in the Endless City" By Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic, editors

"Living in the Endless City" is a companion to the 2008 publication "The Endless City." These two books are essential reading for anyone interested in a comprehensive understanding of the state of contemporary cities. Economic sustainability underpins any truly sustainable development. Few books do as good a job as these two at articulating the scope of challenges today's cities face. The contributors lay out a veritable mountain of information and statistics on the changes facing contemporary cities, from urban migration to energy consumption and climate change. READ MORE >>

via online.wsj.com

Can We Handle Nature’s New Norm? « Natural Capitalism Solutions

By William S. Becker

Whether or not we are ready to conclude that today’s extreme weather events are linked to global climate change, it would be utterly irresponsible for us to ignore the possibility.

Failing to minimize and manage the risk is a dereliction of duty to everyone who is vulnerable. That includes us all in one way or another, as victims or taxpayers. Ironically, our own practices over the last century have made us more vulnerable. For example:

False Security: We have spent billions of dollars on dams, levees and other structures to protect lives and property from floods, the most common natural disaster in the United States. These structures have saved lives, but they’ve also produced a deadly false sense of security.

Many levees were built originally to protect sparsely populated rural areas and farms. Over the decades, people and property moved in, assuming the levees would protect them. But the levees do not meet the standards required for populated locations.

In reality, no engineer can predict with certainty what nature will do and no structure can guarantee our safety. There are countless examples, including those in the news today, of communities flooded despite the presence of engineered structures. But the most iconic example is Rapid City, South Dakota, which believed it was protected by dams. On the evening of June 9, 1972, a storm stalled over the city, dumping hundreds of tons of rain. One flood control dam was breached; the rain fell below a second dam, making it useless. Nearly 240 people died, more than 3,000 were injured and damages reached $165 million (more than $820 million in 2009 dollars).

Aging Infrastructure: There are more than 85,000 dams in the United States today; their average age is 51. In dam years, that’s old. The latest analysis by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) found that 15,237 dams are considered high hazards and more than 4,000 are unsafe. Overall, ASCE gave America’s dams a grade of D.

Levees got an even worse grade. There are more than 100,000 miles of levees in the United States; 4 of every 10 Americans live in locations ostensibly protected by them. The ASCE grades their condition as D-minus.

Deferred maintenance is part of the problem. Nearly 90 percent of dams and 85 percent of levees in the United States are locally owned. The federal government may have helped build them, but maintenance usually is the responsibility of the farms, drainage districts and communities they were built to protect. Many communities have not been keeping up; budget problems suggest they cannot catch up. READ MORE >>

via www.natcapsolutions.org

Biophilic Design: The Architecture of Life (Trailer)

Biophilic Design: The Architecture of Life (Trailer) from Tamarack Media on Vimeo.

Living Buildings: Are AEC Firms up to the Challenge?

By Edward Keegan

Over the last decade, the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program has established itself as the preeminent industry standard for rating green buildings. Despite LEED’s remarkable success, however, there has emerged a determined contingent of USGBC loyalists—many with “LEED AP” after their names—who nonetheless feel that LEED simply does not go far enough. These supergreen eco-warriors have united under the banner of the International Living Building Challenge.

The nesting ground of the Living Building Challenge is the Cascadia Green Building Council, encompassing Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska. It should come as no surprise that such an initiative would find a home in the Pacific Northwest, long a bastion of environmental pioneering and leadership.

The prime mover behind the Living Building Challenge is Jason McLennan, LEED AP, a Canadian-born architect who was involved with LEED from its early days as a principal at Kansas City-based BNIM, where he worked with the legendary Bob Berkebile, FAIA. McLennan and Berkebile were hashing out the basic outlines of the “living buildings” concept, in print and in public discourse, in the late 1990s, when LEED was still in its nascence. McLellan was project manager on two of the first 10 LEED pilot projects, notably the David and Lucile Packard Foundation headquarters, from which came the Packard Matrix (2001), a groundbreaking study that attempted to quantify the relative first costs and life cycle costs of LEED and living buildings. READ MORE >>

via www.bdcnetwork.com

'World’s greenest building’ to welcome U.K. students

Students moving into a new halls of residence in a Yorkshire city next week can lay claim to living in the most sustainable building in the whole world.

With solar panels to heat up water, rain captured to flush the toilets and a screen in the kitchens showing how much power is being used, Bradford University’s new £40m student village has been named as a global leader.

The Green, which was launched yesterday on the edge of the city centre on the university’s main campus, is one of only 15 developments across the world to be ranked as outstanding by an international system measuring environmental building standards.

More than a million buildings around the world have been assessed by BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment) since it was created two decades ago – but nothing has ever been given a higher score than Bradford University’s new student village. READ MORE >>

via www.yorkshirepost.co.uk

Oberlin Project Envisions New Future for City and College

By Allegra Kirkland

The Oberlin Project, brainchild of the College’s Paul W. Sears Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics, David Orr, has recently taken its first steps toward changing the way the members of the Oberlin community live, work, consume and study at Oberlin. The project, organized around five principle goals, is a concerted effort in what Orr refers to as “full-spectrum sustainability:” an all-encompassing joint venture by the town and College to create a thriving, sustainable and environmentally friendly community in Oberlin.

The principle goals of the Oberlin Project are constructing a downtown green arts district, achieving climate neutrality for both city and College, creating a green belt for agriculture and forestry and the realization of these aims as an educational alliance between the College and other local schools. Additionally, in an effort unrelated to the College, the project hopes to serve as a model that can be replicated in towns and cities across the United States.

Ten teams — consisting of educators, city politicians, community leaders and policymakers — are simultaneously working on specific aspects of these overarching goals under the leadership of Orr, College President Marvin Krislov, Managing Director Bryan Stubbs and Eric Norenberg, Oberlin’s city manager. The project is expected to take more than a decade to complete.

As Orr said, “Full-spectrum sustainability is not a simple conversation. … It’s a fancy way to describe a lot of conversations that occur between the boundaries by which we organized the industrial world.” READ MORE >>

via www.oberlinreview.org