Green ArchiTEXT

GOOD: Why 'The Death of Architecture' May Not Be Such a Bad Thing

By John Cary

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Architecture conjures up all sorts of images in the minds of non-architects: rolls of blueprints, soaring buildings, a life of glamour and fame. But even the most famous architects say the past and present realities of the profession are markedly different. Becoming an architect today requires grueling hours, a disproportionate amount of education, years-long licensing hurdles, and finicky clients, while yielding relatively low pay and career stability compared to other learned professions.

More detrimentally for both the public’s perception and opportunities within the field, architecture remains a luxury available only to a privileged few. The field has long wrestled with its elitism; books have been written, conferences staged, and museum exhibitions mounted around estimates that architecture and good design are accessible to only a select sliver of the population. Yet architecture shapes everyone by creating the environments around us, impacting our collective quality of life. As philosopher Alain de Botton once wrote, “Belief in the significance of architecture is premised on the notion that we are, for better or worse, different people in different places—and on the conviction that it is architecture’s task to render vivid to us who we might ideally be.”

Like public health did for medicine, the emerging field of public interest design offers a new direction for architecture, one that takes into account the needs of the other 99 percent of the population that has historically been marginalized or disempowered from shaping their environments. While architecture has divorced itself from related fields like environmental psychology, landscape architecture, and urban planning, public interest design seeks to reunite them—not for the good of the profession, its image, or its bottom line, but for the benefit of society. READ FULL ARTICLE >>

via www.good.is

Make It Right Looks North to Kansas City, Will Renovate Historic School into Green, Affordable Housing

IMAGE: Courtesy BNIM Architects & Make It Right Foundation

A major redevelopment in Kansas City is now underway, with the support of the Make It Right Foundation – founded by actor Brad Pitt to build affordable housing in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina – donating $2.3 million toward construction of green, affordable housing units on the grounds of the old Bancroft School within KC’s Green Impact Zone. Upon its completion, the $14 million Bancroft redevelopment will include 50 affordable housing units: 29 in the remodeled school building and 21 in new town homes to be constructed on school grounds, all meeting LEED Platinum standards.

After discussions for more than a year, this project now moves forward after the announcement last Monday by Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II and Kansas City Mayor Sly James – which follows a decision by the Missouri Housing Development Corporation to approve a Low-Income Housing Tax Credit application that will allow redevelopment of the vacant Bancroft School. The project will also receive $1.4 million in federal and state Low-Income Housing Tax Credits; $3 million in federal and state historic preservation tax credits; and $676,000 in Affordable Housing Assistance Program tax credits.

BNIM Architects is leading the design, with Dalmark Development Group as the developer. Other key players include the Historic Manheim Park Neighborhood Association, Kansas City’s Neighborhood Housing Services, the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC), and the Green Impact Zone.

IMAGE: Courtesy BNIM Architects & Make It Right Foundation

For more on this amazing new project, see Kevin Collison’s piece in the Kansas City Star, “Brad Pitt’s foundation to help redevelop Bancroft School”:

A bond forged in storm-ravaged New Orleans between actor Brad Pitt and a local architecture firm is bearing fruit in Kansas City — and may show the path forward to reusing dozens of empty schools.

The long-closed Bancroft School at 4300 Tracy Ave. will be renovated into affordable apartments and a community center with the aid of the Make It Right Foundation founded by Pitt, a Hollywood superstar with deep Missouri roots, and the creative talents of BNIM Architects, his helper in New Orleans.

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The $14 million project calls for the existing 103-year-old brick school building to be converted into 29 affordable apartments with a 6,250-square-foot community center on the main floor. A new building with 21 apartments will also developed. READ MORE

via www.kansascity.com

Atlantic Cities: The Real Reason Cities Can Be So Much Greener Than Other Places

By Michael Mehaffy

For those who do research on the sustainability of cities, there's a tantalizing puzzle. Per capita, cities are greener than other places; urban residents have a much smaller ecological footprint.

In our current models, we understand only about half of that difference, perhaps even less. To be sure, some of the greenness of cities is not so hard to explain. For example, people drive less in bigger cities because it's harder to drive, and because it's easier to get around without a car. Other factors are small in themselves, but add up: the closer spacing of buildings results in lower transmission losses and pumping energy; there's less embodied energy in roads and other infrastructure; urban residences tend to be more compact and energy-efficient.

But the most intriguing reason may be the one we understand the least: people in cities actually interact and use resources in a more efficient pattern. When we look at individual factors in isolation, we miss the synergetic effects of this network. READ MORE >>

via www.theatlanticcities.com

University of South Carolina will Debut the Largest Net-Zero Building in the World

When the Darla Moore School of Business is completed next year, the University of South Carolina will have 1.2 million square feet of green building space. The Moore School will be the largest net-zero building in the world.

via www.environmentalleader.com

USA Today: Brad Pitt's group helped by zero-energy homes

By Wendy Koch

Since actor Brad Pitt founded the non-profit Make It Right in 2007 to build low-cost, sustainable homes for New Orleans' Hurricane Katrina victims, green building has exploded nationwide. On Friday, two builders are announcing plans to offer affordable homes designed to produce as much energy as they use -- one of which is a stylish modern prefab to benefit Pitt's charity.

California-based LivingHomes, a developer of high-end, ultra-green, factory-built homes, is debuting its lowest-cost model ever -- the C6 -- that will be available in most states. The 1,232 square-foot. $179,000 prefab, which is about half the size of the average new U.S. home, has three bedrooms and two baths as well as a courtyard that blends indoor and outdoor living. Part of the proceeds from each home's sale will be donated to Make It Right.

"This is by far the most energy-efficient home we've built," says LivingHomes' CEO Steve Glenn, noting it's designed to earn the top or platinum rating from the U.S. Green Building Council. He says it's also the easiest and fastest one to build, since it's fully constructed by Cavco -- a manufactured housing company with factories nationwide -- in less than two months and installed on-site in one day.

Also late this week, Scottsdale-based Shea Homes, the developer of Trilogy resort communities and a builder in eight states, is announcing the launch of its "no-electric bill" home aimed at the age 55-plus, Baby Boomer set. The "SheaXero" will combine energy efficiency with solar panels to produce all the power the house is expected to need. READ MORE >>

via content.usatoday.com

BSA LifeStructures' Urban Forest: Modeling Nature for Sustainable Solutions

Interesting ideas being developed via BSA LifeStructures' Urban Forest concept - on their blog at "Some Cities Contemplate Sustainability, Others Are Living It":

Cities today are looking for an edge to curb operational expenses. Where capital is available, investing in sustainable technologies is a win-win. The city of South Bend, with the help of BSA LifeStructures, is moving towards a more sustainable model; beginning with the development of Ignition Park on the brownfield site formerly occupied by the Studebaker Corporation. BSA LifeStructures' Urban Forest concept focuses on bringing sustainable technologies to the urban setting. Through our campus planning and business incubator planning strategies we are aiming to reduce storm water runoff, generate sustainable power, and lessen the development footprint of the park. While these technologies and concepts are adding to the initial development cost, the payback is such that the city couldn't afford not to move forward with these concepts. In fact, the city is looking to utilize these concepts outside of the park as they address sustainability regionally.

The goal when implementing a concept like the Urban Forest is to gain support from multiple entities and interests within the community. READ MORE >>

via blog.bsalifestructures.com

Seattle University's buildings go carbon neutral with facilities upgrades, offsets

By Mike Thee

Seattle University's buildings are carbon neutral. Just pause a moment and let that sink in.

Yes, that's right-through new infrastructure enhancements and offsets, our campus buildings have completely shed their carbon footprints, further cementing the university's status as a leader in sustainability.

David Brugman, assistant director of utilities and sustainability, is playing an instrumental role in making SU's campus more energy-efficient. It is unknown how many colleges and universities in the country can claim their buildings are carbon neutral, but Brugman believes the list is pretty short.

SU's buildings have achieved carbon neutrality largely through two recent developments. First, a new, highly efficient heating loop serving five facilities has reduced our buildings' carbon output by 18 percent. Second, the university is offsetting the remaining 82 percent primarily by investing in a project that's turning cow manure into power. READ MORE >>

via www.seattleu.edu

MIT: Harnessing nature's solar cells (VIDEO)

MIT researcher Andreas Mershin has a vision that within a few years, people in remote villages in the developing world may be able to make their own solar panels, at low cost, using otherwise worthless agricultural waste as their raw material.

The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse

A report produced by the Preservation Green Lab of the National Trust for Historic Preservation provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the potential environmental benefit of building reuse. This groundbreaking study, The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse, concludes that, when comparing buildings of equivalent size and function, building reuse almost always offers environmental savings over demolition and new construction.

The report’s key findings offer policy-makers, building owners, developers, architects and engineers compelling evidence of the merits of reusing existing buildings as opposed to tearing them down and building new.

Those findings include:

• Reuse Matters. Building reuse typically offers greater environmental savings than demolition and new construction. It can take between 10 to 80 years for a new energy efficient building to overcome, through efficient operations, the climate change impacts created by its construction. The study finds that the majority of building types in different climates will take between 20-30 years to compensate for the initial carbon impacts from construction.
• Scale Matters. Collectively, building reuse and retrofits substantially reduce climate change impacts. Retrofitting, rather than demolishing and replacing, just 1% of the city of Portland’s office buildings and single family homes over the next ten years would help to meet 15% of their county’s total CO2 reduction targets over the next decade.
• Design Matters. The environmental benefits of reuse are maximized by minimizing the input of new construction materials. Renovation projects that require many new materials can reduce or even negate the benefits of reuse.
• The Bottom Line: Reusing existing buildings is good for the economy, the community and the environment. At a time when our country’s foreclosure and unemployment rates remain high, communities would be wise to reinvest in their existing building stock. READ MORE >>

via www.preservationnation.org

GreenSource: The Nutritional Life of Buildings

The ongoing dialogue about the environmental and health impacts of building products – an important new addition to the push for transparency from BuildingGreen, Inc.

By Alex Wilson

When you buy a box of Cheerios at the supermarket, you know exactly what's in it: each ingredient; the number of calories in a serving; grams of sugar, fat, and protein; milligrams of sodium; and so forth. You also get some sense of what this means for your health—from those "percent daily values" in the nutrition facts box.

Why isn't this sort of information available for the products going into our buildings? We live or work with those building products for years or decades, spending an average of 90 percent of our time indoors. We're not literally eating our building materials, of course, but we would like to know if there's something in the paint, carpeting, or composite countertop that might harm us or the environment. Why can't we get that information?

We can, and we should. The move toward transparency is all about making this information readily available, to help everyone in the industry make more informed choices.

A growing piece of the movement toward "nutrition labels" for building products are environmental product declarations (EPDs), which are designed to inform us about the life-cycle environmental characteristics of products. READ MORE >>

via greensource.construction.com