Green ArchiTEXT

Ed Mazria @ Greenbuild: How Do We Mitigate Climate Risk & Why Do We Need a Shared Vision? [VIDEO]

Greenbuild 2013 Master Speaker: Ed Mazria from U.S. Green Building Council on Vimeo.

Kansas City Makes It Right: Bancroft School Apartments Open

Kansas City, Missouri, is the home of Make It Right's latest community revitalization project. Though the neighborhood of Manheim Park hasn't been affected by a natural disaster, it's been afflicted with decades worth of decline. Bancroft Elementary, a formerly abandoned school dating from 1904, is the projects locus. Make It Right and local firm BNIM transformed the vacant building into low-income housing for families, veterans, senior citizens, and youths transitioning out of foster care. Architect Tim Duggan, director of Make It Right's Innovations department, spearheaded the effort. We chatted with him about the project, "urban acupuncture," and how this redevelopment plan serves as a model for other cities. "We see this as a model both locally and nationally to identify a catalytic project and revitalize it," Duggan says. "So often conventional development says, it won't pencil out or it won't work unless there are inferior quality materials, or it'll pencil out with less community space or less attention to quality. We didn't want to do that." READ MORE >>

via www.dwell.com

A New Solar Material Shows Its Potential | MIT Technology Review

By Kevin Bullis

A new solar cell material has properties that might lead to solar cells more than twice as efficient as the best on the market today. An article this week in the journal Nature describes the materials—a modified form of a class of compounds called perovskites, which have a particular crystalline structure.

The researchers haven’t yet demonstrated a high efficiency solar cell with the material. But their work adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting perovskite materials could change the face of solar power. READ MORE >>

via www.technologyreview.com

Data Centers Aiming for Net Zero

By Michael Welton

"The cloud” gives a lighter-than-air spin to all our connectivity and data sifting. In reality, they consume energy like there’s no tomorrow. Next-generation data centers aim to fix that.

Data centers are changing. And that can’t happen too soon. “These buildings use an enormous amount of power,” says Gensler’s Bernie Woytek. “We’re talking millions of kilowatts per year—it really adds up.” After one data center client recently consolidated into a single new facility, its firstyear savings in electrical power was $14 million. The trends for future data centers are clear, says Woytek’s colleague Joe Lauro: “Smaller, more compact, and aggressively energy-efficient.”

So how do you get there? READ MORE >>

via Gensler Dialogue

Energy from roads, railways - and dancefloors: How cities of the future will harness energy

By Mike Scott

The power of footfall. An English company harnessed energy from spectators arriving at the Olympic park during London 2012. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA

Endless amounts have been written about what is the right path to a low-carbon future – but not much of that commentary has focused on the role that literal paths could play. Yet in the future we may all be generating energy wherever we go, whether we're walking, driving or sitting on the train, using a technique known as energy-harvesting.

There are two main approaches. One is to use mechanical technology to capture the energy and convert it into electricity and the other is to use piezo-electric materials, which produce electricity when they are put under pressure – when someone steps on them or drives over them, for example.

One of the best-known uses of the technique was in a club in Rotterdam, which installed an energy-generating dance floor, where the dancers created their own light show. While in the UK, a company, Pavegen, has generated energy from schoolchildren running to their next lesson, from thousands of runners at this year's Paris Marathon, revellers at the Bestival music festival on the Isle of Wight and spectators travelling to watch the London 2012 Olympic Games via West Ham tube station.

The technology is ideal for anywhere that attracts crowds, so ticket barriers at train and tube stations are an obvious application, but the concept will also work at shopping centres, sports venues, even airport terminals. READ MORE >>

via www.theguardian.com

Town Square: San Diego - How Gensler is Reimagining Cities

By Patrick Mikusky and Ben Regnier

Image © San Diego History Center

Despite the sprawling nature of San Diego, our team chose to concentrate on the downtown core, not only because it is our own backyard, but because this region of the city has consistently lacked compelling public space. Combining historical research with a survey of the current urban landscape and its dynamics, we have started to unravel the “why” of our contemporary city, as well as its strengths and weaknesses. The historic and current drivers of the San Diego economy – the military, research and engineering, tourism, tuna fishing, and shipping – have over the years worked against the development of the downtown waterfront as a civic arena. READ MORE >>

via www.gensleron.com