Green ArchiTEXT

eVolo: Conference Center “Green Solution House” Takes Sustainability to a New Level

IMAGE: 3XN

Danish practice 3XN is the architect behind a new experimental conference center and hotel where everything is adapted to the circulation of nature and where guests will get an idea of how it feels to live in a world without waste.

No waste
The Green Solution House conference center on the Danish island of Bornholm is designed and developed in accordance with the principles of Cradle 2 Cradle®. This means that all materials used in the building are either fully recyclable or biodegradable. Hence, the building design takes on the ambition to eliminate the concept of waste.

The project is managed by Kasper Guldager Jørgensen, head of 3XN’s innovation unit, GXN: In Denmark, the construction industry alone is responsible for 30% of all waste generated. Waste that puts an enormous burden on the environment, but with Green Solution House we demonstrate that this is a problem, which we can actually solve.

Eliminating waste means that everything must be part of a circulation. Thus, the building is designed for disassembly and constructed of defined recyclable materials. Solar energy produces the energy consumed in the building, rain water is collected and water used is biologically cleaned and reused. Integrated green houses produce organic fruits and vegetables for the hotel restaurant. Further, the daily material flows from running the center is either recycled or composted. READ MORE >>

via www.evolo.us

William McDonough on Cradle to Cradle Design (VIDEO)

Great short video with Bill McDonough - part of The Designers Accord's new Sustainability in 7 video series:

Designers Accord - Sustainability in 7 - Bill McDonough from Core77 on Vimeo.

Cradle to Cradle: Creative and Effective Urbanism

'Design and Politics: The next Phase' is the opening event in new series of seven Cradle to Cradle lecture and discussion events taking place in 2011.

Coinciding with the opening of the exhibition “Cradle to Cradle® Festival” at Aedes Architecture Forum, the Design and Politics series begins with an exploration of the potential of the Cradle to Cradle® philosophy to inform architecture and urban planning principles. The speakers listed below will present their respective positions on this question and engage in a moderated dialogue intended to articulate the scope, limitations and effectiveness of the Cradle to Cradle® philosophy in setting universal standards across all scales from city design, to architecture, to product design; and to determine where political responsibility lies for creative and effective urbanism.

For more information on the Cradle to Cradle® Festival and its philosophy, visit http://www.cradletocradlefestival.com.

Park 20/20: A Cradle to Cradle Inspired Master Plan

2010 ASLA Honor Award
William McDonough + Partners, Charlottesville, VA

Park 20/20 is a new model of sustainable development, conceived as the first large-scale urban development in the Netherlands to implement the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) design philosophy. Located within a man-made "cultural landscape" of a Dutch polder (land reclaimed from the seas), the planning concepts promote regenerative design agenda of C2C philosophy at all scales, from regional ecological connectivity to enhanced landscape biodiversity, and from workplace health and well-being to neighborhood connectivity. Integrated within the urban plan are highly effective district waste, energy and water system that eliminate wastefulness throughout the complex. READ MORE >>

via www.asla.org

Cradle to Cradle Design: Going from Less Bad to More Good

Nice overview of the Cradle to Cradle protocols from Bill McDonough, Principal, William McDonough + Partners – at Fortune’s “Brainstorm: Green” conference, held recently in California (April 12-14, 2010). The theme of the conference: “How can business profitably help solve the world's big environmental problems?”

McDonough also refers briefly to the California Green Chemistry Initiative – statewide recommendations (released in December 2008) that seek to eliminate or reduce the use of toxic substances in products and manufacturing processes. More on that can be found here.

The Challenge: Building Life Cycle

In "Built to Last: Measuring the Life Cycle of a Facility", Sarah Fister Gale explores the tools and methods used in life cycle assessment (LCA), a holistic approach to new building construction. For the Greener Buildings article, she writes:

"Defining the carbon footprint of a building is an elusive and complex process. Unlike individual products that have well-defined shelf lives and finite ingredients, buildings stand for decades, endure climatic extremes and will be used for multiple purposes.

Every decision that goes into the design, material choice and energy use in a building has a long-term effect. "Buildings are the most long-lived products we make," says Tom Gloria, chief knowledge officer for eQuilibrium Solutions Corporation, a sustainable management services company in Boston.

Their longevity makes getting an accurate life cycle assessment (LCA) complicated. LCA is a method of holistically evaluating the environmental impact of a product throughout its life cycle, from the harvesting of raw materials through processing, manufacture, installation, use, and ultimately disposal or recycling or the entire envelope."

Better understanding of a building's life cycle, in fact, is an area gaining greater attention lately. The Lifecycle Building Challenge, which launched last year, just issued a call for entries for its second competition, LBC2: "Submit your innovative project, design, or idea for reducing to conserve construction and demolition materials and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by designing buildings for adaptability and disassembly."

Go here for more information.