Living Building Challenge IRL
Last week was our penultimate topic week in the Sustainable Buildings class, and it was an important one: we covered the Living Building Challenge, one of the “deepest green” sustainable building standards in the world. It was even more appropriate a topic when you consider that it was started in our own backyard in conjunction [...]
Midterms in the Sustainable Buildings Class
This past Tuesday, we all got to see for the first time what buildings the students are modeling for their Term Projects, the primary objective of which is to evaluate a building’s energy consumption using three different methodologies. The students will then derive from this process a better understanding of that building’s interaction with its [...]
Architecture 2030 and Net Zero Energy Buildings
Today in class we talked about Architecture 2030, which is a private organization started by Edward Mazria to, in their words, “achieve a dramatic reduction in the climate-change-causing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the Building Sector by changing the way buildings and developments are planned, designed and constructed.” Architecture 2030 is effectively trying to change [...]
America’s Greenest Building Code
Last week, the California Building Standards Commission unanimously adopted the first-in-the-nation mandatory Green Building Standards Code, also known as “CALGREEN”. The new standards take effect starting January 1, 2011 and will require all new buildings in the state to be more energy efficient and environmentally responsible. The new CALGREEN code will require: a 20 percent [...]
Green Building Policy in a Changing Economic Environment
The title of this post is taken from a report recently released by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), which I found through my daily Department of Energy update. The report can be found on this AIA’s Local Leaders in Sustainability Web page, which also has some great links to case studies done over the [...]
…and I dropped the blogging ball! More about the Solar Decathlon…
Sorry for going on hiatus after my last post from DC about the Solar Decathlon. The truth of the matter is that the weather was 100% miserable the entire time I was there, and I had not the time nor the space to blog: my hands were numb and it was raining, thus making it [...]
The AIA Awards and Carbon Neutrality
The American Institute of Architects, or the AIA, is the national association for professional architects in the United States. Each year, local chapters of the AIA give out awards to projects or firms in their jurisdiction for exemplary design. Well, MOST of the chapters give out awards for exemplary design. Yet another reason why I [...]
Green housing round-up!
I’ve been collecting links to interesting articles about green housing and design lately, almost all via Treehugger, and I finally have a break in the action where I can repost them and shine a light on what I think are some worthwhile endeavors. Have a look! GE recently introduced a Net-Zero Energy Home, which uses [...]
The 29 most important pages of the Waxman-Markey climate bill
Ed Mazria is a bit of a legend in the Architecture and design community. He’s been in practice forever; he wrote a big, fat book all about energy-saving passive design in the 70′s entitled The Passive Solar Energy Book; and he’s the driving force behind the organization known as Architecture 2030. Basically, when Ed talks, [...]
Every city should have one of these
Today I visited the Portland ReBuilding Center, and hopefully you can get an idea of what it is from the title: it’s a place where people can donate used building materials so they can be sold again for new building projects. It’s building recycling, or, “rebuilding”. And it’s great! Have a look: I am originally [...]
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