Archives For sustainability

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Green Buildings: Solar Decathlon 2011

solar decathlon 2011 winnerEach year the U.S. Department of Energy sponsors a competition for the design of a home that can maximize the energy of the sun for affordable, sustainable living. This year, the team from the University of Maryland took home the competition’s top honor for their project entitled: Watershed. Rather than a visual manifesto on the rebranding of the single family home, the success of the design revolves around the integration and interconnection of a series of technologies and systems to create a compact, efficient and welcoming residence. The result can serve as a model to progressive home building in many ways–an area where our country needs no shortage of help in understanding how sustainability can be integrated into everyday living.

Merely building a small home that gathers the most solar energy would not snag you the blue ribbon in this competition. The Solar Decathlon is judged on a series of criteria including affordability, engineering, communications, comfort zone and market appeal. This is integral to the success of the challenge because despite the fact that sustainability’s public image may revolve around solar panels and wind turbines, the true meaning of the word is a holistic notion of balance that affects all aspects of living. Continue Reading…

Architectural Green Tech 
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Pushing the Envelope to Change the Standard

green certification standardMost of the opportunities that garden variety Americans have to make a sustainable change in their life are small in the grand scheme of the country as a whole, let alone the world and its biosphere. As an architect, designing a LEED Platinum building, or fifty of them for that matter, is still a drop in the bucket for level of change that we need to the built environment of this country. Each individual person or building is a long way from getting everyone on board, but the goal doesn’t have to be 100% participation. The few that extend themselves to push the envelope now build the image of interest that allows for larger standards to change with sweeping effects over broader areas. Continue Reading…

Political 
2

Vertical Farms Need a Residential Piggyback

Urban farming continues to ride the wave of sustainability with efforts sprouting up across the country that find very real and fruitful results. The rush of interest has maintained conversations of massive towers buried in the center of urban cores to produce local, sustainable crops for city dwellers. However, the conceptual mecca of farming in the city, vertical farms, still remains mired in the theoretical world due largely to the unwillingness of any funding sources to make the first cut on a bleeding edge development pattern. On their own, large vertical farms in the cityscape bring costs that may be insurmountable for a largely unproven model, but if the system was paired with high-end residential and positioned as an amenity then new crops could get the prime exposure they need to test their strength where it its needed most. Continue Reading…

Architectural 
9

Renewables Give Us More Power Than Nuclear

green power productionFor the first time in a while, our portfolio of renewable power sources has surpassed power production from nuclear generation. According to the latest Monthly Energy Review from the Energy Information Administration, the most sustainable forms of energy now produce more for us than the most hazardous, largely due to rises in wind, solar and hydro production. Continue Reading…

Infrastructural 
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Sustainable Systems Survive Convention-Sized Value Engineering

New York Convention CenterThe behemoth of black metal and tinted glass known as the Javits Center is awaiting its long-needed renovation in an attempt to boost the functionality, size and appearance of New York’s largest convention center. Much like Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, the project needed help from the moment it was completed in 1986. In the current economic climate, the budget for the work shrank drastically from its intended funding levels, but amazingly enough the sustainable systems of green roofs and high performance walls—treated as novelties by some—were deemed priorities by the project team and survived cost cutting. Continue Reading…

Architectural 
10

The Garden City vs. the Green City

Planted CityPop culture’s interpretation of “green” urban landscapes have a tendency to draw a literal representation of a more sustainable city. These “Garden City” visions can include plants growing from virtually every spatial nook and cranny possible. With flowing strands of climbing plants scaling facades and trees not only lining the streets, but poking out of sky gardens stories off of the ground, the idea of a more environmentally responsible cityscape is often presented to the public as being the result of the integration of flora and fauna.

While incorporating foliage and creating micro-climates carry a number of benefits, a truly green city has to revolve around the integration of systems to help it emulate a natural ecology. Plants should be treated as one component of a network of sustainable efforts in order to be properly utilized. This vision is not really “wrong” as much as incomplete and runs the risk of misleading people into thinking that making cities sustainable is as simple as adding plant life. There is no real solution that involves only planting our way to stewardship.

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Urban Planning 
24

Indoor Farming May Be Organic’s Only Hope

farming growing organicAfter decades of trying to build an industry based around a diversion from the chemical-laden farming practices of agro-giants, organic farming still makes up an infinitesimal portion of America’s produce. Despite the apparent strength of naturally oriented stores and markets, when it comes to planting acreage and shopping baskets, organics do not hold a meaningful presence at the table—largely due to lower yields and their affect on profitability. Due to its inherent control over growing conditions, indoor farming could be the medium that allows organic produce to harvest more of the national market share.

I recently read a fascinating post by Steve Savage, over on Sustainablog, who did some analysis of farming data collected by the USDA. His reported conclusions give us a glimpse of organic food’s place in American agriculture—and you need a magnifying glass to see it. According to Savage, harvested organic produce currently comprises a mere 0.52% of all cropland in the country in 2008. To an architect in New York City, where organic products seem to be available on every corner, the number caught me by surprise. Continue Reading…

Economic 
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Digging into Geothermal

geothermal heating and coolingWhen it comes to the question of how to heat and cool our homes, there is a great answer right under our feet. A client recently expressed interest in exploring geothermal for a home renovation in Rhode Island and I wasted no time in jumping on the opportunity to cement it as one of our goals for the project. Despite Americans’ slow adoption of the technology, geothermal offers an efficient and sustainable way to let the earth do most of the work in heating and cooling a home. It also offers one of the best solutions to target energy efficiency and the reduction of reoccurring fossil fuel use. Continue Reading…

Architectural 
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Government Agencies Can’t Match Support with Results

government sustainabilityThe government has the opportunity to serve as the testing ground for innovative policy changes in order to gather data and provide a working example that can be used as leverage to convince an undecided public. Apparently, most executives in federal agencies support sustainable initiatives but also say that the agencies themselves have found little success in implementing them.

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Political