The U.S. Green Building Council has announced its Greenbuild keynote speaker for 2008: Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It's an interesting choice, following on the heels of Vice President Al Gore being given half of the Nobel Prize for peace, that reinforces the connection between social justice and environmental performance. What will Tutu have to say about green building?
"There's one thing worse than being young and full of stormy tantrums, and that's being old and backward-looking and crotchety."
I mentioned this in passing the other day, but it deserves to be given more attention. Following up on its February 2007 webcast, "The 2010 Imperative
An interesting conversation about what lies beyond LEED has been happening over the last few days on the Big Green email list. Some excerpts of the exchange follow. (I've done some editing, and added links. Check the December '07 and January '08 Big Green archives for the complete, unedited exchange.)
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Read the current bulletinThe GreenSpec team is regularly contacted by manufacturers and their marketers asking how to get products "certified as green." The question itself reveals one of two things: that they either haven't done any work yet to understand what it is they're actually asking... or that they have. In the first case, good on 'em for looking into it.
7/1/09 Update: The LEED AP exam has significantly changed, and the following information has not been updated to reflect this. And by the way, if you are looking to learn about the LEED 2009 rating systems, there's no better tool out there than our own LEEDuser.com.
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Twice each month, BuildingGreen publishes an email news bulletin with current news and product information briefs. Sign up here—it's free. We will never share or sell your email address, and you may unsubscribe at any time.
Read the current bulletinarchitecture2030.org — which will be hosting a 2010 Imperative webcast at the end of January — was righteously stoked when the "Energy Independence and Security Act" was signed into law the other day.
From their email bulletin:
The President signs Energy Bill containing The 2030 Challenge targets
We wish all of you a happy, life-changing year ahead, and thank you for all the good, important work you do and choices you make. We had our annual holiday party for staff and their guests on Wednesday evening; it's something we look forward to every year. If there was enough room, we'd have you all over. That's part of the reason we've developed this LIVE section of our website — so we can catch up with each other, have lively discussions, and bask in such good company. Here are some photos from our party. (Click the pictures for a larger version.)
SG Blocks of Charleston, NC, refabricates sea-truck shipping containers into modular construction units, and has been getting buzz on the likes of Bob Vila's show, the NBC Nightly News, and other newsy outlets.
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[Clicking an image in this post will load a larger version of the image. A slideshow of the images in this post, and more, is also available. Previous posts in the "Notes from Sweden" series include #1: How They Get Around.] It's enough to make architects go weak at the knees.
The answer to this question is... MIT might, but only if it wants to.
