In December 2007 I posted about a video called The Story of Stuff.
This is the second post about strawbale building today. The other is Building Science for Strawbale Buildings.
Over at buildingscience.com, the online home of Building Science Corporation (where you can benefit from the big-brained research and synthesis of Joe Lstiburek, John Straube, and others), there are tons of great articles like Can Highly Glazed Building Façades Be Green?,
Last night in President Obama's address to congress he mentioned Greensburg, Kansas as an example of leadership in green energy:
4240 Architecture is a national design firm dedicated to creating architectural, planning, and interior solutions that integrate social, technological, economic, environmental, and aesthetic concerns.
The firm recently moved its Denver office from its Lower Downtown (LoDo) location to a former steel-pipe foundry in the River North (RiNo) district. The firm is the first professional-services company to relocate to this emerging neighborhood.
This major renovation converted a retail lumberyard into an office and retail facility. Retail space now occupies half of the first floor, while office space occupies the other half of the first floor and the entire second floor.
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Read the current bulletinThe tireless folks from Google's for-profit charity, Google.org, are developing a web-based application called PowerMeter that takes advantage of the increasing availability of "smart meters" from utility companies and independent manufacturers.
What color is green?
The fundamental, unanswered — perhaps unanswerable — question. And it's not just people new to the concept of "green" who are asking it as technology, information, and philosophy continue to evolve. "Green" seekers are all spread out on an incredibly wide path, and all are at different points along the way. At least most of them seem to be heading in more or less the same direction.
In an online article on the U.S. Department of Energy's EnergySmart Hospitals, we compared that program to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star for Healthcare program. Having looked at both programs, we suggested that, without benchmarking and reporting requirements, the EnergySmart Hospitals program was the less rigorous of the two. In addition, several sources we spoke with suggested that the program would do little to support energy efficiency that the Energy Star program was not already doing.
We've all had this conversation: is a huge single family green home really green? A new building in the desert? A man-made island in Dubai?
The blog Green Building Elements has collected the 10 Dumbest Green Buildings on Earth, including a BP gas station, a golf lodge, a single-family skyscraper, and a car dealership.
Despite the economic downturn and the trend toward smaller crowds at building trade shows, Efficiency Vermont's 2009 Better Buildings by Design Conference was a great success and actually increased attendance this year.
Turbines in Mount Equinox, Vermont.
Last week we reviewed the history of wind energy, including its use for pumping water and generating power. This week we'll take at look at the state of the art with wind power and what's ahead.
There are still people on both sides of the PVC issue, but let's go ahead and assume that most green builders don't like the stuff — mostly because of its upstream and downstream environmental burdens. PVC taken in isolation from its birth and death enters murkier territory.
