The Natural Resources Defense Council

Robert Redford Building in Santa Monica, California has won a

Charter Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). The building, designed by Moule & Polyzoides Architects and Urbanists, simultaneously addresses green building and New Urbanist concerns (see

EBN

Vol... Read more

, warns an article in the July 2004 issue of the

Journal of Light Construction (JLC). According to Kevin Hansen, who recently investigated abandoned tannery sites in the Wilmington, Delaware region for Tetra Tech, Inc., the leather-making industry used to soak animal hides in a slurry of lime and arsenic... Read more

On July 8, 2004, the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) imposed a moratorium on the issuance of building permits in Middletown, a community of 3,000 just west of Frederick. The cause of this action was concern that the town’s water supply is inadequate to satisfy both existing and proposed development.

This is the second time... Read more

Seattle’s

Environmental Home Center (EHC), profiled in “Getting the ‘Right Stuff’: A Guide to Green Building Materials Retailers” (EBN

Vol. 10, No. 4), lost its main warehouse, showroom, and offices to a fire on August 11, 2004. Two warehouses remain standing, however, and the company has laid out an aggressive recovery plan in... Read more

Power to the People: How the Coming Energy Revolution Will Transform an Industry, Change Our Lives, and Maybe Even Save the Planet by Vijay Vaitheeswaran; Farrar,... Read more

Ills caused by global climate change range from increased frequency of asthma and heat stroke to more intense storms and species extinction. While environmentalists go far past calling the phenomenon a “nuisance,” they are applauding eight states and one city for doing just that. The attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Iowa, New... Read more

2004 Energy Efficiency Integration Awards: the

Cesar E. Chavez Education Center in Oakland, the

Challengers Tennis Club for Boys and Girls in Los Angeles, and

Lake View Terrace Branch Library in Los Angeles (the latter two of which are profiled in... Read more

ozone levels in the eastern half of the U.S. exceed air quality standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), predicts a report published by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The study,

Heat Advisory: How Global Warming Causes More... Read more

At the June 2004 American Institute of Architects (AIA) national convention in Chicago, the Portland Cement Association (PCA) rolled out a sustainability initiative, “Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World.” Part of PCA’s Cement Manufacturing Sustainability Program, the initiative will help the industry develop sustainability guidelines,... Read more

The day-long seminar “Educating the Educators: A Crash Course on Eco Design™” is intended to quickly

bring design educators up-to-speed on green design. David Bergman, architect and teacher at Parsons School of Design, and Erika Doering, interior designer and teacher at Parsons and Pratt Institute, developed the program with the... Read more

Nicola Valley Institute of Technology in Merritt, British Columbia has won a

Governor General’s Medal for Architecture, jointly administered by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and the Canada Council for the Arts. Shared by the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology and the University College of the Cariboo, this 48,600... Read more

There’s a lot of pavement in the United States—nearly 38,000 square miles (9.9 Million ha) or an area about the size of Indiana, according to calculations EBN has done (Vol. 5, No. 1). The vast majority of this is impermeable surface that contributes to stormwater runoff. In certain applications, that pavement can be made porous so that the... Read more

There’s a new option for potable-water, hydronic-heating, and other pressurized piping applications: polypropylene from the German company Aquatherm, GmbH. Aquatherm has been producing high-quality Fusiotherm® polypropylene (PP) piping for 30 years with tremendous success—never having paid a claim for damage due to failure of the piping,... Read more

University of Manitoba interior design students

Tamara Nyysola and

Corina Penner have won the first-ever

GreenInteriors Student Design Competition. Dow BioProducts, Inc. and

Interior Design magazine sponsored the first annual competition, which drew 55 entries from 14 design schools across North America. The... Read more

The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) board of directors has announced the recipients of the

2004 Medal and Firm Awards, to be presented during ASLA’s annual meeting in Salt Lake City this November. Some of the winners are listed below; more information is online at www.asla.org.

•Peter W. Walker, FASLA, received... Read more

Federal Environmental Executive John Howard resigned from his position effective June 11, 2004 to return to Austin, Texas. “It has been a privilege and an honor to have served with so many in working to improve the Federal government’s (and America’s) environmental stewardship,” Howard said in his letter of resignation. “I believe we have made... Read more

Additional research would have revealed that the European Union disagrees with

EBN’s recommended general ban on certain brominated flame retardants (see

EBN

Vol. 13, No. 6)—which, through its generalization, could be dangerous for your readers, other builders, and their customers by reducing fire-safety protections.... Read more